Page 42 2013 Home for the Holidays Special edition of LINCOLN DAILY NEWS.com
that is when it happened.
Mom has a remarkable memory,
sometimes too remarkable when
she starts recalling all the mischief
my sister and I got into as children.
She sat in her spot on the sofa and
surveyed the room with a puzzled
look on her face. You could almost
see the wheels turning inside her
head. “Something is missing,” she
said. “There’s another gift some-
where.”
And so the search began for the
elusive gift. After a few minutes
of examining the area where the
mountain of gifts had been, we
located the package. It had fallen
off the top of the sewing machine
stand and was lodged between the
back of the machine and the win-
dow.
My sister surmised that she could
get on the floor, scoot under the
make-do table, and perhaps reach
the gift from underneath. However,
that proved to be a little harder
than expected. Because it was an
old-style pedal sewing machine,
she couldn’t get under the table far
enough to reach the gift.
In a moment of insane brilliance,
my mom had an idea. She jumped
from her supervisory spot and trot-
ted across the room, announcing
that the little tree could be picked
up, and then the gift could be re-
trieved from above.
While it might have been a good
plan, mother made a few tacti-
cal errors in its execution. To start
with, in her rush to rescue the gift,
she didn’t give my sister time to
get up from the floor. Next, while
the tree was light as a feather when
she put it together, it became much
heavier with strings of lights, gar-
land, tinsel and balls. In addition,
the tree was now tied to the wall
via a mass of electric cords, and fi-
nally, she forgot that this tree went
together in pieces and would surely
come apart in pieces.
Nonetheless, she proceeded with
her plan, hastily lifting the tree off
the table. The weight of it tipped
toward her, and the bottom failed to
move very far because of the elec-
tric cords. The top half then toppled
off, knocking my sister in the head.
The garland tied the two halves
together, and ornament balls went
flying across the room. My sister
screamed, my hubs and brother-in-
law laughed, and the baby started
to cry, as in a moment my little sis
became the best decorated item in
the room.
The branches began to tumble from
the bottom half that my mother was
still hanging on to in shock. They
tangled in sis’s hair, and the gar-
land cascaded around her shoul-
ders, almost as though it had been
intentionally put there.
The little angel that had topped the
tree appeared to be hanging on for
dear life as her electric cord kept
her from the floor, but also swung
her into the branches of the bottom
half of the tree.
Lights were everywhere, includ-
ing on little sis. As the shock of the
event wore off, my mom started
laughing, as did my sis and I, and
we all couldn’t stop. After all, it
was too funny. There stood my
mom holding on to half of a Christ-
mas tree. There sat my sis on the
floor, covered in holiday décor. We
laughed so hard the tears ran from
our eyes and our sides began to
hurt.
When the melee quieted, we set
about trying to make the little tree
whole again. It was hopeless, not
to be done. We did finally get the
tree upright and back in one piece,
standing on the sewing machine.
But, it looked like something that
would have embarrassed even
Charlie Brown.
The baby had finally stopped cry-
ing, the hysterical laughter had
calmed to quiet giggles, and we
were all exhausted by the excite-
ment. As we settled down and got
comfortable, my mom sat in her
special spot on the sofa with that
puzzled look on her face.
