A Real "Ballbuster"

by Abigail
(Gainesville, FL)

My earliest childhood memory is of Christmas time. My mother would put up a holiday tree every year, and decorate it with glass balls, lights and tinsel. According to all reports, I was fascinated with the lights and the reflections of all the ornaments.

I must have been, because I would take the glass ornaments off the tree and throw them at the wall, and then I'd giggle. And then I would throw another one, just to watch the pretty pieces of glass as they exploded off the wall and landed on the floor. I would do this over and over, in my red footie pajamas, until someone stopped me, or I ran out of ornaments.

There are pictures of me doing this, looking coyly at the camera with a glass ball secreted behind my back. But more than the pictures, I remember how the ornament felt in my hand, how light it was, how fragile. I remember seeing the blinking lights of the tree winking off the different decorations on the tree. I remember the smell of the Douglas fir tree that my mother had put up in the living room that year.

I must have been about two years old.