Quest for perfection

My Mother would have been 92 yesterday. One of the funny things about my Mother was her ideas about Christmas Trees.

Growing up in Tucson during the depression her family had a little green artificial object that sat on a table that stood in for the large living floor model. As an adult she had strong ideas of what a tree should be for the household.

Each year during my childhood I remember the discussion about a week before Christmas about the tree. Between Mother's artistic sense of perfection and Dad's idea of being frugal it took over the house for at less 24 hours. Some years it could be running for three days up to the whole of the holiday season.

Dad always bought the tree at the parish tree lot and preferred to do it about a week before Christmas hoping to get in on at less one of the markdowns that occurred for late tree buyers. These trees by nature were the looked over, passed over group. The lots were usually frozen, snowy and the tree were frequently tall green sticks with limbs tied up.

After a day of thawing in the tree stand the true shape of the tree was showing and Mother critical eye came into judgment. She would sit in a living room corner chair and as one of us stood next to the tree. We would slowly rotate it to see the best features, the fullest sized and possibly, hide the fact that the tree plainly leaning because the trunk was crook it.

Rarely, was the tree up to her standards. Of course, Mother was not about to enter a tree lot and walk on that icy surface or stand and shake snow off a dozen trees looking for perfection. She had no idea, how cold and wet a Christmas tree lot was and how early the light is gone in the December afternoon. Thank heavens, for the pool room in the basement, it got Mother's first rejections, crook it stem and all, with garbage ornaments.

Now, it would be misleading to remember my childhood Christmas trees as if they were like the woodcuts in great books or the photos of magazines. No, my childhood trees were treasured but by all standards, they had too few lights and ornaments that had been mis-packed and faded over the years.

All of this came fresh to my mind Christmas evening while sitting at Ken's house and looking at his tree and the voice out of my body was saying, "how much did pay for that tree?",,,,"that was too much" ,,,,"look at the top 10 inches, what in the world happens to it?" ,,, Ken's reply was, "Mom, tell me what you really think!"....I could not help but laugh along with Phil and Ken at the sound of my voice and the reincarnation of my Mother. Soon, everyone was laughing at the craziness of my stories about Christmas trees and my Mother.

We had such a delightful evening laughing. It was a lovely Christmas. Mira, like me, at eight years old is in charge of putting the lights and ornaments. Somethings are traditional.