Tinkling of the Angel Chimes
I can't remember where my mother bought what turned out to be one of my favorite Christmas decorations when growing up. As a child you don't wonder about that. You only look for it every year when the biggest fresh cut tree ever is brought into the house and the decorating begins. Our Christmas trees always reached about to the ceiling and took up more space than needed in the living room. My mother was the official decorator. She was quite particular as to what went where-except for the angel candle chimes. At some point in my young life I'd made it apparent that I wanted to be in charge of taking the parts to the chimes out of the same old box as the year before and the year before that. So from that point on, my mother would hand me that box without saying a word. She'd relinquished her role of official decorator to me-at least when it came to the angel chimes. I'm thinking now it might have been because that responsibility was one I took rather seriously and...