{"id":1195,"date":"2009-01-25T03:26:41","date_gmt":"2009-01-25T08:26:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spritewrites.net\/?p=1195"},"modified":"2009-01-25T03:26:41","modified_gmt":"2009-01-25T08:26:41","slug":"one-last-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spritewrites.net\/?p=1195","title":{"rendered":"one last night"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Our<\/a>Tomorrow the Christmas tree will come down. It’s a month past Christmas, seven weeks since we put the tree up, covered it with lights, and decorated it with our friends. It’s time.<\/p>\n

It’s been a good tree. We stopped watering it weeks ago, probably last right around New Year’s Day or maybe a few days past. Definitely before Russian Christmas. And yet, it remained strong, vibrant. It held onto its needles tightly, and I was loathe to end its existence before it was ready to give up the ghost.<\/p>\n

It could also be that I needed it as much as it needed us. The colored lights and their pink glow fill my light-deprived soul with gladness and joy. I admit I needed it less desperately this year, whether because of the assortment of happy lights my parents gave me for Christmas or because of the impending Inauguration offered me hope of a different variety, I don’t know.<\/p>\n

But the tree and I have grown comfortable together, and so together we spent many cozy evenings.<\/p>\n

This past week, though, I’ve noticed a difference. The weather turned and temperatures dipped down into the chilly regions. We turned the heat on. The tree remembered that it grew up outside and likes a chilly winter. It started shedding layers the way a child does coming in from sledding. And I knew it was time to let it go.<\/p>\n

So tomorrow Rudi and I will take each ornament off the tree. We’ll remember once again the friends and loved ones who’ve given them to us or where we acquired them. The sled from my first grade teacher. The styrofoam ball from nursery school. A bauble with my name painted on from Kim my sophomore year of college. The glass we brought home from Montreal and from London.<\/p>\n

We’ll wind up the strands of lights.<\/p>\n

And we’ll take the tree back outside, thanking it as we do, for giving us a gift of life and of hope.<\/p>\n

But tonight after Rudi headed to bed, I turned out the rest of the Burrow’s lights and sat knitting in front of the tree, admiring its soft pink glow, grateful for one last night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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