Memories

There is a saying that 'memories written down are never forgotten'.
One of the current Kay Jewelers commercials on for the Christmas season, prodded a memory to resurface.
It is the one where a young couple are at a city 'tree lot' picking out a tree for the Christmas holidays. Underneath one particular tree is a small box. A ring is presented.
My memory is of the lighted tree lot.
I remember going with Mom and Dad to a city tree lot. I was fascinated by the lighted wires overhead. Oh sure, I was excited about getting 'the tree', but the lights overhead held a fascination for me.
Mind you, I was a small child, about the age of three. My sister Dee was born December 20, 1946 when I was four. There are four years separating us.
Lights were on a table or sprouted from the ceiling or wall. Never just a wire with a lightbulb dangling from it.
These lit the entire city tree lot. People were bustling all around in the night, in that bulb-lit tree lot, trying to find that perfect tree, just like we were doing. I was along and I don't remember any other siblings at that point, and since I can pinpoint that, I must have been three.
Dad had come home from the war in the Phillipines, so that really dated the time.
He came home on Christmas Eve day, 1945.
All I remember about that was that there was a knock on the apartment door, and this man in a green suit handed me this little cloth horse, told me its name was Skeezix and then he enfolded my Mom in for a hug. She was crying.
I didn't know this man.
I got in between them to try and keep her from crying. I didn't know why she was crying, but she was. In my child's mind, when I cried, she held and comforted me. I didn't like that she was crying and this man in the green suit had made her cry.
So the first Christmas memory I had was going shopping for a Christmas tree in a city of Minneapolis tree lot, lit by these fascinating lightbulbs overhead on wires.
Department 56 has a lighted tree lot in their product line. I do want to get that piece, as it is so reminiscent of that compelling memory. That is a real heart tug for me at this time of year.
When I go by the Boy Scouts tree lot in one of the parking lots in Elk River on Highway 10, I get that same smile on my face as I remember the lights.
Thank you Kay Jewelers for that wonderful resurfacing of my memory.