Christmas Kaleidoscope

A Mother's Heart

The first thing I put up during Thanksgiving weekend after laying self-sticking tile on the living room floor was my little Christmas tree. Branch by branch I put it together. Picture ornaments went up one by one, then the skirt. And I put on top the little angel Lydia made last summer at camp, because all Christmas trees should have a new ornament looking to the future, as well as the many old ones remembering the past. The following weekend, our Thanksgiving weekend, Benjamin and Lydia were with me, and Sunday morning, in Las Vegas, Nevada, it snowed to welcome the Christmas season. Now, at last, I understand why the Christmas decorations cant be up all year round. Now the time is right to put Christmas away for another year. The treasures of the past must be put away tenderly, just as the memories, to be cherished, and protected, but not kept out in the open all the time. And every Christmas season I want to take the time to feel them and remember them in a kaleidoscope of memories, then put them away looking toward the future, remembering all the miracles in my life that have brought me through this half century. I need to remember all the love, joy, and happiness that strengthened me through the good and bad times. But I will keep out the little ceramic angel looking over two small children, the one my mother gave me, reminding me that we do have guardian angels. I have surely had one continuously by my side.