“Seventy-percent off,” my dad said as he jumped out of the truck. “Who says it doesn’t pay to wait until Christmas Eve to go tree shopping?”

John and Johnny helped him carry the tree into the man cave, while Polly and I found the ancient boxes of lights and ornaments in the basement.

We rolled up our sleeves and got to work decorating the tree. My mother had given each of the kids a special ornament marked with a dated name tag each year, making every Christmas a stroll down memory lane as we unwrapped the tissue paper that kept them safe. Most of my siblings had taken their ornaments to their adult homes. They’d also started the same tradition with their own kids. But my ornaments were still here, a testament to my late blooming.

I held up a round ornament, hollow and fragile, with a picture of Raggedy Ann skiing on it. A little gold tag said Sarah, 1973 in my mother’s handwriting.

John came over to stand beside me, and I showed it to him. “Next year,” I said. “We’ll have our own tree. And I’m not even going to think about how we’re going to keep the cats from climbing it yet.”

My family started arriving in waves. Chinese food had been our Christmas Eve tradition for a while now, so everybody dropped takeout food containers on my father’s kitchen counter on the way in. Our dad cranked up his record player and Nat King Cole started singing “The Happiest Christmas Tree.” He clapped his hands and the LED lights on his red round vinyl platform bed in the middle of the room flashed from red to orange to blue to purple. The lights on the Christmas tree in the corner glowed a more demure white.

We chowed down on Chinese takeout served on disposable plates with plastic forks. The adults ate standing up. The kids who didn’t manage to grab one of the few chairs sat around the edge of the bed.

“Yum,” John said as he speared a bite of beef and broccoli. “It’s not casserole.”

I noticed Polly chatting away with Carol and Christine. Already I could tell they were warming up to her, as if she were some new hybrid of family and friend, a member of the framily.

John disappeared after we finished eating and came back with the dogs.

“Hey, everybody,” I said. “Meet Scruffy Dog. Isn’t she the sweetest thing?”

“You can’t call her Scruffy Dog,” Carol said. “That’s a ridiculous name for a dog.”

“I like it,” Christine said. “It’s like the dog version of Phoebe’s Smelly Cat on Friends.

“Anderson Pooper?” Billy Junior said.

“William Shakespaw?” our father said. “On second thought, make that O’Shakespaw.”

“She’s a girl dog,” I said.

“What about Sandra Flea?” Michael said.