What's On Your Tree?

We have not purchased a Christmas Tree yet this year.  Coordinating with kids who live out of town and are working, makes a family outing much more challenging than when I drove them around and they went where I took them.  Those days are gone.  I am delighted they have grown up and are living adult lives, that was the plan, but it does make tree choosing challenging!

On our Christmas tree we hang an ornament for each member of the family.  I grew up with this tradition.  The ornaments from my childhood were lost in a fire, they cannot adorn our tree; my parents and brother are not represented on its boughs.   Our first dog and our only cat have their ornaments, though they have both died.  The new dog has one for her, and my kids each have their own angel ornaments. The “kids” are also represented as part of the larger family by two tiny knitted sweaters made by my husband’s Aunt (by marriage) Mu.  This ties them in with all their cousins on that side and it makes me remember Aunt Mu, who is somehow, in a twist of fate, related to my mother’s family.  Life can be weird that way.  Aunt Mu and her husband, like our parents and our first two pets, are dead. My tree is draped in ghosts; A Christmas Carol indeed. 

Years ago, I was represented on the tree by a bright red, wooden moose given to me by a friend when I was single.  I have put it away with some other treasures, to live in a box of things past.  A few years ago, some The Cat in the Hat ornaments were issued when the movie came out.  The movie was awful, but the ornaments are depictions of the Cat in the Hat, Thing 1 and Thing 2, and the Fish in the Pot, as drawn by Dr. Seuss. When I was single, I was like the Cat in the Hat; I juggled, danced, dropped things, made irrevocable messes and was generally dressed in black, white and red and - active.  Motherhood, gave me two kids (Thing 1 and Thing 2) a husband who is certainly the Cat in the Hat, which left me to be – heaven help us all, the voice of reason?  The fish in the Pot.

It's a small pot of water, with a naggy fish whose business it is to restore order.  I’m not very good at it and, in reality, I am still that crazy juggling, dare I say – pot stirrer - but I like to let my spouse think he’s having all the fun.

The metaphor of the ornament chosen is interesting to me.  How they were chosen and then amended or absented over the years. That we include those of the dead, is bittersweet, but we still love them. The metaphoric qualities of Christmas decorations are the aspect of the holiday I enjoy the most.  Evergreens for life, blood red berries, white snow for purity, heavenly star to guide, camels who make the impassable, passable, Kings whose worship defines a higher level of King, and who bring gifts foreshadowing his ultimate death…

As an artist. I choose what to paint, draw, build, represent, every time I start a new work or series of works.  I often employ metaphors and work abstractly.  It is the challenge of the artist to say more with an image than words might do alone; to invade an individual's experience less than words might. To make something that stirs, either the pot or the soul, and if you're lucky or very good, both.

If you chose a metaphoric image to represent your life, your passion, your love, what would you choose?