CHRISTMAS TREE

It was all I wanted then and now that I can have one,

I just think of the trail of needles, water spots on the

floor. But in the apartment, lights strung across Main

Street. 78 records near the Batell Block’s loud speaker

and the shadows of ruby and emerald on snow that was

so much like a calendar scene Life Magazine was

always there photographing the white Congregational

Church spire, the bells always 4 minutes late. Presents

from out of town were  the most mysterious, there

on a table my mother covered with crepe paper

that looked like bricks. My father’s sister gasped, “You

mean you hung up stockings? You really had a tree? You

call your father “Ben?” until we were sure we were heathens.

My grandfather, sly and sneaking around, might climb

up the stairs to the apartment, come in with his own key.

Still, one December we had a small tree, on the table. A

Hannuka bush my mother called it with rings of pastel colored

paper, tinsel, nothing too angel-y and certainly no star. It

was green as spring in the flat my mother never fixed up, hoping

to leave for a new house. It smelled of outdoors, of hills and pine I

loved from Girl Scout hikes where we slept in bunk beds listening

to stories. We had no lights or glass bells on the tree, needed

to be able to quietly snatch the trunk and plunge it into the

closet hearing my grandfather’s steps but it seemed, with the

lights inside off and the tinfoil balls and dripping silver near