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Dear Reader,
Every ornament hanging on my Christmas tree tells a story and when I decorated my tree the other day, one-by-one, I remembered.
I remembered the day my son came home from kindergarten and hurried into the living room to put the LifeSaver yarn doll on the Christmas tree. "Look Mom, see what I made." A miniature roll of LifeSavers in the middle of yarn arms, legs, and long locks of golden hair. It's still holding up after all these years.
Three red rocking horses. I remember, my daughter begged me to buy them when she was seven years old, the year she asked me about Santa.
Oh my, here are the pink drum ornaments, remnants of an "almost" all-pink Christmas tree. We'd just moved into a brand new house and I wanted our Christmas tree decorations to match the light, warm colors of my new sofa, rug and drapes. So I didn't bother getting out any of our old favorite ornaments that year, because they just wouldn't do. Instead, I spent hours, actually days (I got a little obsessed) looking for light pink, dark pink and cream-colored ornaments and lights to make a perfectly color coordinated Christmas tree.
Yes, indeed the front of the tree was an all-pink masterpiece, but I forgot to decorate the backside. And plop! Over the tree went. Broken ornaments everywhere and the water, filled with tree preservatives, spilled out onto the light gray carpeting. I was so angry at the tree and myself that I just let it lay in the middle of the living room floor for a couple of days, which of course set a water stain in the carpet.
My family thought I'd lost my mind, and I think that year I temporarily did. I gave the unscathed pink ornaments away (it was too embarrassing to keep them around), but I did keep two of the little pink drums. They're forever a humble reminder that I need to keep some balance in my life.
I'd forgotten all about it, but there it was tucked away in the bottom of the box of ornaments. I remember the day Mom gave it to me. She was so thrilled to find it--a clown popping up out of a wooden children's block with a "V" initial on the front of it. "V" for Virginia, my mother's name. My mother used to be a clown in her hometown parade in Cuba City and one year I did the parade with her and we even won a prize. Mom gave me the ornament the year before she died.
That stupid clown ornament--there it is waiting for me to hang it on the tree, but all I can do is cry and the crying turns into sobbing, my knees give way and soon I'm sitting on the floor in front of the Christmas tree--remembering another story, because every ornament on my tree tells a story. Stories I hope I'll never forget.
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
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http://www.DearReader.com
READ THE CLASSICS: The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton, and enter the free Penguin Classic's Drawing. Go to: http://www.supportlibrary.com/nl/path_go.cfm?x=815&site=24
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