And The Middle Shall Be First

Twas the month of December and the tree was chopped down.

No one can find the nativity scene but the tree stand magically reappeared after a two year hiatus.

Christmas music blared and we all scrambled through the tissue paper and completely untidy array of ornaments treasured and tarnished and piled high in a less than glamorous Rubbermaid bin.

We name every tree we get.  I can’t pretend to recall the names of all of those trees but I do remember the first tree I ever decorated the first year I ever spent the holiday as a wife.

Herbert.

Herbert was a ratty old scrub cedar plucked from his life on a hillside of the farm in Virginia.

In the woods he looked perfect to two wildly enthusiastic newlyweds.

In our home (which was really not our home but the home of our generous framily) Herbert looked forlorn, ridiculously lopsided and sort of pitiful.  To keep him from falling right over we literally secured him in place by attaching a rope from the center of the tree to the wall.

One side of Herbert was conveniently completely bare – a fact I have no idea how we overlooked in the woods – so that Herbert could, quite literally, lay flush against the wall.  A real space-saver, Herbert was.

The people with whom we worked at our humble first post-college, post-marriage jobs felt sorry for us and decided to shower us with Christmas decorations.  Yes.  They showered us with their old, outdated, tacky decorations.

It suited Herbert somehow.

The following years we acquired and inherited a vast array of lovely ornaments and we ditched many of those tacky first-year “treasures”.

But we kept one.

One sad little plastic fur-ish covered white bear.

I don’t even remember why we kept him.

He just lingered on somehow.

And – now – twenty years later – that little bear is still sticking around.

He marks the official end of Tree Decorating.

After the tree is deemed complete and overpowered with gobs of memories and history in paper and shine, the bear is literally tossed right onto the tree.

When you visit – it’s kind of like an I Spy game.  Who can find the white Christmas bear?

Bergen was our tosser this year.

No one could entirely recall who tossed the little guy last year.  But we all decided that maybe this should be The Year of Bergen.

As he stated so poignantly, “Whenever we have Christmas or have to stand in order for anything, I know I never have to worry about being first or last.  I’m just always right in the middle.”

So this year the middle is rising to the top.

We are breaking all the rules.

It has been declared by all that Bergen Hawkeye can open his stocking first this Christmas.

And that same little nine-year-old can toss the bear too!