"Hey, Brad, do you remember this?" I showed my brother the photo.

"What is that?" He asked.

"Toys behind the couch.  It was from when we played Christmas and snuck toys back there for each other while we pretended to sleep on it."

"I don’t remember any of that," Brad muttered.

"Shut up, you liar," I laughed. "You remember it perfectly."

"What about this? Did you know they took a picture of us doing that?" He held up a photo of the two of us lying under a half-decorated Christmas tree. I hadn't known of the photo either, but I remembered the tradition. Our mom liked to have ornaments in the middle of the tree, not just on the ends of the branches. Brad and I would scoot under the tree on our backs and reach up into the tree to hang ornaments. Our dad must have taken the picture. Our mom was always too busy worrying we’d tip the tree over as we caused it to shake. We never did, though we did have a few ornaments dropped harmlessly on us.

"Do you see any of us finding her antique ones?" I asked.

"Corey and the bird." Brad held up the photo of Corey pointing to a clip-on bird that had a fluffy tail.

Our sister, Corey, wasn't often part of our childish traditions, but she did help find the ornaments. Our mom had five ornaments from her grandma. I don't know if they would qualify as antiques officially, but they were old enough to have wax on them from when trees had candles rather than electric lights. We weren't allowed to touch them. Our mom would wait until the rest of the tree was decorated, and my brother and I were done crawling under it, to hang them. Usually, we would leave the room while she did it. Later, we would try to find them.

Of course, there are pictures of us waiting on Christmas morning to go into the family room to open gifts, and there were some of us opening the gifts.

We found a few pictures of Corey and me in the new Christmas dresses that we got each year for Christmas Eve service and Brad in his suit. Those were taken in front of our other trade. The second tree was decorated with ornaments we had made in school and in Scouts. These days, I still have some of those ornaments on my own tree. Brad does too. I don't know about Corey. She lives too far to visit for Christmas now.

"I think these are enough," Brad said.

"I agree. They'll help the nursing home see more cheerful. Let's go see mom."

Word, Paint, 4 hours, Christmas memories