MOM’S LEGACY COVERS OUR CHRISTMAS TREE!

My family is pretty good at avoiding drama, but way back in 2001 we almost had our very own World War III — over Christmas ornaments!

That might sound crazy, but the truth is they weren’t — and aren’t — just any ornaments. They’re a set of 200 painstakingly crafted decorations that my mother made in the early 1980s. She suffered from cancer at the time, and making those ornaments was her way of keeping busy. Every single one is unique, exotic, and delicate.

Each ornament began with a Styrofoam ball, either round or egg-shaped. Once she had that base, Mom gathered hundreds of pins, buttons, glass beads, and other reflective items. Then, she carefully wrapped the Styrofoam in rich fabric or metallic ribbon. Finally, she loaded the pins with beads, buttons, and trinkets, and pressed them into the surface of the ornament one by one. The finished decorations are works of art, and each one took a week or more to complete!

As you can imagine, when my mother passed away in 1983, those ornaments became family treasures. She made them in a broad variety of colors and sizes, and each one was crafted with painstaking love and care. The ornaments stayed with my father, but there was an understanding among the family that one day, they would pass to my daughters (since I’m an only child). Then, my father remarried in 1985.

My father’s new wife, Betty, was a very sweet woman. She proudly brought out my mother’s ornaments and decorated the tree with them each year. There was only one problem: Betty seemed to think that when she married my father, everything that once belonged to my mother now became hers. So, when Dad died a few years later, she refused to give us the ornaments!

We found out on the day of my father’s funeral in 2001, right around Christmastime. When my wife, Kaye, spotted my mother’s ornaments on the tree, she mentioned that my father had always wanted our girls to have them.

“But those are my ornaments!” Betty said.

To Kaye, those were fighting words! I didn’t realize just how much Betty upset her until the five of us were several hundred miles down the road on our way home. “Travis, I have to confess something,” she said. “We stole the ornaments!” Each of our girls repossessed a single ornament from Betty’s tree and pocketed it. Just in case they never saw Gramma’s collection again. I couldn’t believe it! Kaye started to laugh, then our daughters did, and finally I cracked up too! That’s the one bright memory from my father’s funeral — laughing over our contraband ornaments, right at the start of what could have been the West Family WWIII.

Fortunately, we did establish a detente a few years later. Kaye convinced Betty to package up the ornaments and send them our way. When they arrived — a bit worse for wear — Kaye and the girls took turns choosing their favorite pieces. Each of them ended up with a set of 25–30 ornaments that we still compare, comment on, and admire on our trees every Christmas.

The ornaments will always remind me of my mother’s patience, resilience, and pride. Of course, given the discrepancy between the 200 or so ornaments mom made and the 120 that arrived on our doorstep, we’re still convinced Betty kept the best ones for herself. I suppose I can’t blame her — they really are too beautiful to resist.

From my family to yours, merry Christmas!