I loved pulling out the ornaments, and you loved hearing the stories that went with each: the ones that were gifts from teachers; the old fragile glass balls with your names in glue and glitter; and all those snowflakes you cut out yourself; the photos on the lap of Santa; and those little elves with the bendy legs that sat on top of boxes of chocolates. Other than the ones you two had made, my favorites were the little pine-cone elves with their different instruments, maybe because they had been my mother’s favorites, those and the little cardboard houses, with the snow on the roof and the places for a bulb to glow within. I loved the silver icicles and the way we could toss the strings up and let them land as they pleased, sweep the strays up from the floor and throw them back on. I even liked when it was all over and I’d carefully tucked everything back into its little bed for the year, recycling the icicles by using them to shield and protect the fragile decorations.

Now, you have your own trees and your share of all those early ornaments; this year, we bought a four-foot one, and it’s on a table in the front window. We have the same star and colored lights and, of course, icicles. From the street, it looks like a full-sized tree.

The year my mother died, there was no Christmas tree, and the one time I mentioned it, my father’s look let me know it wasn’t going to happen. But still, I pretended. I decorated the coatrack and called it a tree. I paid special attention to the tree in the window of a house near ours, one I passed each day walking to school. At first, it made me feel left out, but then it became my focus, it became my tree and was a bright spot in my day. And then January passed and it still stood, and then February, too, and I began to wonder if the people had died. But, no, I saw them, coming and going. Still, it was a lesson to me how hanging on to something long after the fact can diminish the power of what was. It’s where memory comes in, I guess, the abstract strength of what is no longer there to see and touch. I don’t even recall if I got a gift that year, but I must have; my father’s sister visited, and she cooked for several days and left the icebox full of food.

My mother had become the past. And the effects on my father were like that forgotten old Christmas tree.

“But she loved Christmas,” I told him, and he said, “Exactly.”