Second in the series: Where Did They Come From?

If you were looking at our tree for the first time, one of the things that you would notice--without fail-- is that we have a LOT of brass ornaments. This was not by design. In fact, it is attributable to a group of ladies at the Presbyterian church in Rogersville, Tennessee.

 You see, the ladies buy and personalize brass ornaments for all the children of the church each year--a nice little custom--to be distributed at the yearly Christmas program. My mother-in-law made sure that each year, our daughters were included on the list. And so, for every year from the day they were born to the year when they were no longer considered young enough to get a present, those personalized brass ornaments arrived like clockwork.

I always thought, too, that those ornaments would provide a 'starter set' for our daughters when they finally had their own households, and their own trees for the holiday. In addition, I always made sure that I bought them a special ornament of their own each year--sometimes of their choice, sometimes of mine--to take with them when they left home.

 Well, a lot of those ornaments are still on our tree, waiting to spread their wings and fly to other locations. Whether it's inertia or my own failure to pack and ship, I do not know. But I prefer to think they remain here where their stories are told each year. I doubt Sarah remembers the silver spiral that she coveted at a shop on Main Street in Fairfax one year. The Pierrots I bought when both Kay and she were part of the drama scene in high school, the pewter ornaments featuring cats (Kay) and horses (Sarah) that we bought in Germany, the snowmen, the Snoopys, the Pooh bears, the homemade clothespin soldiers from their preschool classes…I may not say it out loud, but I remember almost all of them and where they came from and what prompted their selection.

 Our Christmas tree is a catalog of who we are and where we've been. Whether it's the determination of their grandmother's relentless brass ornaments, or the souvenir ornaments from vacation travels, or the ones that indicate passing interests or permanent ones (I don't think we have any anthropological ones, and most of the legal ones were JC-related), each item on the tree has something to say. I try to give them voice each year, which is why I will never have the Martha-Stewart, color-coordinated tree of the decorating magazines. Instead, I will have the styrofoam snowmen with felt features and lipsticked lettering, the aqua-colored (with glitter) spinner from my childhood, the felt mouse, asleep in his matchbox bed--imperfectly perfect in every way.

 There's a moral in here somewhere. Our Christmas tree gives us the opportunity to acknowledge all of our experiences and the people who made them, to remember and smile, to think about where we've been and what we are becoming. What better thoughts could we have when we are preparing for the coming of the baby at Christmas?