The tree was up and dressed in less than a day. John and Hope fetched her in spite of the rain, and Zack named her Fluffy. Her presence, no domination in the living room brings me joy. 

 

The hundreds of ornaments on Fluffy's branches comprise a history of our family. In concert with Scrooge, they tell the past, the present, and the future. Well, by future I mean the future from the perspective of what was once the past. Let me explain. 

 

There are simple wooden hearts and horses with my children's names on the back. I made these in the early years when the task of transforming a house into a holiday seemed out of my league. I can recall the sensation of pretending I knew how to do this. There are the painted treasures that appear on most mother's trees that were prodigious at the time their five year old created them, yet whose beauty has tempered. There are others from New Mexico... crosses from a neighbor who was a devout Catholic, a Spanish angel playing the lute, and a storyteller. She is a clay woman with six children on her lap and is an icon in the culture. Her presence is a foretelling, because I only had a mere four kids at the time, and did not yet know I would grow into storytelling. 

 

There are a Raggedy Ann and Andy, which were added to the collection before we had our escapade of dressing the twins as such. I bought wood and silk images of Glencairn long before the girls joined the staff there. There are felted angels that predate and thereby predict me learning the craft. Quilted stars were reborn when I cut up an antique that was first stitched when my mother was a girl. 

 

Then there are the people. A woman who gifted the school staff with her hand woven baskets. Another who generously offered her signature ceramics with quotes. I have wooden ornaments from my mother's tree, which is amazing considering she lost almost everything in a flood. The nutcrackers foretell my daughters' devotion to dance, which sadly may come to a close this June as they prance into new adventures. 

 

What saturates my senses as I sit at the foot of our Fluffy tree, is that it all contributes to the wonder. Even details like living below the poverty line in Albuquerque, and the death of my parents, and the inevitable loss of my twins when they move to another continent. Christmas is, after all, as fraught with darkness and fear as it is resplendent with Light and Joy.