Last day of the gayborhood tour, though through this lens one could argue all the ornaments on my tree are a little gay. Today I bring you a fabulous and crazy glass ball that I rescued from the family tree when some old ornaments had to make way for new ones. Objects glow and fade that way: charged with meaning for years, and then one day no more. Or depending on the beholder, it loses significance as I suspect this ornament did for my mother.
I don’t know its story before I rescued it, but I know why I saved it–my mother’s glass balls are so perfect and smooth and stately, and this one is spiky, technicolor, with a burlesque pasty tassel and disco vibe to it. It spoke to the inner, queer me I was just discovering in those adolescent years. It also reminded me of a children’s book I used to love, The Glass Mermaid, about an ornament I think comes to life on Christmas eve to a boy who falls asleep under the tree. The plot is gone from me at this point, but I remember the book’s cover and associate that glass mermaid ornament and the colors of that cover with this spiky ball.
I also remember it was one of the first ornaments I put on my first mini-Christmas tree. My mother had bought a tree for me and one for my little sister for us to decorate and put in our bedrooms. And I had this tree for years–through high school, college, grad school until I moved to NYC. And then my ornament collection grew to the point where I needed to upgrade. So now I have a four foot tree. And the Christmas bush, as that little tree came to affectionately be known as, went to live with my friend Emily.
