DPP 14: Repetitive and Evergreen

When I was a little girl, my grandfather and I took a trip every November to a Christmas Tree Farm a little ways from home. Together we roamed through a beautiful forest of woody-smelling evergreens, examining the dimensions, fullness, irregularities, and overall elegance of each before tagging a large tree for his house and a slightly smaller one for mine. We would return to the farm in late December to cut our trees and take them home, and somewhere amid the blur of working in my parents' bookstore, preparing Christmas gifts for my family and friends, and attending the Christmas Eve services that marked the end of the crazy retail shopping days, our tree would get both lights and ornaments.

Life is less idyllic now, and we bought our modest little tree pre-cut and at a discount on account of its many irregularities and "holes." It has exactly twelve ornaments (five from last year and seven from this) two garlands, and one string of lights, which is exactly right because there's not much room for more--and taking the tree down after Christmas will be simpler. Some of these ornaments will go back to the charity shops from whence they came when we move back to the States, and a few will indubitably make the journey overseas with us, to remind us in years to come of our happy days overseas: exhausted and busy, but without the demands of children and long-term employment.

Ah, these will be the days . . .