In December of 1971, my husband and I were newlyweds, four months past our August wedding day. Hugh was in his third year of pharmacy school, and he was working part-time as a pharmacy intern in a hospital thirty minutes away through Decatur traffic. I was a first-year high school teacher with all the stress that went with a demanding new job that paid $6400 a year before deductions.
I didn’t know anyone except a few colleagues from work I’d known for only a short time. From the third floor of our apartment building, I looked out on a parking lot full of strangers’ cars. Hugh had classmates, hours of study, and his internship to keep him busy, but I had hours on weekends alone. Mountains of papers to grade didn’t help my mood either.
We needed a Christmas tree, but we didn’t have much money. We decided to visit Young and Sons Nursery in Atlanta. We drove through wild traffic in our 1965 Plymouth Fury. We selected a small tree and braced ourselves to hear how much the tree cost. Mr. Young apologized. “I’m sorry, but that tree is gonna cost you three dollars.” We never forgot his kindness.
We were so excited. I don’t even remember how we got the tree home—probably tied on top of our car. Three flights up, we stood the tree in its stand in front of sliding glass doors that opened onto our sunny balcony, and the limbs slowly began to lower and spread. The tree was much bigger than we had imagined. We managed to buy strings of lights and gold satin balls. The tree would match our gold carpet and draperies. It was, after all, the seventies.
But all the lights and ornaments didn’t keep me from feeling sad and lonely. My family lived several hours away. We had only one car.
Earlier in the month I’d decided to get crafty. My mother had given me a copy of a Lee Ward Craft Catalog. I had pored over its pages and found the perfect ornament I could afford. It was a gold satin and pearl wonder—some assembly required. There was no Internet, so I had sent off my order form along with a check. It took days for my order to process.
One cold, gray Saturday afternoon the order arrived just in time. I opened the package to see what lay before me: A Styrofoam ball covered in gold satin threads. Small bags of straight pins, fake pearls, thin gold chains, and medallions. One gold tassel. And, last but not least, complicated instructions.
I set to work, sticking pins through holes in tiny fake pearls, attaching medallions, and, at last, adding the tassel. I pushed the circular hanger into the top of the ornament. It was ready to hang among its less fancy cohorts on our first Christmas tree.
Now fast-forward to 2019. Yes, it’s hanging on our tree once again. Is it gaudy and very “seventies?” Yes. But I have hung it on our tree forty-eight times since its debut.
And each time I hang it, I think back to the much younger me who crafted a remembrance. It pulls me back to that special golden Christmas in 1971, long ago but not so long ago, when we didn’t have much money to spend, but none of that really mattered. I was blessed to spend Christmas with the love of my life.
Each year that ornament reminds me of how quickly time has passed since that bleak Saturday afternoon in our apartment when I sat alone poring over the instruction sheet. I think of all the friends we’ve made through the years, and I remember all of the loved ones who saw the gold and pearl ornament hanging on our tree and who are no longer with us at Christmas.
After Epiphany, we will take down our tree and tuck decorations into boxes for storage until next year. I will pack away all sorts of ornaments: A peppermint candy cane reindeer made by a little boy in pre-school who’s all grown up now. Dinosaurs, sheep, stars, angels, and cardinals, each one clinging to a memory as surely as it held onto a branch on the Christmas trees of our marriage. I will store my gold and pearl ornament safely away until it’s time for it to make another appearance.
Some Christmas trees have a theme. Our tree also has a theme.
Its theme is memories.
