In this memory, I’m five years old. One day in early December, my mother takes out the box of a Christmas tree kit from the storage and bring it to the living room of our tiny half-dilapidated apartment. It’s a small fake Christmas tree that was bought in the winter my family moved into the apartment four years ago.
The plastic tree comes in several parts. As my mother starts assembling the trunk and the branches, slowly, the shape of a fur tree appears, and that’s when my little brother and I come running to the room, abandoning whatever we’ve been doing.
“Mommy, are you doing the Christmas tree?”
The Christmas tree kit comes with tiny ornaments, a few long shiny threads, fluffy cotton to mimic snow, and a large star to be placed on top. After my mother finishes assembling the tree, we all spend some time decorating it together, hanging the ornaments on different branches, sticking the cotton between the branches, and wrapping around the tree with the shiny threads. Since my brother isn’t tall enough to reach far up in the tree, I’m the one who places the star on the treetop.
From that day on, the tree becomes the centre of my brother and my attention. It’s wonderful to have a tree inside our home because there are now many fun things we can do with it. As a starter, I pretend to be a horse, eating the tree leaves. I then become a cat with my brother, cozying up under the tree. The various ornaments hanging from the branches come in handy. I pick some apples for our food, and a candle for warmth. We also pretend to be a prince and a princess by wearing the shiny threads and cotton on our clothes.
By the time Christmas is over, several ornaments have found their home in our toy box, and the shiny threads have been bared to a great degree. My mother collects all of them, putting them back into the box with all the tree parts for next Christmas.