Oh Christmas Tree

To exhaust another old cliche, 'tis the season to pull out the Christmas tree from the basement--the evergreen, echo-friendly variety (meaning: plastic)--and assemble it in the living room. It conveniently has the lights pre-installed, all that needs to be done is put together the three segments of the tree and plug it in. Oh, and decorate it with dozens of balls and ornaments.

Meg is the resident designer and decorator. She believes I'm too clumsy to handle fragile glass decorations, and she just may be right. I certainly don't do anything to dispute this. Which is why I ended up watching her humming softly to the tunes from the stereo and circling the tree in search for the perfect spot for this or that colored ball.

What is with Christmas to always bring such a tide of melancholy? There are other, more convenient times in a year, when one could feel just as melancholic and downtrodden, but somehow it's always Christmas that floods us with memories, nostalgia and sadness. Each ball in Meg's hands flashes a scene from a Christmas of long ago: mom and I, a kid of 7, decorating a tree, dad laughing with us from the couch; celebration at grandma's and grandpa's when us kids found an unguarded bottle of chocolate liqueur and collective nausea that followed; first high school all-night Christmas party at my place and a memorable cleanup afterward; the trees from the past blend into the trees of recent years, with Meg at the decorating helm and me in supporting role.

Meg's smile stops the time machine in my head. She holds a small, silver ball for me. I take it from her fingers and hang it to the high branch she can't reach. We finish the task together, then take a step back to admire the creative kitsch we assembled. With her hand in mine I finally understand the scenes which were flashing through my mind--all of them lead us to this point and yet another Christmas we will share with each other.