Butterflies and Christmas

When I was a little girl,
my parents used to leave the Christmas tree lights on
all night long
on Christmas eve.

Christms morning would find me
kneeling in front of the glistening tree
with it's flickering lights
gazing at all of the wrapped gifts
that covered the floor.

The butterflies in my tummy were so great
that my teeth would start chattering
in my excitement!

Now that I'm the Mom of the house,
going on 29 years
(man, I'm old! yea!),
you'd think I'd be over the whole
Butterfly-tummy thing, right?

I'm not.
No way.
As we put up our tree last night,
those same tingly butterflies returned--
each ornament is a memory on our tree.
None are the same--
there's the bagpipe one from Edinburgh,
and the one from our honeymoon in Breckenridge,
the ones we gave each other
that first day we met, December 1997,
and the yahoo's baby ornaments,
the new house ornament from Fort Collins,

AND the truly antique ornaments:

the tiny cherubic angels from Mr. Wonderful's mother
who passed away long before I ever met him,
long before he even thought he'd have a family.

There are 6 tiny little angels
and 6 miniature creche's
that Doris Ella used to put on her tree
way back when Mr. W
was just a yahoo in his own house.

And let me just say,
in case this isn't obvious--
those little angels are treated as though
they're made of 24 carat gold.

Mr. W hands the youngest yahoos
those tiny angels
and tells them in a sweet low voice:
"These were my Mom's."

We have to hang them together
or we'll lose them on the tree,
as we found out one year--
it took a long time to find every one of them.
They're only an inch and a half long.

But to Mr. Wonderful,
they're his Mom.
Like little Guardian Angels sent here
to watch over Doris Ella's boy,
they hang with honor on the very hooks
they were matched up with over 50 years ago.

See what I mean?
Butterflies.

We have our small rituals to get us going:
Hot cocoa with peppermint sticks,
the "Mary, Did You Know" cd by Kenny Rogers,
and our special ornaments.

I try not to direct the yahoos as to where
to place their ornaments.
Once the lights and garland are on,
anything goes!

The step-stool is brought out
and the un-spoken contest to see who
can get closest to the highest bough
begins--
"Mine is higher!"
"Ah-ha! Mine is higher now!"
And continues on until
there are 524 ornaments
at the top
and three
on the bottom bough
of the 9 foot tall tree.

It's all good.
The butterflies are flitting about,
the hot cocoa is delicious.
The kids are laughing about the handmade ornaments
they made in elementary school--
the ones with their school pictures centered in wreaths,
with their childish haircuts
all of it
circled in globs of glitter.

The last ornament to go on
is the Star...
that was the one tradition I brought
from my childhood:
My dad put the star on top.
Mr W does the deed and that's that.

All finished,
we settle back on the sofa
and gaze at our homemade masterpeice
ignoring the bins and buckets,
the tissue and strew ribbon--
we soak up all Christmas magic like
the last sip of hot cocoa--
we want every drop of it to last.

Joseph announces:
"It's Snowing!"

Hey, it's Butterfly Season.