A Christmas tree story

When night drops its cloak, my mother sits on my late father’s rocking chair at the terrace of our home in Laguna. She allows the nippy breeze to kiss her face and shortly after enters her own dreamland with her eyes wide open and a smile overlapping her face. Lately, she has been anticipating the arrival of dusk, like it brings with it some manna from heaven. She longs for sundown because it gives her a promise of an imminent happiness.

What’s with the sharpening of nighttime that makes my mother happy? The answer lies in the bluish-white LED Christmas lights that hang in our narra tree, the centerpiece of our garden at our modest home.

These days, many of the leaves of our mighty narra tree pirouette down the ground. This is always the case come the “ber” months. It is always a delight to see a carpet of yellow-brown leaves gathered in our yard.

The branches of the tree look like ballerinas doing arabesques in mid-air as they dance to the music of the breeze blowing from Laguna Lake. The breeze, especially now, is packed with a chilly force that everything it kisses on its path cannot help but feel that Christmastime beckons.

The narra tree in front of our house is a mute witness to the occasional challenges and many celebrations our family has been through. In its silence, it has become a symbol of hope and strength for all of us. And now, most especially for my mother, the narra tree, from whose branches many strands of bluish-white lights are suspended like Cirque du Soleil performers, is an undeniable source of joy. My mother’s happiness is magnified 5,000 times by the 5,000 little bluish-white lights that her eyes feast on every night.

I bask in her glory as I see the reflections of thousands of bright, blinking lights in her eyes. Her bliss is uncontainable. Thanks to the narra tree  our Christmas tree at home.

* * *

For my brothers and I, there’s nothing that we will not do to make our mother happy. So, on a night when she fancied upon those bluish-white lights that adorned the metal gates of the village where I stay in Makati, my mother knew right away that those lights would make a difference in her life this Christmas. This is the season that attempts to also make her feel ambivalent, a fact that is caused by my mother’s longing for her husband.

In our sincere desire to make our mother’s spirit buoyant this season, we sourced the safest Christmas lights and called the trusted neighborhood electrician to safely drape and decorate our narra tree in the garden with those bluish-white lights. And two Sundays ago, Nanay was the one who switched on the lights in what we dubbed as our own “ceremonial Christmas tree lighting” at home.

“Kung buhay ang tatay ‘nyo, matutuwa siya at sa wakas ay may Christmas tree na tayo (If your father were alive, he would be happy because finally we have a Christmas tree),” she told me.

Yes, finally, we have a Christmas tree at home, a live one at that.

* * *

Growing up, I could only wish we had a Christmas tree  the kind that had green plastic boughs. We never had one at home. Even to this day. My brothers and I did not experience how it was to festoon a green plastic tree with toys and icicles. We were also alien to the thrill of putting the star atop the tree. Much more, we were unfamiliar with the concept of finding gifts under the tree.

In some Christmas Eves of our childhood, my brothers and I found our gifts  a box of Sour Balls, a handmade wooden top, a piece or two of Caramel, Curly Tops, or ChocNut, a plump boiled camote  inside our respective green Boy Scout socks, which our parents asked us to hang outside the window of our house for Santa Claus to notice. We were taught to believe in Santa Claus, whose plastic poster was plastered at the back of our lawanit door at home.

So, there, we did not find our gifts under the tree. But we were happy just the same. We did not ask our parents to buy us a Christmas tree. To begin with, in those days, money was hard to come by for a couple whose main source of income was tilling the land.

We didn’t have a Christmas tree but we had some of the most beautiful parols in the neighborhood. My father would fashion lanterns out of thin bamboo slats while my mother would dress up all these parols with colorful papel de hapon. There would always be an impromptu friendly competition between my mother and father as to who would make the more beautiful buntot (tails) of the parol. To this day, I still remember how these lanterns would dance while hanging at the makeshift awning of our house.

The days of want taught my whole family to have a humble and loving heart and a persevering mind that appreciates the true spirit of Christmas.

And to this day, I still feel the warmth and joy of the many past simple Christmases of my childhood  even if in those days we had no Christmas tree and no gifts wrapped in gold to find at home.  

(For your new beginnings, please e-mail me at bumbaki@yahoo.com. You may want to follow me on Twitter bum_tenorio. Have a blessed Sunday!)