Christmas on Brentwood Road

This is my 34th Christmas on Brentwood Road. It will be my last one here. I thought this would make me very sad, but so far it has been relaxing, fun and somewhat nostalgic. It all took a turn for me a few days ago when my mom and I were decorating the Christmas tree. We had these god-awful brightly colored, 1970's christmas ornaments (you know - the kind that are gold with a bright red spot on them) and every year, I attempt to get my mom not to use them. And every year, she tells me we have to because they remind her of when I was young and she and my dad bought the fake tree at Sears a week before Christmas and all Sears had was this one tree left and they had to undecorate it and pack it up to take it home and re-decorate it. All the while, yours truly, a two-year old who was loving to run was making tracks all over Sears while they attempted this. So every year, I try to remind my mom that I am still young and if we can get new ornaments, I would be happy to run around Sears to remind her of that day in 1974. She laughs and makes me put these god awful things up.

So -- this year, we open the box and for some very fortunate reason (at least for me, my mother was devastated with our discovery at first), the damn things are completely rusted and chipped. THANK YOU moist cellar! I finally convinced my mother that it was time to get some new ornaments and let these go out with the trash. She reluctantly agreed. Once this task was done, we put up all the gifts, six kid made, your the best grandma ornaments we have and I thought our tree was looking pretty great. My mother however, was mortified and said that our tree looked and I quote, "naked". Mind you, we had over 100 ornaments on the tree.

We sat looking at it, me very satisfied, her not so much, and I told her a story about my friend J in Seattle who collects ornaments.... I might even say she is obsessed with collecting ornaments. In fact, I said, we only put about half of J's ornaments on her tree when we decorated it a few weeks ago. My mother told me she wished J was not on the other side of the country because our naked tree needed some ornaments.

Let's just buy some I said. This was a novel idea to my mom - we hadn't bought any ornaments since that day in 1974 at Sears so she wasn't exactly sure how we should go about this. I suggested a ride out to Concord -- which if you are not familiar with Massachusetts history is where the famed "the British are coming" bit occurred -- and where now we have lovely boutiques and shops. So, we took a ride out to Concord and we bought about 35 beautiful ornaments (i even bought one for J but don't tell her), and when we got home we put them up on the real tree (the fake one having gone in the dumpster with the rest of 40 years of stuff) and last night my mom and I felt very happy.

As we sat there looking at the tree I thought to myself, see, we can make new memories and get past the old things that we held dear and it can still be great and it can still be home. So, for now, the tree is beautiful, and my mom is healthy and that's all that matters.