Tree of Lights

 Christmas through the drinking glass. Mixed media. iPhone + migraine 

Thank you Lois Trapp for that extremely accurate title.

We have this tree.  It's meant to be a yard ornament I think, but we use it inside.  It's made of white metal and blue and white lights. It used to morph from blue to white and back again.  It stopped doing that last year. When it is lit, it looks like the whole thing is made from light.  It may be my favourite tree. When we bought this house we  did not have a tree  and buying one was out of the question.  I haven't had a cut tree in  decades, I just can't bring one in to die.  Yes, I know they are grown just for that purpose.  So enter the tree of lights.  It's been our family tree since we moved into this house.  Covered in our collected ornaments, and my childhood ornaments, it's theme is just us. We also have a giant antique aluminum tree, that one didn't make it out of the box this year. 

The tree was just fine for a few days and then.  Zip.  I touched to dial and it looked like the Acid Queen.  Flashing very quickly through a variety of patterns.  Then dark.  Much like the first year we used it, there was just no room in the holiday budget for a new one.  Plus this one was already decorated and given illness and work schedules there was just no time.  So there is sat.  Dark in the corner.  It seemed to focus my ambivalent feelings, my sadness into the darkest night.  Mocking from the dark corner by the hearth.  It's really dark here right before the Solstice.  Midnight dark by 4:30pm.

One night Doodle and I were sitting here watching Rankin and Bass movies and I just couldn't take the dark tree anymore.  So rummaged around and found a light string to wrap around the base, and an old colour wheel from the aluminum tree to shine at it.  It helped some.  Then, we located all of the LED toys we could find.  Snowflake wands, swords, tiara's and  a strange Rudolph  with fibre optics in it's head.  Into the tree they went.  It was lovely, still dark, but not so bad.

"Fixing" it was a very My Mom thing to do.  All my life she made due with whatever was available.  We had Rube Goldberg'ed the tree.  When we moved to Australia all of our belongings went somewhere else and we spent the first several months waiting for our shipping container to arrive. With only what was in our summer suitcases and what was available to buy in the wilds of Western Australia in the 1970's, my parents made Christmas happen.  We had rented furniture and ingenuity.  My Dad chopped a limb off the only evergreen he could find.  We made paper chains and paper snowflakes.  At some point my Mom gave in used a tiny bit of our available cash to buy a wooden ornament kit.  She and I punched out and painted a dozen or so very 1970's wooden ornaments.  Augmented by my stash of glitter.  Never travel without glitter!   The week before Christmas, in the middle of a cyclone warning, a package from my California grandparents arrived.  It had been mailed before we left Hawaii in August!  In it was an angel music box.  From Hallmark, a white and gold angel candle on a white base playing "Oh Come All Ye Faithful."  It was the only music we had and I played it endlessly.  It still plays. 

We had decorations and music.  It could be Christmas now.

I wonder how she did it?  Alone in a new country without any of the resources she was counting on.  How did she keep it together and make Christmas happen.  Did she stare at the dark tree too?  As it turns out the base family advocate had a Christmas party with tinsel and cookies and gifts.  And best of all a movie!  Our town had no radio and no TV reception.  A movie was big deal.  I have no recollection of the movie, but I do remember the Bugs Bunny cartoons that preceded it. 

Also, as it turns out....a generous friend sent us a huge box of holiday lights and Patrick was able to fix the tree.  It no longer morphs, but it lights.  A tree made of light.