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| Christmas 1999 |
Christmas Morning: the culmination of MONTHS of shopping, spending, decorating, wrapping, baking, planning. December 26th: we can’t put it all away fast enough. As a kid, I can picture the naked Christmas trees abandoned at the ends of white driveways up and down our Minnesota streets. But not the Wood House! Those old colorful bulbs shone proudly through the frosty picture window until the first week in January. Having come from an Orthodox Catholic home, my mother insisted on keeping the tree up until Three Kings’ Day, otherwise known as The Epiphany. I recall feeling some embarrassment for not keeping pace with the neighbors. And yet today, 40-some years later, pop over to my place around January 7th and you will find Christmas still at it, trees and all.
Either way- the day after or 2 weeks later, that stuff has to come down. I dread it just as much as the next guy. Room by room, I disassemble the holiday, eager to have my house back & free of dust-collecting Christmas chach-keys. In no time at all, the whole thing turns into the mom version of “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie”: If you give a mom a ladder, she’s gonna notice the dusty fans and need a vacuum. When she goes to get the vacuum... You get the idea. The process is painstaking: fake pine needles sprinkled about, stray hooks that find their way into the carpet and plastic tubs that somehow seem incapable of housing the Christmas Crap-ola that just one month prior came out of them!
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| Hog pile with Dad - 2003 |
By hour eight of the dismantling process, I drag my ladder over to the family room tree: the last remaining evidence of Christmas 2013. Savoring one last holiday moment, I plug the tree in as I begin the unraveling. Winding tiny twinkle lights onto a wheel, a nostalgic sadness envelopes me. So many bulbs, so many memories. I stop, holding that warm ring of a thousand lights & snap a mental picture of its radiance. I’m reminded of all the lights in my life: my four children and husband of 22 years. I think back to decades of parenting and marriage, with all its challenges and gifts. I thank God for the many bright souls who were a light to my sometimes darkened path.
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| My Four Babies - 2013 |
Before I know it, another Christmas is put away: the wad of lights in their proper tub, and the tree, squeezed into its tattered box for safe keeping until next year. I pause, pondering those three kings... ‘Star of wonder, star of night, star with royal beauty bright, westward leading,
still proceeding,
guide us to thy Perfect Light.’
