I had pretty much made up my mind that we weren't going to put up our tree this year, with my reason being that I didn't want Ava to pull the tree down on herself. Silly, I know, but then again I also decided that I could live without the red front loading washer I'd been pining over because there was a chance that Ava could crawl in and get trapped. (And of course, that realization was partially a response to the price of the washer and dryer. Two reasons not to buy it always sound better than just one, right?)... Anyhow, back to the tree. I think the real reason that I didn't want to put up the tree was a combination of laziness and well, laziness. I didn't want to actually have to get everything out of the shed, then spend hours rearranging ornaments until I was at least partly satisfied. (As it turns out, Josh got everything out of the shed and rather than spend hours allowing my obsessive compulsive side to take the reigns, I have been rearranging a little bit every day). And now back to the other laziness... I also didn't want to have to watch Ava every time she got near it. Aside from the before mentioned safety hazard, there is the before mentioned OCD.
But the Christmas spirit is alive and well in the aisles of Target. Something about getting practically ran over by a cart, having people step directly in front of me when I was looking at items on a shelf, and watching a family put a cookie jar that their son broke behind other cookie jars, just made me feel awash with Christmas joy. I decided that we needed to put up a tree. "Ava will love it," I told my mom, as I coincidentally found ornaments that would look perfect with those I already had and piled them into our cart. By the time I got home, Josh had already pulled everything out of the shed and within a couple of hours our tree was a glittery arrangement of bananas, orchids, birds of paradise, shells, starfish, and colorful ornaments.
And Ava loved it. The next morning she peered under branches at hidden treasures, attempted to eat a banana, and touched every decoration within her reach (when I told her "no" at every touch, she tried it all over again with her foot). Exasperated with not being able to give the dogs satiny lime green and plum globes, she resigned herself to lying on the floor and staring at my glowing concoction of color.
Antoine de Saint Exupery wrote, "The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves, but in our attitude towards them." In Ava's curiosity and wonder over something I would have just as soon left boxed up in the shed, I am reminded of days when a wrapping paper roll could be a sword, an appliance box could be a castle, and a ribbon could be a crown. I remember making stories out of words that I couldn't yet read and dreaming of places that only my imagination could create. I am reminded that even as adults there are times when we should allow routines and worries to give way to the magical and sublime; that a washcloth can be a hat, that it doesn't matter how the ornaments are arranged so long as they sparkle, and that sometimes children do know more than their parents.
