cats and Christmas trees

Even if you have never heard it before, the sound of a Christmas tree falling is unmistakable. The swoosh, crash, and tinkle could be nothing else. The guilty cat accelerating from the room provided a second clue if one had been needed

I guess that Cordelia was too young to cause this havoc last year, since she was about four months old on Christmas 2004. This year she took out four of the special ornaments from the tree (well, that is all I have found so far). One was a hand blown cardinal, which had graced my father in laws childhood trees. She also destroyed a glass soap bubble ornament which was one of the first Christmas gifts from me to Robert before we were married. The other casualties were a terra cotta angel that a friend gave to me over twenty years ago, and the first ornament that my mother gave to James, a porcelain carousel horse. The angel and carousel horse can be patched up with glue , but the other two are tiny, glittering fragments in the vacuum cleaner.

We have had animals in the Christmas tree before this. Christmas 2003 found Squill, the squirrel, clambering through branches and chewing on the peppermint candy canes. He did little damage since the children and I chose not to put breakables on the tree that year. In my childhood, Champ, the family’s airedale mix, would pull ornaments off the lower branches of the tree, much to my mother’s dismay.

I regret the loss of the ornaments. None of them were fine and expensive, however they were memory triggers. The visual symbol of the ornament cued my mind to recall dating Robert, working with Brooks, James’ second Christmas, my in-laws dividing the family Christmas ornaments among their children . As I decorate my tree each year, unwrapping each piece of plastic, glass or metal, I renew those memories. This is how I keep memories fresh and strong. I suspect that it works that way for all of us.