Saturday, August 9, 2008

IMAGINARY FRIENDS - Page 14

But the big attraction was the Tree. At the beginning of December, there was an ornament-hanging ceremony where the same men who picked the Tree would climb up on giant ladders and cherry pickers and place the ornaments from top to bottom. Thousands would show up to watch from the different levels both above and below as their ornaments – or those of their children, or grandchildren, or nieces and nephews – were hung with the rest of the town’s.

The greatest achievement was to be named to the Collection, sort of an “Ornament Hall of Fame.” Five outstanding decorations were chosen every year to go into a permanent group, and every year those pieces were brought out of storage, lovingly unveiled, and hung on the Tree last of all. There were close to 300 ornaments and decorations now in the Collection, spanning a period of almost 60 years. Despite Davey and Brian’s heated disapproval, the matchstick reindeer wasn’t one of them.

But the one made by their mother was.

The winter after Davey was born, Susan Tanner had created a batch of homemade playdough, using flour and salt and oil. Brian, only three at the time, used a cookie cutter to make Santas and snowmen and candy canes. But Susan had sculpted a little family of carolers – a mother, a father, a little boy, and a baby. She put them on an elaborate little stage, complete with Christmas tree and tiny boxes at the base. The whole thing was so small that it could easily fit in Jeff’s hand. After baking it in the oven, she used her kit of oil paints to delicately color all their faces, their clothes, the tree, the presents. She had even used a special gold paint to gild the tree’s star, and had glued on tiny colored glass beads to serve as ornaments. A little golden thread crisscrossed the base of the ornament, and somehow the loop it made perfectly balanced their little family.

When they went to the ornament-hanging ceremony that year, Brian demanded that they take along the ornament instead of his candy canes and snowmen. Jeff had been afraid – it was so delicate looking! – but Susan had nudged him and smiled, and promised she would make another one if it broke.

A good thing that it didn’t, because she never would have gotten the chance.

It had been a car crash. Three years ago in February. She had been driving alone, coming back from the grocery store one night while he watched Brian and Davey.

The police told him she didn’t even feel it. How they knew that, Jeff had no idea.

They told him he should be thankful the rest of the family wasn’t in the car, too.

He just remembered screaming at them, crying, telling them they were wrong, they had to be wrong, it couldn’t be her. It couldn’t.

He didn’t remember anything after that for days. Maybe weeks.

Granny Jobson, Susan’s mother, came to stay with them the day after the accident, and had been there ever since.

Since then, Jeff tried to focus on the good memories. Like Susan carrying Davey, bound up tight in a cotton blanket papoose. Brian walking up to the front of the crowd of thousands, holding the tiny ornament out to the mayor, who presided over Decoration Night. Normally, anyone who wanted to have an ornament on the Tree had to send it weeks ahead of time. But one look at the shy little boy with his hands outstretched, and the mayor had smiled and handed the ornament up to a man on a cherry picker, who placed it on one of the highest branches. You could see it clearly only if you stood on the third floor, it was so high.

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Copyright © 2008 Darren Pillsbury. All rights reserved.

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