Persephone

Christmas Tree

28 Christmas Tree It was all I wanted then and now that I can have one, I just think of the trail of needles, water spots on the floor. But in the apartment, lights strung across Main Street. 78 records near the Batell Block’s loud speaker and the shadows of ruby and emerald on snow that was so much like a calendar scene Life Magazine was always there photographing the white Congregational Church spire, the bells always 4 minutes late. Presents from out of town were the most mysterious, there on a table my mother covered with crepe paper that looked like bricks. My father’s sister gasped, “You mean you hung up stockings? You really had a tree? You call your father ‘Ben?’” until we were sure we were heathens. My grandfather, sly and sneaking around, might climb up the stairs to the apartment, come in with his own key. Still, one December we had a small tree, on the table. A Hannuka bush my mother called it with rings of pastel colored paper, tinsel, nothing too angel-y and certainly no star. It was green as spring in the flat my mother never fixed up, hoping to leave for a new house. It smelled of outdoors, of hills and pine I loved from Girl Scout hikes where we slept in bunk beds listening to stories. We had no lights or glass bells on the tree, needed to be able to quietly snatch the trunk and plunge it into the closet hearing my grandfather’s steps but it seemed, with the lights inside off and the tinfoil balls and dripping silver near the window, we had stars inside, sparkling as in the sky ...