Behold the tree, bare of ornaments and tinsel. I pour the nog and begin.
My brother Kermit loved tinsel. You remember tinsel — the glittery silver stuff you hang on the Christmas tree every year? Yes, yes, that stuff.
Kermit, who went to war and died a fireman in Las Vegas, was obsessive-compulsive about tinsel. Before he brushed his teeth, kicked the furnace on or had his coffee, it was all about tinsel.
Before anyone awoke in the house, he began to unpack his tinsel.
From when I was old enough to sit erect and take nourishment, I watched him hang his tinsel. He’d step back and light a cigarette. Pause, and begin again.
He would lay each piece on the tree, one piece at a time. Like Hemingway looking for the right word; George Seurat adding one more dot of blue.
Imagine, one piece at a time. He started on Thanksgiving and would let no one else touch the tree.
He was decorating on Dec. 7 when World War II started. On Dec. 21st, he hung the last piece of tinsel, before leaving with his four brothers for the Navy.
The tree, so far. This morning, I stare at my fake tree, 5-foot and green, bare as though it had just come from Robert Frost’s woods.
My house is surrounded by evergreens too tall to cut, and I stand here embarrassed to look out the window at them.
I can hear them giggle, laugh out loud. It’s the laughter of the evergreens, guffawing at the boy from the concrete jungles, decorating a fake tree.
I kind of remember when it started. It was Christmas near the end of the “Great Depression,” when suffering families would actually steal one.
They had no meat, no bread. But now they had a tree.
Christmas was when I was usually sick with something, stuff like mumps, measles, impetigo and other assorted illnesses.
I was told to sit on the corner of the couch where I was medicated and fed Christmas candy and cold Dr Pepper to soothe my throat.
It was there on that dark green monster of a couch where I, as the baby of the family, was catered to, rubbed with ointments and had my thick, black bangs brushed back by the soft, cold hands of my mother, my sisters and aunts who came through the week to watch Kermit work the tinsel.
From my place near the big radio, I memorized the lyrics to the ancient carols and the latest Bing Crosby ballads, and many of my brothers, and sisters, secrets.
So I sat there, sucking Dr Pepper and listening to words of love.
It was there that sister Rita whispered softly to her Ricky, Eileen to her Charlie, men who would soon be going to war.
They would turn the radio up so that Kermit and I couldn’t hear the lyrics of their private carols of love. But I did, and I remembered.
They’re all gone now, but their whispers are alive, still in my mind.
It’s dark now, and the nog glass is empty. I nod and hear Kermit’s words from the other side.
“Tinsel.”
J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.
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