incandescence ovenbird As the sun shone on December’s pale face my mother would go to war with the Christmas_lights. No one was allowed to touch the lights but her. She had a specific method for untangling them and distributing them on the branches of our tree. They couldn’t just go on the outside. They needed to be tucked into all the recesses so the tree would glow from the within. This was not a joyful process. It was a battle that could only be won through sheer force of will. I can see my mother still, glass with two inches of Bailey’s Irish Cream on the floor beside her, wiggling each godforsaken lightbulb in a string that lay stubbornly dark, sweating and swearing. Over the years my brother and I learned to clear out when my mom was “doing the lights.” We would return later to drink eggnog and help with the decorations. I carry on this tradition now in slightly altered form. LEDs have eliminated the obnoxious reality of a single dead bulb preventing the whole string from lighting, so I don’t have to worry about that, but I steadfastly refuse to let anyone assist with the lights. This year my daughter watched me illuminate the tree. She was sending my mom pictures of my progress. Suddenly she said, “Baba wants to know if you’re drinking Bailey’s.” I was. I’d pulled out the bottle from the back of the fridge where it had sat untouched since last Christmas. I let my daughter taste it but she wrinkled her nose at the bite of whiskey. I conformed to tradition and did some swearing when I misjudged the distribution of lights and ran out four inches from the top of the tree. When it was all finished my children hung every ornament their hands have made since preschool. The War of the Lights is a stupid tradition but I always hope something goes just a little awry because it makes me feel close to my mom and it leaves me with a sense of satisfaction to have triumphed over darkness one more time. 251204 what's it to you? who go blather from