The Hope of a Tree

I can still see the tree in my mind’s eye…artificial, six feet tall, with red, white, and blue balls hanging from its branches. Large multi-colored lights of orange, green, blue, red, and yellow were draped carelessly around the bottom sharing the spotlight with their smaller counterparts up top. The smaller lights blinked every few seconds as if to say, “Look at me!” Silver tinsel placed very carefully from top to bottom so as to be spaced exactly evenly and not ruin the effect. Handmade ornaments decorated the bottom forming a perfect circle just above the red and green tree stand. A crocheted red and white candy cane, Mr. and Mrs. Claus made from red and white yarn with felt pieces for facial features. And not to be outdone, adorning the very top of the tree, a sliver tinseled star with one each of red, green, blue, and yellow blinking lights. Lastly, icicles, silver icicles.

It paints a beautiful picture, doesn’t it? And yet, it was not, for this is where the colors of my painting begin to run.

There were only two of us kids, my brother, four years younger, and myself. Each year, hope for the season would spring anew. Hope that this year, things might be different. Hope that maybe Mother would decide this year two weeks of having the house decorated wouldn’t be enough, that she would long to see the beauty longer than that. Hope that while stringing those beautiful lights upon the tree that our father wouldn’t curse and scream at my mother about how much he hated it. Hope that Mother wouldn’t begin in September to remind us yet again how lean things were financially and that there wouldn’t be much for Christmas this year. Hope dimmed in the blur of colors running together as each year things remained exactly the same. And yet, the colors never dulled enough to completely extinguish hope for….

I have a new tree now…seven to eight feet tall, a real Frasier fir. The scent of pine fills the air. Its branches are still covered with those beautiful red, orange, blue, yellow, and green lights. Large one’s on the bottom and smaller, blinking one’s around the top. Their placement isn’t haphazard, nor is there cursing when they wind their way around the tree each year. The ornaments are an eclectic mix of Star Wars, Star Trek, Gone With the Wind, and Disney. Scarlett in her green velvet curtain dress. Rhett in his gray pants and white shirt when she visited him in jail. The Death Star. The Enterprise. The X-Wing Fighter. They all come down from the attic the day after Thanksgiving, for two weeks ISN’T long enough to enjoy the beauty. The tinsel is gold musical notes. Icicles. No tree is complete without icicles. They are red, my favorite color, the color of hope, the color of Christ’s precious shed blood. An angel, glowing in white, sits serenely atop this colorful masterpiece. Its colors are brilliant and vibrant and hope is no longer dim.