Aunt Dorie's Christmas Tree

I loved my Aunt Dorie, and she loved me extra much because of the crazy circumstances in my childhood household. There were summers that my Mom would let me go stay with her and my cousins Ginny and Stevie for a week. It was a break. My cousin Ginny would toss me into the clawfoot tub with bubbles from bubblebath every night before bed. At home, I got scrubbed in Spic and Span on Saturdays, like the floor. I was flabbered at this fuss but it helped me feel elegant, dainty, with no fear that the girly bubbles would turn me down the road of prostitution, as advertised by the noise at my own house. These visits provided relief and a power of choice I had no where else, and helped my sense of another world outside parental walls electrified by lightning bolt fear and honor thy fatherism.

Well, I could recount the hallways, the rackety spiral staircases up to the attic, the beautifully shaped appointments in the bathroom, the creepy basement, the immense rooms with sliding doors, the phone that still worked in the back hall off the kitchen that decades earlier was used to call servants; this house was a part of the years when the City of Buffalo flourished in the quaint grandeur of gaslights and horse-drawn tradesmen. The city was also once a center for wrought iron, and elements of twisted intricacy still remained as paeans to the working man as artist. Railings, gates, speared fences or hitching posts arranged themselves within the neighborhood rising from grass like soldiers on watch, some with animal or human faces meshed in vines cast as medallions, melded amongst the worked undulations of decent iron.

'Bout time I got to the Christmas tree part. Christmas in the 1950's smelled different than these safer, modern times. No one was insane enough to light candles on the tree, but the large, hot, leave-a-blister-on-fingers Noma lights glowed like fire on the real tree branches and were just as dangerous. Anything electrical in the Fiftie's was scary and crackly and smelled like a fire was coming, soon. That didn't stop us. My Aunt Dorie loaded her tree with bubble lights and long strands of the incandescents. Ancient real aluminum foil ornaments were heated by the lights and smelled bitter metallic. Foil also starred as tinsel, hanging in heavy, kinked formations--the success of the tree hinged on how well and how much tinsel you got on--and added to the Christmas aroma of pine and blast furnace. Glass balls bobbled in place, giving off a seething incense when swinging over the electric bulbs and the remnants of a clingy attic dust burned off. The lit tree heated the room, the papery wallpaper, the wood moldings, and the mohair upholstery. Garlands curled, wax angels drooped, ribbons on gifts smelled like they were just ironed. My aunt was happy at her exuberant tree decorating skills; she allowed me to have one spinning, metallic decoration, so that my tree at home might create emanations similar to an overheated TV dinner tray. My parents would unplug our own tree after fifteen minutes, just in case.

I admired and envied the exuberance and daredevil ways of my aunt, if you can call a lit Christmas tree an adventurous risk. Well, perhaps back then you could. I envied my cousins, living with my Aunt Doris, for they got to see the glorious, dangerous tree everyday until early January when everything saved was packed in boxes and the remainder taken to the curb.

She took chances in life; not all of them went well, but I could say she always jumped in with both feet. No testing the water with a tentative toe, her motto was to live for the day. You could try that out to see how it goes for you, tomorrow. Enjoy something fun, nice fun. Think about what that might be, as night enters when the lights go off and morning alarms are set. Maybe tomorrow, I'll hold a piece of foil over a flame, or pine needles held in metal tongs and set afire. Could that bring back a moment, a memory of Christmas chances taken, of the pleasure and joy found in ordinary things? I'll let you know. Sleep well, my friends, and dream of life lived.