The saddest thing to me is driving past a Christmas tree tossed out in front of a house, ready for the trash collection, ON THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS. When we were new immigrants in Canada, I vividly remember going with my Mother on Dec 26th to buy a Christmas tree at the lot about two blocks away from where we lived. My mother was in complete shock that there were no trees there and the lot was gone. She kept mumbling about what kind of uncivilized country we had come to. Disheartened and sad, we took a shortcut home, through an alley that ran behind our house. All of a sudden, just a few houses away from where we lived, there was a perfectly good and fresh Christmas tree, still covered with tinsel, resting against the back fence(garbage and trash was picked up in the alleys, there). We gingerly dragged that tree to our house. My mother was so happy that God had been so kind to us and saved our Christmas. We made sure to buy a tree before December 24th after that. Tinsel was not part of my mothers tradition, but we always put tinsel on after that, first year, always recalling and retelling how we found our first tree in the alley. I am certain or at least would like to think that some of the tinsel I have today may still be leftover from that original tree We always saved as much tinsel as possible from year to year and the new tinsel eventually was not made the same as the kind we had back then. Christmas was always such a special time for my Mother, something that made the difficulties of life as an immigrant miraculously disappear at least for a month because you were distracted from the modern reality and magically transported back to better days if only in your mind. Since my Mother passed away, it has been difficult to have that same enthusiasm, to decorate the house, to even put up the tree or write a Christmas card. There is a saying that Home is where your Mother is. For me, it seems that Christmas isnt Christmas because my Mother isnt a physical part of it anymore.
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 19:17:37 +0000
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