Memory #3

One Christmas, when the tree was in the living room, Justin started to talk about the possibility of sleeping under it. I was about six, and once the idea was in my head, I couldn't let it go. With some pestering we got permission from our mother. Jenny (about fifteen then) only stayed under the tree for a while, and I felt a fair amount of distress when she got up to go sleep in her bed, but the feeling passed.

All I could see from the floor were those convincing plastic tree branches in the dark, and dangling ornaments (half of them our own creations), all glowing with the light of a hundred little blue and green stars. My favorite ornament, a trio of iridescent glass bells, hung close to the bottom of the tree. I played with it before I fell asleep. I didn't think things could get much better.