The Fallen Tree

Today we decorated our tree, Christmas 2020 is well underway, and somehow, for the first time in my life my holiday spirit is legit. I look around at the glittering ornaments lining the tree, tinsel and lights dotting each branch, stockings hung by the fireplace, and while I sip on the cocoa I just made with my children, I finally realize the joy of the holiday in this treacherous tedious time. It finally dawns on me why my parents put so much effort into a thankless tedious task, and why they continued to do so long after their children deserved it.

I hated the holidays and I always made damn sure my parents knew it, but in my parents mind Christmas was everything, and the lights and decorations were their chance to create magic for us—of course we didn’t understand that!

So here I am stuck in a cloud of reminisce. A memory of laughter- a memory of pain. The thing I’m reminiscing about is a flagpole that still stands outside, in what is now my front yard. Let me take you back, back to my holiday outtake memory to the magic my parents tried to create.

I grew up in the nineties and like most prepubescent youths I HATED the holiday season. We spent each year begrudgingly hanging Christmas lights- our house lit up the whole area and one year my dad even fell off of the garage hanging those lights. They were the bane of my existence every November—and when I say we hung lights, I mean we hung lights! They were everywhere! We hammered lighted reindeer into the ground, we had blow up Santa’s with snow globes that played music, we strung lights in every window and on every eve, the whole nine yards.

We hated it, but we always laughed our way through it, whether we were cold or screaming or miserable we always made each other laugh, we always found humor in our mess and our stress. The memories we made are vivid, and the lessons we learned irreplaceable.

One particular year dad had just spent the summer adding a HUGE old flagpole to our yard— so why wouldn’t we decide to turn that flagpole into a gigantic lighted Christmas tree??

It was a novel idea, and if executed correctly it would have looked amazing, so we spent hours stringing lights and checking our work. Cursing the cold, stopping to warm up and starting again. Truth be told our work was glorious, I think we were all bursting with pride when we finally hoisted our masterpiece high high high into the air—then suddenly with a crack, a whiz and a whirr our Holiday memory came crashing down! Strings upon strings of lights flew to the ground deafeningly quick.

On that day the mess was endless and the frustrations were high- especially after the crash- but we lived through it, we laughed through it, and most importantly we loved through it. We created a memory I cherish and look back on fondly now even though, back then, in that moment all I felt was frustration and defeat.

In my life the outtakes, have given me resilience and humor inside of every situation. The humorous struggles of life have surely become some of my favorite lifetime memories. The outtakes have shaped who I am, and they have fueled my creativity. Take your blooper reel and run with it- even the worst of it can some day be seen in a different light and somehow bring growth, understanding, appreciation and love.

Now some twenty years or more has passed, the pulley has been repaired and the flagpole is operable, but it never hoisted another lighted tree. My sister and I aged out of the holiday decorating and my family has lost its closeness, it’s humor, so here I suggest that each person reading this remember to take the holiday pictures, and send the holiday cards—-bake the treats and decorate EVERYTHING that you can get your hands on because at the end of your life sometimes all you will have left are those holiday cards and the memories of creating them.