Mom's Christmas Trees

Mom’s Christmas Trees

When I was a small boy and when it was time, like always before, I looked out my little second story window. Out through the cold jack-frost figures, through the darkness and to the blowing swirling clouds of snow across the busy street–to that great and wonderful circle of radiant white light. They were there again!
The christmas trees had returned to red’s gas station.
And my own christmas tree was in the front room, in front of the big window. It was almost up to the ceiling and it was so very green and it smelled so sweet and special, just like I remembered.
It was a mountain of colored lights, brightly reflecting balls and other pretty things; and it was covered with wisps of shimmering-shining silver tinsel. The tinsel hung like hundreds of tiny ice- cicles on my giant tree.
Mother had the soul of an artist and her Christmas trees were simply magnificent. I wish I could remember the very first Christmas tree of Mom’s that I ever saw; but I cannot. I can only feel a wistful warm-faint-glow from a time when time was a mystery and when life was magical.
When Mom passed away in 1985 something left Christmas and Christmas trees everywhere. But for each of the past ten Christmas’s Mom has returned with a very special gift, a remembrance of love and devotion past, but not gone.

When I go to church on Christmas Eve I can never get through the singing of Silent Night without my eyes watering, my nose running, and my words choking into silence. It is then that the images of the twin giant christmas trees on the alter blur, glisten, and radiate with cherished images from my childhood.

For that moment time does not exist, the magic returns, and once again Mom dresses and illuminates not one, but two giant Christmas trees–

Just for me.

　

God Bless and Merry Christmas!

Dr. Tom (From Christmas, 1992)