Ugly, old, and not very hip

 Last Christmas Scott and I made the trek to Pennsylvania to visit my Mom for a couple of weeks.  We did a lot of talking, a lot of reminiscing, and a lot of snow shoveling!  And Mom gave us a present of a box of old ornaments.  The one I have above is the very old-fashioned glass kind circa 1960 or 1965.  It was green and silver back in the day.  Today the green has been washed out by sunshine and tree lights and time so that it is a sort of pale, barely-there minty green color.


I hated these ornaments growing up.  They seemed so understated and uncool.  (yeah, I was such a hip third grader!)  But when Mom gave me the box to open they were just what I wanted.  A bit of my past to put on my tree each year.  So this year, when we FINALLY started putting ornaments on the tree I had to put these on their first thing.  Now the tree continues with our family tradition of having only hand-me-downs from others.


The other ornament that I had to get on right away was this one:

Made out of a kleenex, glitter, and half of a green pipe cleaner with construction paper wings, it is just exactly what it looks like...an angel ornament made by a child.  Nathaniel made it for me many hundreds of years ago.  When he was at home he used to protest noisily about me including it on the tree, but I think secretly he was happy to see it up there.  He never took it down, never hid it, and it never "accidentally" got torn or lost, so I think he was glad to know I treasured it.

Nathaniel hasn't been home for Christmas for several years now.  This will be his third one away and I have been missing him something fierce this year.  Economics prevented me from spending the hundreds of dollars that it would cost to fly him out here from Miami.  But he is spending it with his Dad's family, so he won't be alone.  He'll hang with his cousins, stay up late, play lots of Spoons and Nertz, watch a lot of football, and get pampered by his Grandmother, so he will have a lovely Christmas.

But when Scott's family gathers around our tree tomorrow and we talk and laugh and eat and soak up the precious family time, a part of me will be missing my little boy.