Festive Pear Tree

It is getting harder to get those lights up. I won’t use a ladder or even a step stool, so I have an odd homemade hook thing on a stick to raise up the strands while my feet are solid on the ground. It actually works pretty well.  I do like bright lights and all that red and green, but I can’t help but wonder why. Not why I like them, but why I bother. I bother because I remember my parents, and wreaths at the windows, and the excitement of being a child, and the first snowfall. Because of the particular smells of traditional Christmas eve food, and that chill that clings to your clothes when you rush into a warm house. There is nothing in the air here to say Christmas, or even winter. And yet. Up go the lights, the ornaments come out of hiding, I wear a funny hat and find bits and pieces of Christmas carols running through my brain in a couple of languages. My uncles, all dead now, smoke cigars and clap each other on the back, the aunts in their aprons hurry back and forth with full plates and bowls, I am not in danger of getting stepped on, but everyone is so tall and hearty and crowded into my grandmother’s kitchen. I am the grandmother now. These kids don’t know about the foods I used to eat. We have different food now. Some things are so far away. But I put up lights with my little stick, and drag the cartons of ornaments from the attic. I can still do that.