Growing up we always had a Christmas tree. Or that’s the way I remember it. They were always small, and doubt if they were real because I was allergic to almost everything.

We had a tree in our dining/sewing room on 18th St., and I can almost see the teenager me unwrapping a present while Momma and Daddy were at work. But that’s another story.

By Christmas 1964, I’d been married two years, my parents had moved across town, and we’d renamed Momma “Goldfinger.”

She got that Ian Fleming/ James Bond name not just because of the book, or the movie. She got it because she turned everything gold with a can of spray paint.

She painted everything from Daddy’s antique iron door stoppers to kitchen knick knacks, door knobs old Christmas tree decorations, etc. Daddy joked that if you stood too still she’d paint you gold.

That’s about the same time, or probably earlier, when Momma got an aluminum Christmas tree.

It was all the rage! I’m unsure if the plug-in “color wheel” was included, or came later, but Momma also had one of those.

Then by the early 1970s I’d remarried, and a friend invited us to cut down a Christmas tree at her farm in North Edmond. That was an experience I’ll never forget. It was all new to me, and we had a great time picking it out, and decorating it with the kids.

After that trip to Carolyn’s farm we continued to get large Scotch pine trees after we moved to Hennessey until, well, until we didn’t like cleaning up all the needles.

“When did you and Dad get old, and get a fake tree?” asked Nick, my then 30-something son who came home for Christmas. “And when did you and Dad stop eating? There is nothing in the fridge.”

“There is cookie dough,” I might have said.

That reminds me to make some cookie dough, and maybe even get the tree out of the box in the garage. But if I do that, I’ve got to move the table, then … to be continued.