O Christmas Tree.....

Now that Christmas is over it's time to take down the tree, pack up the ornaments and move the furniture back to their proper place. Sigh. It's a sad time. There's just something so charming and home-warming about a sparkly tree decorated with items I've collected over the decades: a saddle from Wyoming, a decorative egg from Budapest, a hibiscus from Hawaii.... And it seems so empty after having been such a fixture in the living room for over a month. Even as a kid part of me longed to hold onto the holidays and to beg Dad to wait just "one more day" before he sawed up the tree into pieces perfectly sized for the fireplace. But he was right. It was time. And thus today it's time as well to, in this case, take the tree apart and to stow it away for another year...