Ornaments

It was seven days after New Year’s Day and he sighed.  It was time to undecorated the tree and take it down.  The letdown after the Holidays.  Celebrations and parties over.  Kids and grandkids returned to their homes on the Mainland.  Fir needles starting to crisp and fall.  Every year the space between Thanksgiving and Christmas seemed more compressed, and Christmas to New Year’s Eve was just a blink in time.  And now it was January.

He had waited until two weeks before Christmas to get a live tree, bring it home, get out the stand that each year showed more rust, and lift the tree onto a side table with his son’s help.  It was a five foot tree and putting it on the table kept it out of the dogs’ reach when they came over.  What he used to do with his wife, then after her passing, alone, he now needed help with.  You must not use the step stool to decorate the top of the tree; tell me when you want me over and I’ll do the climbing, his son had admonished.  He bowed to common sense and agreed.  I’ll let the tree branches settle for a couple of days and call you, he told his son.
  Before calling to help with that, he got out the tree lights and the two ornament boxes in readiness.  If you can do put on the tree lights, and the top angel, I can do the rest, he said when his son arrived.  No climbing his son reminded him.  I haven’t shrunk that much that I can’t hang the ornaments, he replied, though he was now 5’ 9” instead of the 6’1” he had been when he was 60.  Thank you, but I can do the rest myself more slowly, now that you’ve done the high stuff.  I don’t want to take up too much of your day.  Yes, I’m sure I’ll be careful.  He liked to decorate slowly, remembering.  The former top angel that had been on their first tree, now looking quite worn, he hung from a lower branch.  He unpacked and decided where to place each ornament, an annual trip down memory lane.  Don’t need all of them this year; we used to have taller trees.  Turned on the lights and they looked evenly placed.  There would be some shifting of ornaments for a few days until he was satisfied with their distribution—that used to be fun for his wife.

But all that was over three weeks ago, and now it was time to put things back in storage and start a new year.  He began by getting out the two plastic storage boxes.  I’ll start with the high bulbs that are within reach and leave the top ones and lights for my son to take down.  Now here are the two small glass ones that we had on our very first tree.  That was in a studio apartment on Third Avenue in NYC, six months after they were married.  The tree they bought from a sidewalk stand on First Avenue.  

And these three were from Sears in Boston, two blocks from our apartment, just across the railroad bridge.  Made in Poland, he remembered—which seemed odd at the time.  Survivors of our moves across the country.  We also bought our trees from the lot in the Sears parking lot.  He wrapped each bulb one in tissue paper as he stored them.  

After Boston it was Great Falls, Montana and USAF life for two years.  Where’d we get these two crazy birds with top hats?  From the BX or “The Paris of Montana?”  That was the department store in town where they sold everything including furs coats up front and bought pelts from hunters and trappers in the back.  Our dining room set came from them.  We went to the National Forests in the snow to cut our own trees.  A caravan from the base, hunting trees.  Hunting pheasant was earlier in the fall.  

On to Seattle for four years.  His wife acquired a few more ornaments each Christmas, including the wooden figures from Sweden that he staged in a winter diorama each year.  The store was a Scandinavian shop on University Ave.  Do all college towns have a University Avenue?  Yeah, the kids got a kick out of that and look for it even now when they come back.  The felt birds she sewed as a volunteer with the Children’s Hospital Guild now hang on our son’s tree.  And when we went Christmas shopping at night at Frederick’s, the store had a supervised play room for the kids.  Frederick’s is no more, but I still have ornaments from it.  I guess there are still chocolate mints that sell under that label.

And finally back to Honolulu.  Here are the musical angels that play “Silent Night.”  From Liberty House and bought so long ago that they were made in Japan rather than China.  He wrapped them carefully in two layers of paper towels.  Liberty House.  They had a store in Union Square, San Francisco once.  I even bought a sport coat from that store.  Liberty House.  Sold by AmFac to a Mainland buyer and later bought by Macy’s.  The small wooden creche ornament was from “India Imports.”  Another local store crowded out of Ala Moana Center.  And these bulbs from Germany that we got for our first Christmas back in Hawaii—from Sears.  Gone too.  Wrap them and stow them.  Our tree that year was a local-grown live Norfolk pine.  No odor though.  We planted it at our first house the next summer.

Ornaments and decorations with histories, barely remembered now.  And now I’m the sole curator of these decorations and memories, he thought.  Ornaments, carefully packed away with their stories until next Christmas.