Just a couple of ornaments....

I gave in to the pull of those pushy, sentimental tree ornaments, pleading silently from their nests of newspaper and more stylish packing materials.

Over the years I've delighted in clear globes, red apples, wooden musical instruments, fruits and vegetables and more recently,cooking implements and animals. And I've honored the contributions made by my daughters, whose pictures go on the tree every year.

Here you'll see Hedge-Pig, lower center, the coffee grinder up and to the right, and Owl, upper right.

The really old item is on the lower right, the three construction-paper rings that remain from a long long chain that my mother and I made when I was about 5. Now that I think back, this was at the small school for expats' kids in Belgrade (in the former Yugoslavia), that she and some other mothers started for the school-age children the of newspaper reporters and diplomats. It was 1949, in a post-war, communist country with no retail, no consumer goods, no Christmas. My parents and I were living in two rooms in a hotel. I have no idea what else we might have put on the tree, or where we might have found a tree...