In the fuzzy foreground you can see one of my Mother’s paper mache, Christmas, tree toppers. Just after my college years she started making very popular Christmas tree ornaments for the little boutique, Harpies Bazaar, she was a part owner of in Mankato. My parents are in a picture on the wall behind the little Christmas scene I just put up in my attic office. Its a little artificial tree full of and surrounded by my Mother’s ornaments, the ones that don’t fit downstairs. Some of my earliest memories of Mom were of her teaching my fourth grade classmates how to make paper mache puppets. The teacher’s husband even made a small puppet theater and I remember getting laughs from my classmates by adlibbing for the puppets while I was behind its curtain.
I bought the faux tree when Mom was in dementia care and decorated it each year until her death. She died just before Christmas 2015 and I got to her room in time to begin singing a family Christmas favorite,”Good King Wenceslas.” She breathed her last breath before the first stanza was finished.
Sorry, gotta go. I have a funeral to attend. Its for one of the fellows at my church who always loved to give razz about my snow sculptures before they were completed.
