It was a production like all the things that mattered to him.
It was his job, and he did it well. No one else could do it. Like cutting the grass or cooking meat on the grill.
Thin sheets of plastic and newspapers draped all around. The smell and the mess, I have to wonder if my mom had a say in the decision.
Photos of toddler me in front of green Christmas trees adorned with bright colored balls suggested that the tree flocking tradition was new to life in our first home.
I was six when we moved from the mobile home park to the house on Mango Street. Their first as a couple. The gravitas and excitement of the achievement for a young couple was lost on a child more worried about finding new friends on the block.
Nestled in the memories of metallic green and red wrapping paper were the arguments that became part of tradition as well.
When I was older I learned about his childhood. The damage that each of his parents inflicted on the other for their imperfections and frailties. The arguments and discord. His siblings all piling into the car with is father to go pick up their mother from a party. Holidays must have been particularly hard in their home.
A new husband and father, he had so much joy for the holidays that was constantly at odds with a hardwiring for strife.
Enthralled by a popular sci-fi TV show about miniature humans, I was fascinated by the small village he created atop a cotton snow blanket on the TV. With the move we had upgraded from a small black and white set to a color television in a cabinet. A sign of success, I am sure. Ice skaters on a mirror pond surrounded by houses and tiny trees covered in fake snow. Eye level for a little girl.
I stood next to him in the front yard. Shivering and fidgety while he pounded pickets into the flower bed. Another production and I was asked to assist.
The life-sized Wise Men, Mary and Joseph would be sure to stay upright in the wind now. With Bobby Sherman staring in Here Come The Brides on TV and bedtime two hours away, what probably took less than an hour felt like eternity to me.
The fresh cut tree, always the prettiest on the tree lot according to my mom, stood in a stand full of water. The smell of pine filling the house. Christmas was close.
His prep was done during commercials. Laying out plastic and newspapers. Covering the carpet, drapes, and furniture in the corner of our small living room. Gathering cans of flocking that had to cost a small fortune on a young police officer salary.
He’d work at it late at night even though roll call came early. Maybe napping a few hours before his alarm.
In the early morning he scrubbed the specks of white from his skin and hair and changed into his uniform. Slipping behind the wheel of the Mercury in the dark cold he knew that his family would be waking up soon to a white tree in a house on Mango Street that they called home.
