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Conner was in the middle of helping Ma with making dinner when they both heard the sound of tires on snowy gravel rolling up to the front of the house, signalling that Pa was home. He had been gone the past few hours and was already off wherever he was going by the time Conner got back from school. So Conner hadn’t seen Pa since this morning before leaving.
When he asked Ma about it, Conner got an incomplete answer, something about trees and the neighbors. It didn’t make much sense, but he didn’t worry about it either. Pa often went off in the middle of the day to help the neighbors or to specific stores a few hours out of the city and wasn’t back until dinner time.
But now Pa had returned, Ma smiled softly as she wiped her hands on the towel hanging from the oven.
“Looks like Jonathan is back with our tree,” Ma turned the radio on the counter down just a smidge and turned to Conner, who was in the middle of carefully peeling potatoes and trying not to slice them.
He looked up curiously at the mention of a tree again, trying to peer out the window to see the bright red truck pulling up into the driveway. The window was frosted over with some ice and condensation as the warmth of the house hit against the cool of the glass, so he couldn’t see through. He had no idea what Ma meant by a tree. This was the second time that she had mentioned a tree.
Were they trying to plant a new sapling in the middle of winter? Conner didn’t know a lot about crops, but that seemed like a bad idea. And the ground was frozen solid by this point in December anyway, there would be no way they could dig a hole in the ground big enough to plant a sapling. Well, Conner probably could, but looking outside at all the snow and wind, he didn’t really want to.
“Conner, would you go be a dear and go out and help him with the tree?” Ma asked kindly, smiling at Conner softly with a look that always melted him. He dropped the potatoes on the counter and gave a short nod, trying not to look too confused.
Sure, trees in the middle of winter, that made perfect sense. But he wasn’t going to say any of that.
“‘Course, Ma,” He rinsed his hands off quickly and wiped them down on the front of his jeans. Then he shuffled out of the kitchen and grabbed his coat by the door to slip on over his sweater. The coat wasn’t really his, but it was one of Pa’s old hand-me-downs that fit a little baggy on Conner, but it kept him warm and was comfortable.
With his boots on, he made his way out the front door onto the porch, where he could finally see the truck pulled up in the driveway. Pa was just getting out of the driver's seat, dropping down onto the snow-covered gravel and slamming the door shut. He smiled and waved at Conner as soon as he spotted the boy standing on the porch.
“Ma send you?” He called out, a chuckle already filling his voice. He walked around the front of the truck to wave Conner over. “Come help.”
“Where’s the tree?” Conner blurted, wanting to get to the bottom of this mystery he had just been presented with. Trees in the winter. What an interesting concept. Conner could see the trees that surrounded the eastern property line of the Kent farm, but those were all leafless and barren at this time of year. And he remembered the palm trees in Hawaii, but it didn’t really snow there, so he couldn’t imagine any of those palm trees would be very happy up here in Kansas.
“In the back,” Pa said, shuffling down the gravel to the back of the truck, which Conner couldn’t see at this angle. He hopped down off the porch and made his trek through the few inches of snow that had gathered on the ground, following in Pa’s footsteps.
He rounded to the back of the red pickup truck, where the tailgate was down and strapped in was a small green bundle of netting that didn’t really look like a tree. Conner frowned and furrowed his eyebrows slightly. Okay, this made even less sense.
“C’mon, let's get this inside,” Pa patted the back of the truck as Conner approached. He pulled himself up and onto the bed, where he could step over the weird netted tree and start undoing the ratchet straps that were holding it in.
“Inside?” Conner asked, genuinely shocked, “Not the barn?” He thought it was a little strange that Pa pulled the truck up to the front of the house, but hadn’t thought any differently of it. He figured a tree would go in the barn, maybe it was one of the neighbor's trees that needed to be cut down, and instead of planting it, they were actually going to use it as firewood. Or if it was a sapling, it should go out in the yard where a tree belongs.
But Pa wanted to take it inside?
“You wanna put the Christmas tree in the barn?” Pa asked, looking at Conner as if he had just said something funny when really Pa was the one saying funny things, “I’m sure the cows would appreciate some festivities, but I only got one tree.”
Conner blinked and looked back and forth between Pa and the green netted agglomeration in the bed of the truck. “This is a Christmas tree?”
That made only a little more sense. He realized with a little belated understanding that it was about the middle of December, prime time for all the Christmas stuff to be kicking up around the town. He had seen a bunch of lights and decorations around the shops and in the bushes of larger businesses, and people had been putting up snowflake cutouts in windows that Conner liked looking at.
He never really thought about it, and had been busy doing other things that it hadn’t actually crossed his mind.
Conner had seen Christmas trees before, sure. Some of the houses and buildings down the street had lovely-looking trees in the window, and when he went over to some of his friends' houses, they had a Christmas tree sitting in the corner of the living room. But he had only seen them once they had already appeared in someone’s house and were decorated with pretty lights and colorful ornaments.
He assumed that’s how they entered the house and didn’t think much of it.
This was a net full of green needles.
“Well, it’s gonna be once we get it inside and get it decorated,” Pa clapped his gloves together with a muffled pop and started to roll up the straps he had used to tie the tree down.
Conner furrowed his eyebrows further, his breath steaming in the air as he tried to imagine what a Christmas tree would look like in the living room. He huffed softly in disbelief.
“So we’re taking the tree inside?” Conner asked again, because that still didn’t make sense. Were Christmas trees really just whole trees that people brought into their homes? Trees were supposed to be outside.
“Yep,” Pa nodded, “I’ll push it out from up here, and you grab onto the trunk.”
Deciding that more questions would just make him even more confused, Conner decided to just go along with what Pa was saying. He grabbed onto the trunk of the tree and backed up a little as Pa pushed it out, waiting carefully for Pa to hop down from the back of the truck so they could carry it together. Conner could definitely carry it on his own, but he had been sent to help, not to do it himself. Besides, he still had some pondering to do.
Once they squeezed the tree through the front door, Ma had set up a little stand for the tree, which Conner helped Pa ease it into. He cut the netting off, and it was a little easier to see that this thing was actually a tree and not just a weird collection of needles.
“Oh, that looks nice there,” Ma said, her voice lilting in excitement as she shuffled her way out of the kitchen to stare at the tree. She smiled warmly, a dish towel in her hands that she wrung neatly between her fingers, “It’ll look nice out the window too.”
It was taller than Conner, but smaller than the other trees he had seen outside. It still held the shape of the net, although it was beginning to sag its branches out, the needles clasped tightly together. It was hard to imagine that this tree, which was completely bare of anything except its own branches and needles, would become the type of Christmas tree that Conner had seen in the windows and living rooms of his friends.
“It’ll take a bit to fluff out,” Pa said to Conner, standing back a few steps to look at the tree, mapping out the space it would occupy in the living room. Conner remained where he stood and stared at the tree curiously.
“Then we decorate it?” Conner asked tentatively, looking back and forth between Ma, Pa, and the tree. He felt like he was walking into some strange tradition that he had no idea what it meant or how to perform it. He never really thought too hard about how Christmas trees came to be, but apparently, this was how they did.
“You can help me decorate it after dinner,” Ma said with a short nod, then she turned to go back to the kitchen, where she was cooking pork and potatoes for dinner. “You and Pa should get the decorations from the attic first while I finish up dinner.”
“I can help?” Conner asked, voice lilting in tone as he almost couldn’t believe what Ma had told him.
“Of course, honey,” Ma laughed to herself as if she were amused by the implication that Conner wouldn’t help. “I’ll need someone to reach the star.”
That filled Conner’s chest with a mix of warmth and excitement, swelling so full around his chest that he didn’t know what to do with himself. He hopped back on his heels a little bit, rocking on his feet. He wanted to help decorate the tree. He wanted to make it look like the trees that he had seen in his friend’s living rooms with a bunch of colorful lights and pretty ornaments.
While he thought about that, Conner followed Pa out to the garage to climb up into the attic where they could retrieve the Christmas decorations. He asked Pa again if he could really help decorate the tree, and Ma wasn’t kidding about that, and Pa laughed and told him, of course he could. Then he pointed out which boxes contained the decorations, and Conner helped carry them down the ladder and into the main house.
The boxes rattled a little bit as Conner carried them, and he risked a few peeks inside the cardboard containers, noticing pieces wrapped in tissue paper and paper towels, strings of lights, and lots of fun strings of shiny material. One of the boxes was full of colorful ornaments of different sizes and red and silver ribbons. He would have spent time rifling through each and every box as Pa pointed it out, but then Pa would call out another box for him to carry, and he’d be going up the ladder again. He’d get to look at all of them later.
Once the boxes were stacked in the living room, Ma had finished making dinner, and Pa helped set the table while Conner snuck some more peeks into the boxes of decorations while they weren’t looking.
Conner ate his dinner as slowly as he could manage (which wasn’t all that slow), excitement bubbling in his chest at the idea of getting to help Ma decorate the tree. He tapped his foot under the table and barely paid attention to anything Pa was talking about. Instead, he stared at the tree over the dining room table and watched its branches start to unfurl and puff out the longer it took its place in the warm, dry house.
Ma gave him seconds, and then half of thirds, so they weren’t stuck with only half a serving of leftover potatoes. Conner never had to leave the dinner table feeling hungry, not with how Ma cooked. But she was used to cooking for a family of two plus one very hungry Kryptonian.
Conner helped clear the table and started to help with dishes until Pa shooed him and Ma away so they could start decorating the tree before it got too late in the night. Conner was pretty much bouncing on his heels by the time he and Ma stood in the living room in front of the now fluffed-out pine tree.
“Oh, hold on, we gotta put a movie on, it’s tradition,” Ma waved her hand lightly, crouching down in front of the television and beginning to rifle through the entertainment center cabinets for a movie. Conner had already gone back to snooping through the boxes of decorations, not brave enough to unwrap the ones hidden behind tissue paper and paper towels, but he poked through the ornaments.
There were lots of different colored ones: blue, red, yellow, and green. He liked the red ones. The ones with glitter got on his hands, but they sparkled so pretty when he held them up to the light. There were some with little pockets that were meant to catch and reflect light. Some were circular, some were shaped like stars, and some were other cone-like or cylindrical shapes.
He heard Ma fidgeting with a tape box and then the VHS player underneath the TV. The tape slid into the slot, and he turned as she pressed the play button.
“This is my favorite,” Ma said with a soft, nostalgic smile as some black and white footage of snow and people in a snowstorm began to play on the television, and then a stop motion snowman appeared on the screen.
Conner had never seen this movie before. He stood and watched, enraptured for a few moments, until Ma came over and nudged his hip with a playful little bump.
“Come on, tree isn’t gonna decorate itself,” She smiled warmly and bent down to pick up a messy cluster of string lights. Half of them slipped out of the bundle Ma was holding and tangled at her feet when she tried to move them out of the cardboard box. Ma huffed in irritation and began trying to wrestle them out of their coil.
“I can help!” Conner insisted, reaching out for the bundle of lights.
He was good at detangling things. It helped being able to feel the different strings with his TTK and follow them through where they were knotted so he could pull them out. Even when the lights got hooked on each other, he could ease them out of the stuck position. The lights slid over his palms, many different colors of lights on tangled wires.
While he worked on pulling the bundle of string lights out of the bundle and into, well, a string, Ma worked to help finish fluffing up the tree.
Taking a seat on the couch, Conner unraveled the bundle of lights slowly and then detangled the wires so that the lights weren’t tangled around each other anymore. He very quickly got himself into a nest of wires as all of the wires were connected in one spot, but then were left slack for the rest of the line.
Something felt off, but Conner didn’t know what.
“Oh, whoops, did the lights come undone?” Ma asked with a hint of amusement as she turned her attention back to Conner, who had sat down to focus more on what he was doing.
“I detangled them?” Conner furrowed his eyebrows, a little confused by Ma’s comment. Her face did that surprised thing where she realized something that Conner didn’t, and was trying to be polite about it.
“Oh,” She paused for a second as she examined the lights in Conner’s lap and hummed softly, worrying at her lower lip.
Conner had the sinking feeling that he had done something wrong. Ma was trying to let him down softly. He shrank in on himself a little bit and bit down hard on the inside of his mouth to keep from making a face.
Ma knelt down in front of him and picked up some of the strings in his lap, running her fingers over the three wires that he had unwrapped from each other, “Well, these strings here are supposed to stay wrapped around each other, it makes it easier to put up and more secure. It’s like how a braided cord stays together even when you gotta untangle the rest of the cord.”
“I’m sorry…” Conner choked out, feeling heat creep up his cheeks as humiliation burned in his chest. Then he asked in a small voice. “Did I ruin it?”
Ma caught onto the small tone in his voice and softened her expression, “Oh, honey, no, it’s okay,” She put her hand on his knee and squeezed reassuringly, “It’s an easy fix, just gotta twist them back up like so.” She demonstrated how he could retwist the strands of wire, using the lights to lock it in place. “It’s a little tedious, but you’ll get it lickety split.”
Conner chewed on his bottom lip, nervously copying what Ma showed him to undo the mistake he had made, “I’m really, really sorry.”
“It’s more than alright, baby, you don’t need to worry about it at all,” Ma leaned forward and kissed the top of his head, which made Conner feel a little better, “I should’ve been more specific when I let you untangle it.”
Conner looked down at his lap, fidgeting with the strands of wires, still feeling guilt heavy in his chest for messing up. But Ma said that it was okay. And he could fix it. He followed her instructions to retwist the strands together as best he could, using his TTK the same way as when he had untangled them.
When the lights were back together, Ma plugged the string into the wall to test them, and Conner’s eyes immediately went wide as saucers as the colorful lights blinked warmly to light, different colors of blue, red, green, and yellow blinking together. He liked the colorful ones, although there were also some single colored ones in the box still.
“The lights go on the tree first, and then we can put the tinsel on, and then everything else,” Ma told him, gathering the lights back into a small loop so they were easier to work with. “You can help, Conner.” She pulled him over to the tree, her hand warm and soft on his inner elbow. She was always so gentle with him, even if she didn’t need to be.
“Should we turn the lights back off?” Conner asked hesitantly, feeling the warmth of the bulbs against his palms as he took the string lights from Ma. It would be easier for him to hold it since he could keep them from tangling again.
“Oh, we can, then we can have a nice big reveal at the end,” Ma smiled, and Conner felt a little bit of the warmth seeping back into his chest, but in a good way this time. He rocked a little on his heels in anticipation, wanting to get back to something that he hopefully couldn’t mess up. There wasn’t a wrong way to decorate something. Right?
Ma unplugged the lights, and Conner almost missed the way they blinked and sparkled and cast his hands in a nice warm colorful glow. But the idea of a big reveal made Conner’s heart skip in excitement. He chewed on the inside of his mouth, humming softly to himself.
Conner caught glimpses of the movie playing in the background. It was stop motion, so all the characters moved a little funny, but he kinda liked the dated style. It was cute. He didn’t know what was happening, but he could see bits and pieces, listening to the characters talk and how the reindeer’s nose glowed.
Ma nudged him again whenever he got distracted, and he huffed in surprise and turned back to the tree.
Even though the tree was taller than Conner, it was way taller than Ma, who couldn’t reach the top part of the tree. Conner helped Ma wind the lights around the tree, circling around it in a way that almost made him dizzy, focusing on adjusting the lights to rest on the branches. The needles prickled against Conner’s hands and arms, but they barely did any more than tingle. It smelled so fresh.
Conner strung the lights around the tree at the top, standing on his tiptoes to get as high as he needed. It was at just the right height where he had to stretch to reach, but flying would be excessive, even though he could very easily fly up and reach the top. The stretch felt nice anyway.
Even if he wobbled and almost knocked the tree over when he tried really hard to loop the string around the top part. Ma steadied him and laughed so warmly and affectionately that Conner didn’t even have the time to be embarrassed.
Conner had to untangle another string of lights from the box, this one was the white one, although when they plugged it in, it glowed a nice warm yellowish light. Ma plugged it into the rest of the lights, and they strung that around the tree, too.
“There should be some tinsel now in one of these boxes,” Ma said after they had finished putting the lights on. By now, Pa had also finished doing the dishes and had made his way into the living room to sit and watch the movie with them.
Conner crouched down on the floor to rifle through the boxes, only occasionally getting distracted by music on the TV.
They found a string of shiny plastic that felt fluffy when Conner wrapped his hands around it. It rustled when he picked it up and caught the edges of the light when he moved it in a way that made it seem like it was sparkling. Even though it wasn’t made of glitter at all.
“There we go,” Ma said with a smile, “That goes on the tree the same way the lights did. I’ll look for some more.”
So, Conner got to wrapping the string of tinsel around the tree, doing a little awkward shuffle around and around the tree, adjusting the tinsel so that it lay nicely on the branches. And then Conner stepped back to admire their work so far. The tinsel looked nice, but it looked bland with the lights off. Good thing they weren’t done.
He bounced on the heels of his feet, rolling up the sleeves of his sweater, since now this was getting serious. This was important business, and he couldn’t let his sleeves get in the way of decorating.
Ma found some thinner strings of decoration, a stiff garland that was decorated with little sparkly snowflakes. Conner didn’t like how it felt in his hands. It was almost like barbed wire, but without the sharp spikes that would cut into a normal human’s skin. It still poked into his skin and made his hands feel all itchy with the phantom sensation. Ma gave him a pass for that one, and while she put it on the tree, he sat next to Pa to watch some of the movie.
It was the part where there were two reindeer in the snow. Conner figured one of them had to be Rudolph because that made sense, but the other one was lighter in color. Pa explained that the other reindeer were making fun of Rudolph because of his red nose, and Clarice was comforting him. Conner frowned slightly and chewed on the inside of his mouth. But the song was pretty.
Pa continued to explain more of the movie that he had missed, that Rudolph had originally tried to hide his nose, but it got knocked off. How there was an elf named Hermey who wanted to be a dentist, which was weird. And how the others looked down on Rudolph because he was different.
He only got to sit for a little bit because once Ma finished with the garland, it was time to put the ornaments on. And Conner had been so excited for that after he got to snoop through the box of ornaments. There were so many shiny ones, and he liked the ones that sparkled in the light. He scrambled up to his feet while the movie continued, and Ma showed him how to put the ornaments on the tree.
Some of the ornaments had strings that easily looped onto the branches, those were okay. Some of them also had hooks that Ma had to show him how to squeeze onto the branch so it didn’t fall off if the tree shook or moved.
As they put ornaments on the tree, Conner found some even more oddly shaped ones. There were ones made of clay, paper, and popsicle sticks, they were clearly homemade with chipping paint full of fingerprints. They were clearly homemade.
One of them had a small handprint embedded in clay and painted brown like a reindeer.
On the back, written in crude handwriting was Clark’s name, along with the year. Clark would’ve been six at the time if Conner did the math right.
Conner made a small noise from the back of his throat as he stared at the ornament, a strange emotion he didn’t know the meaning of swelled in his chest and made his throat tighten.
There were more ornaments like that in the box, ones from when Clark was younger and older. Mostly crude crafts that a child could do with some hot glue, googly eyes, and a lot of glitter. They were made with sticks and ribbons and clearly loved over the years, despite their childish construction that made them hard to maintain.
“Oh, we’ve got lots of those from Clark,” Ma said, smiling and waving her hand almost dismissively, a look of nostalgia over her face. She leaned over Conner’s shoulder as he held one of the popsicle stick creations, a picture frame with a picture of Clark as a child. “Every year we got one for Christmas.”
Right, because Clark was their actual child. And Clark got to be a child.
Conner bit down hard on his lower lip and tried not to let the aching sadness or the misplaced jealousy chew away at his temper.
Of course, they had ornaments from Clark. He was their son. That made sense. There was no reason for Conner to be upset about it.
“There should be a few from Jon in there too,” Ma explained fondly, bending down to sift through the box of ornaments as well, picking up some of the ones Conner had been looking at and sighing softly at them, as if thinking back happily.
And there were. Conner found the ones with Jon’s name on them, too. There weren’t as many since Conner was sure Clark and Lois had the majority, but there were enough to fill a nice spot on the tree.
Conner suddenly understood the feeling of being the odd reindeer out.
It didn’t matter. It wasn’t supposed to matter. Clark was their son, and Jon was their grandson. Conner was just whatever the hell he was to them that they were taking care of for Clark until he could hold his own.
And besides. He was too old for this kind of stuff anyway. It wasn’t like he ever got the chance to be a child or go to school and make ornaments for his parents. He didn’t have parents or grandparents. Not in the traditional sense, at least. He sure had DNA that came from at least two people, but that didn’t really change anything.
Conner didn’t say anything to Ma about the ornaments and just continued to help decorate the tree, feeling a little out of the holiday spirit again. It was stupid, and he kicked himself for being a sour sport about it.
Ma reminisced about specific decorations and ornaments. Conner smiled and listened and tried not to feel too hurt about it. He let Ma put up all the sentimental ornaments. He went back to being enamoured by the sparkly and glittery bulbous ones, getting his sweater and jeans covered in a nice amount of pine needles and sparkles.
They were just about finished with putting the ornaments up when Ma smiled softly and pointed out a spot on the tree that was missing an ornament, “I think we need one here, too.”
Conner nodded determinedly and went back to the box of ornaments to dig one out that would fit nicely with the rest of the ornaments in the surrounding area. Ma could barely contain the full force of her smile. Even being adopted, Clark must have learned how to smile from Ma.
“Hold on, I know just the one,” Ma said, and then hurried out of the room, leaving Conner kneeling in front of the box a little baffled. He watched her go, listening to her rustling through something in her small workshop down the hall. Pa got his workshop out in the barn with tools and wood. Ma got her workshop in the house with paintbrushes and yarn.
Ma returned with a small bundle of tissue paper in her hands. She chewed on her lower lip to keep herself from smiling too widely. She handed it to Conner so enthusiastically that it caused him to pause for a second.
“Here, just for you,” Ma promised.
Conner took the bundle from her hands and unwrapped the paper carefully from the object. He froze the moment the paper pulled away from what it actually was.
It was a wooden ornament cut in the shape of a star and painted with beautiful shades of yellows and oranges. Conner’s name was painted in red in cursive in the middle, in the perfect hand and swoopy signature that he had seen Ma do more than once when she wrote his name on notes sprawled around the kitchen.
It matched with another set of two ornaments on the tree, both wooden and hand-painted by Ma in various colors. But one was a snowflake, and the other was in the shape of a Christmas Tree. But those had Clark and Jon’s names on them respectively, in perfect, swooping cursive.
Ma made him an ornament for the tree. Ma made him an ornament to match Clark and Jon’s.
She made his ornament part of the set.
Conner felt his heart in the back of his throat, his tongue heavy and useless in his mouth. His face burned with a swell of warmth, and a tingling feeling swelled all the way from the back of his eyes down to his lips.
Ma’s face was just as soft and loving as it always was when she looked at him, and it wasn’t until she tutted in sympathy and muttered the softest, “Oh, sweetheart.” That Conner realized he had started crying.
He frantically wiped at his face with humiliation building in his chest. But the more he tried to wipe his eyes, the more tears fell.
She gathered him into her arms in the warmest hug that Conner had ever felt, and he pressed his face into her shoulder, his chest stuttering with an embarrassing hiccup. She kissed the top of his head and petted his hair, running her other hand up and down his back in a soothing gesture. Conner clung to the back of her sweater with one hand, the other still clutching the handmade ornament.
Ma rocked him back and forth as if he were a kid, she kissed his head and made Conner feel that much smaller, gathered in her arms, even if he was well taller than her.
Conner felt another pair of arms gather around him and realized that Pa had gotten up as well to hold him tight and squeeze him in a hug. Conner shivered and hiccuped, making a soft keening noise from the back of his throat that he knew Ma and Pa didn’t understand. Ma kissed his head again, and Pa rubbed his back.
When Conner finally managed to cry himself out, he clung to Ma for a bit longer, soaking in her hug like a man dying of thirst.
Ma broke the silence first.
“Well, go on, you gonna put it on the tree?” She asked playfully as Conner lifted his head from her shoulder. She reached up and smoothed his bangs away from his face, petting his head gently.
Conner sniffled wetly and nodded. Ma let him go so he could shakily attach the ornament to one of the branches on the tree, right in the spot that Ma had pointed out, next to the other two ornaments in the set. He wiped his eyes frantically on the back of his hand and sniffled. Ma came back and rested her arms around his shoulders, kissing the side of his head.
“Think that’s enough ornaments?” Ma asked, playfully.
Conner would blame the wetness of his eyes and the aching feeling in his heart for the next thing that blurted out of his mouth.
“Can I make you an ornament too?”
Like the ones Clark made. Like the ones Jon made. Like all the homemade ornaments on the tree that filled it with so much love and life that Conner would never look at the Christmas trees in movies the same way.
Ma blinked, surprised at the question. But then she smiled, and laughed so warmly in that way she always did whenever Conner said something endearing. She hugged him a little tighter.
“‘Course, baby,” Ma agreed, her eyes crinkling around the edges with smile lines so deep it made her seem so much softer. Conner nodded and wiped his eyes again, sniffling one last time.
“Conner gonna put the star on, or do I gotta get the step ladder out?” Pa said jokingly, moving to stand behind both of them, one hand around Ma’s waist, the other on Conner’s shoulder, heavy and comforting.
“I can do it!” Conner insisted, still a little weepy and deflated, but he gathered up his strength to put himself back together. They weren’t done with the tree just yet, they still had to put the star on. And then it would be complete. Well, until Conner added more ornaments to it.
Pa moved back and bent down to rifle through the boxes and pull out a pretty yellow star from one of the boxes. Conner’s eyes widened a little bit.
Conner was just tall enough to clip the star to the top of the tree and plug it into the rest of the lights. He stood on his tiptoes once again, the tree rattling a little bit as he wobbled, the ornaments knocking against the branches.
“Well, let’s plug it in,” Pa prompted a little more excitedly. He kept his arms around Ma’s waist, pulling her back against his chest and kissing her cheek.
“Of course, of course,” Ma laughed a little, “Conner, you wanna do the honors?”
Conner’s lips split into the smallest of smiles, his eyes were still red-rimmed and puffy from crying, but he still had just enough energy to be excited about this part. He forgot about the big reveal.
He plugged the initial string of lights into the wall, and the tree immediately lit up with sparkling and glittering colors that reflected off the many ornaments on the tree. The lights blinked intermittently, colors shining across the floor and ceiling with refracted crystals of light seeming to hang on every object in the nearby area. Conner stared with wide eyes, drinking in the glow. Somehow, the tree had become all the more beautiful, just by being the one to decorate it.
He felt a sense of accomplishment along with that achingly raw feeling that he couldn’t exactly name whenever his eyes caught the star ornament with his name on it. His heart fluttered happily in his chest, and he almost wanted to do little flips in the air.
But he remained where he was. It was cold outside, but it was warm inside, standing around the tree with Ma and Pa. And Ma didn’t let him do flips in the house anyway. So Conner kept his feet on the floor, even if he had to rock a little, and skip his weight from foot to foot with barely contained excitement.
“It looks great, you two,” Pa complimented, his face crinkling with the edges of a smile.
“Conner did a great job, didn’t he?” Ma laughed a little, and Conner felt himself smiling, his cheeks dusting red with embarrassment.
“Mhm,” Pa kissed Ma on the cheek again and then waved Conner back over so he could pull him into the hug again. Conner let himself be squeezed between the two of them, admiring the sparkling colors of the tree.
“I think we should watch another movie,” Ma said with an air of determination that said she wasn’t going to take no for an answer. “Conner, any requests?”
Conner blinked in surprise at being asked for a movie selection. He frowned slightly and looked back at the TV, which was just rolling the credits. Pa had explained to him some of the plot, but he only got bits and pieces of the movie since he was busy decorating the tree. So he was too distracted to really pay attention to what was happening.
“Can we rewatch that one?” Conner asked softly, “I didn’t get to see it all.”
“Never too much Rudolph,” Ma agreed, ruffling his hair a little bit.
Conner helped Pa move the boxes out of the way so they wouldn’t trip over anything in the middle of the night. They would put them away in the morning and not worry about it right now. Ma rewound the movie and turned the living room lights off so it was just the glow of the Christmas tree and the light from the TV.
Conner got himself comfy on the couch with one of the knitted blankets always resting on the cushions. Pa got himself situated on his armchair just off to the side, and then Ma came to sit on the couch next to Conner just as the movie started playing from the beginning, the sound of fake wind whistling over the black and white images of snow and newspaper articles.