The tree of life

It's that time of year.  Today is the fifth day of Christmas (did you get your rings? I was so sure I sent them), and in seven more days the Christmas tree will be coming down.

Many people have tasteful trees.  Trees where the ornaments match, or at least don't clash badly. Trees with delicate glass balls and pine cones.

That's not our tree.

Our tree is eclectic, to put it charitably.  It is a mess of scattered styles and materials, the colors ranging through all possible shades of the rainbow (and then some).  We do not have any black ornaments, but that's about it.

Each year, our tree is a microcosm of our lives together.  I buy an ornament for everyone in the household save myself. The tree becomes a living testament to our history.

There are ornaments of this year: Rocket Scientist's polar bear, Echidna Boy's pink velociraptor, etc..  There are the trains from former years for Railfan, and the glass chili pepper for the Not So Little Drummer Boy, who has yet to find a food other than ice cream that he will not put hot sauce on.  There is every handmade ornament from school -- fading paper chains, cutout styrofoam trees with pictures on them, the tinsel garland with bananas and pineapples.  All of them fragile, dilapidated, and treasured (if not by the kids, then by their parents).  There are the cheap plastic angels that were part of someone's fundraising drive. There are the glass seahorses I bought on a trip to St. Croix, the icicles sent to us by one of my bridesmaids, the spun crystal angels I bought at York Cathedral.


Every angel we have ever had as a topper is on the tree: the pathetic one made out of yarn from the first tree after we got married when we could barely afford a tree, let alone anything to put on top of it; the larger one I made the next year with glitter wings and yellow yarn hair; and the one that now sits on top, the one with the yellow braids and pearls that I made fifteen years ago.  For many years I pleaded with the Rocket Scientist to let me have a store-bought glass angel, and he adamantly refused. We will never have one now, I suspect.


There are markers along various roads:  the brightly colored enameled balls we bought in Santa Fe on our way east, in a move that was going to be permanent, to Washington D.C.  And the glass balls with doves on a somber deep red background that we bought in New Orleans on the way back, after Al Gore had reorganized the government and us out of a posting.  There is the sterling silver gnome and the fiber ball with the MIT insignia on it, the first ornaments -- no, the first gifts -- the Rocket Scientist and I gave each other so many years ago.

The tree is a chronicle of our lives together, he and I, as friends, as lovers, as spouses, as family.

The tree is like all of us: crazy, chaotic, esoteric, somewhat messy, definitely unique.

And above all, loved.