Holiday Memory #01

When I was a little girl, the Saturday after Thanksgiving was reserved for putting up the Christmas tree and other holiday decorations.

My mom would retrieve all of the boxes from their various hiding places in the store room, and my sisters and I would wait impatiently for my dad to get home, so he could put the lights on the tree.

He was, and is, very, very good at lighting a tree.

My dad still owns a service station, still drives a tow-truck, and is still a volunteer fireman. This meant that some years, we waited a very long time for him to get home, and sometimes he had to go back out into the cold or blizzards to help people.

No matter what, we waited, because to do otherwise was unthinkable.

He worked with a delicacy that defied his work-hardened fingers and hands, weaving the strands of lights artfully around the branches of our artificial, plastic tree. Always the colorful lights, patiently untangled, checked for burnt out bulbs that could cause a whole string to stay dark... He'd check and check until he found the culprit. Not until the lights were perfect could we begin putting on the tinsel, and the ornaments. The wait was always worth it. Finally, when we were finished, he'd put the tree topper on the very top, and the Christmas season could really begin.