This morning I had a Facebook conversation with a writer friend, Carolyn Wilker. She had posted a picture and comment about her Christmas tree and its decorations. We ended up listing the variety of ornaments we had on our Christmas trees and shared a little bit about the stories behind them, as she said, “Stories of love on our Christmas trees.” I told her that there was a story for every decoration on my Christmas tree. Here’s one of them.
Between 2001 and 2010, Tom, an old high school friend who later became my husband, was a part of my life.When I first started dating my Tom, I noticed he had a small collection of frogs in his home. I began looking for other frogs to add to his collection and bought him a colourful, whimsical frog as a decoration for our first Christmas tree. So began a new tradition.
Each Christmas, a new shiny frog was added to the tree to celebrate another happy year together for us. Each one was unique and different and acted as a symbol of our love and time together.
After six years of love, we were married. Just before our fourth wedding anniversary, Tom was diagnosed with small-cell lung cancer. Seven months later, just before Christmas, the cancer took Tom’s life.
We had ten devoted years together. Ten frogs on the Christmas tree are a reminder every year of that fulfilling love that I shared with that wonderful man.
Margaret looked into the bathroom mirror
as she did every morning. She ran her fingers through her hair, eased out the
tangles. Picking at the corner of her eye, she rubbed away the sleepiness of
the night. As she leaned in to the mirror, she flexed her lips to check for
stray pieces of food caught in her teeth. Stepping back, she glanced down for a
moment and then back up to greet the face in the mirror. She struck her pose,
her best look. Turning her face slowly to the right, then the left, she
examined the small wrinkles at the corner of her eyes. “That’s okay, they’re my
smile lines,” she told herself confidently. The same smile lines curved down
from either side of her nose to the edges of her lips. As if to prove it to
herself, she smiled once at the reflection. And that’s when she noticed it.
A little spark, a twinkle in her
eyes, a flash of mischief, looked back at her. Her silly, get-into-trouble
three-year old face was still there, looking for the next amusement that would
send her into high-pitched giggles and squeals of delight. She stuck her tongue
out at it. No wonder she enjoyed her little grandson so much. He gave her
licence to let the little girl out once in a while, to romp and play and be
enchanted by the simple pleasures of life once again.
She took one step back away from the
mirror and looked past that little girl to another reflection. This time a
young girl, an almost woman, stood shyly in front of her. Margaret could see the
bloom on her cheek, the tightly closed lips afraid to say the wrong thing, the
averted eyes edged with long, curling lashes, that cautiously looked up at her,
then quickly looked away again as they made eye contact. Margaret knew she
still lived inside of her. Every time Margaret was faced with a new social
situation, a new challenge at work, the insecure young girl appeared, telling her
she just wasn’t ready, didn’t know enough, wasn’t capable of grand achievement.
Margaret stood a little taller,
pulled herself erect into the whole woman she knew she could be. She looked
again at the reflection. This time, she saw a grown woman. A woman about to be
married. A woman who loved and knew she was loved. The face was rounder, the
lips fuller, the eyes shone in confidence. It was a sensuous face, a glowing
face, a face that was about to embark on a new journey with a man who loved
her. Margaret could see the future in that face, full of promise, children, and
new adventures. Margaret smiled at the reflection. It, too, was still a part of
her.
But then she eased herself back into
her own form. She stood a little less at attention, relaxed into the older body
that was hers that morning. She looked back intently at the mirror. The face she saw this time was even fuller, a
little saggy, a few more wrinkles than she had first admitted to. But the eyes
were calm, all-knowing, all-accepting. She was proud of that face – proud of
every gray hair on her head, proud of every crease on her cheek and forehead.
She was now a mature woman, a woman that was an accumulation of all her life
experiences. A woman that had lived a rich, meaningful life; one of joy and
pain, sorrow and celebration, and a full acceptance of it all. None of it was
lost. It was still all there, reflected back at her from that beautiful face in
the mirror.
