One Ornament at a Time.




Christmas has come and gone. The new year opened with a fantastic beginning for our family. We were able to enjoy the company of wonderful friends who gathered at our home on the New Year's Eve. We are grateful for each other, another year, assurance of true peace and many other tangible and intangibles around us.

I had a very special time while taking down the Christmas Decoration this year. We waited till the Jan 2nd to begin our process to take away all the Christmas trimmings and glitter. I was hoping to go through some items with the guys but Erik's school was beginning the following morning and he is also facing a giant of Science Project presentation and Piano Concerto Competition this week,,,, he was up till late but he had to use all his available time for preparation for these events. So, I began the process of taking the lights and all gradually. Erik was playing his piano and the CHristmas tree was right next to him.

As I stood and looked at the tree, and saw some of the ornaments, I had a flash back, so to speak. 1996 was the year that we learned that we were expecting. That year, I had a bit of a gamble when it came to Christmas shopping. I had a sense that I may be suited to be a mother of a boy and not a girl. I was drawn to ornaments that represented boy theme such as trains and airplanes. One of the first ornament I bought was Percey, the train from Thomas the Tank Engine. I imagined that if it turns out to be a girl, I am just going to have to "train" her to love locomotives!

It was fun to have Erik hang green train ornament! I have a few other vehicle ornaments that are dated 1966, a year before he was born! Glad my hunch was right!

Erik was always a cautious and thoughtful child, very unusual in a way. We rarely had to worry that he would touch an ornament and pull it down or break it. But we have one that he accidentally actually broke. I had fun reminding Erik of the time he broke the ornament and he became very upset with himself. He did not like it that a part fell of and that he could not reattach it! He was only a year and a half.

There are some ornaments that remind me of the sweet singing voice he used to have,, he could always carry a tune pretty well. He loved to say, 'o-ly o-ly" at bedtime asking me to sing Holy Holy Holy,,, from our hymn selection in one CD sung by the British choir, called, the Choir of Paisley Abbey.... I thought that it was interesting that he showed strong interest in that type of music rather than kids songs but he still has the same response to the chorale music. IT was precious to watch him respond and begin to sing at loud when familiar carol played one day while we were preparing for company over Christmas. Baritone does something to him...

Life is so short. We must cherish and enjoy it. Erik's mere 14 years with us brings me so much to remember and love. He has certainly grown up to be a special young man. Just look how handsome he is!

As we began our 2012 and took down the Christmas Tree, I thoroughly immersed myself in the stories and memories that each ornament represented. Not only our own small family, I remembered the special friends associated with some of the ornaments and thanked God for special friendship. As I took the last ornament off the tree, my heart was full of stories, some, I had not thought of in years. Someday, I thought to myself, I should write tales to go with each ornament so Erik will always know what a precious history he helped create for our family,,,,,I really should, when my current project ease off, I will write something little about each,,,one ornament at a time!.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

One Glorious Hallelujah at a time.

 No words are sufficient to describe the work of Handel and Messiah that he wrote in such a short time. Messiah was composed in 1741...yes, it is a bit ago. The first performance was apparently in Dublin and later in London.  In 2020, the year of Pandemic, we still enjoy Handel and his work. Christmas season is especially precious in terms of music that we add to our festivities welcoming the birth of Christ.  Our family, all of us, definitely enjoy Music in all shapes and sounds. We have been so blessed to have a pianist who can play things his parents can't play. We are also blessed to have a high quality Grand Piano, our miracle Steinway.  Someone requested Erik if he could play this piece for a service and he worked on it for weeks to prepare. On the 20th of Dec, 2020, he performed it as a postlude after a Christmas Service. I enjoyed listening to it during the Service so I did not record it. I asked him if he would let me record it at home later in the evening. ...
Read more

Birthday

Image
It is December 9th, 2009 in Japan already. My mother was born, Dec 9th, 1933. I am very grateful for all her effort and sacrifices she made to raise my brother and I. It is a very special time to reflect and remember how precious it is that she was born and how fortunate I am that I was born as her daughter 33 years later. The 4th photo is the home where my mother was born. She is held by her mother in front of their home that my grand father designed. It is located in Jiyugaoka, Tokyo. My grandmother's portrait is the last one on the left of this paragraph. She was a model, I heard, primarily because she was so tall for her generation (but I am taller than her) and she was quite beautiful. She never sought out to become a model, of course, she was quite a revolutionary character those days so she stood out. She used to tell me that she was one of the first woman in Kyoto, Japan who began regularly wearing western clothing, or ride a bike in public, or go to college. It did not bo...
Read more

One City at a time.

Today, I spent about half and hour playing with my son. I play the flute but I am not at all an expert like my son is with his piano. But I love the music and what it does to me when my mind is tired. I have been frantically working on my course assignment for my doctorate class at the same time I have been working on all the lecture preparation that I am giving in Japan in a few weeks. Lecture is very technologically demanding these days. I have made three sets of slides, each set is like 40-50 slides. Some have video, some have several photos with music embedded in it to enhance the learning and enhance the delivery. So, I probably put too much energy into the creation of my slides/video/audio combined presentation. So I decided to take a break and had fun practicing a few pieces with Erik. Erik was able to sight read this peace so we put something together for fun. Another video is from the reformation Sunday this past week when Erik presented his offertory at Church. A mighty fortr...
Read more