Christmas waits impatiently on the other side of midnight, less than five hours away on the East Coast of the US. Besides its ultimate meaning, Christmas carries a bagful of gifts called memories: some good, some painful, some both. When my family returned to Spokane after a 22-month period of moves to Seattle, Los Angeles, and back to Spokane, the neighbors across the street organized a block Christmas decorating project. They lived in the house pictured above. All the men–times differed a bit back then–gathered in the double-car garage just out of the photo to the right, all of the women kept them stocked with hot or cold beverages of their choice, and all of us children ran around in the snow and threw snowballs at each other. For several years our block featured wooden trees lit colorfully…almost as in this photo.
One by one fewer trees appeared each year. This person moved. That person got tired of the maintenance involved. (Ours needed a new stake to keep it upright in the nearly frozen ground.) By the mid-70’s the folks in the pictured house–the ones who instigated the tree-building–had moved, all of the neighborhood children were grown, the trees had disappeared entirely, and ours began its 45-year hibernation in the rafters of our garage.
In 2013 my father died, and in 2019 my mother joined him. Through 2018 the new neighbors in the brick house across the street had taken care of my mother as she declined, assisting her with all those little tasks that get more difficult as one nears 90. My brother lived hundreds of miles away, while I lived thousands. We did nothing with the house during the ten months she alternated quarters in the rehab center or the assisted living facility, but after she had passed we went through the stuff and asked neighbors if they wanted anything. Our neighbor wanted the tree. He spent a couple years before he souped it up with the reflectors, but other than that he returned it to its original condition. It seems appropriate it now lives where it came into being. I ran across this photo looking back through December photos. Funny how so much can be packed into one unassuming photograph.
all the voices in my head 
terrific memory. So glad the neighbor wanted the tree. And this memory, I’m sure so vibrant and visceral: “all of us children ran around in the snow and threw snowballs at each other”
Merry Christmas!
And Very Merry Christmas to you! I’m hoping the Christmastide gives me a chance to catch up on your recent prolific spate of posts!
Just enjoy the holiday. Sometime, I’ll put it all out in full. I appreciate you!
Such a beautiful story of full circles, memories, and how all things go through changes. It made me tear up thinking of my childhood street and how little of our core group remains connected. It’s hard sometimes to swallow the changes we see, but we never know how things will turn out. Thank you for sharing this. I hope you and your family had a wonderful Christmas.