I think of my immediate family. I remember standing at the bottom of a ladder while my dad unloads boxes from the attic. We’re like a conveyor belt. My dad and brother would be all the cartoon ornaments. SpongeBob, Patrick, Yoda. All the nerdy funny ones. My mom would be a big yellow chicken ornament. She likes the tree prim and proper, red and green, but she puts this big, round chicken with feathers and glitter on the tree. She also has a flamingo with swinging legs.

Those ornaments go in the middle of the tree because they’re the foundation. I would be the homemade ornaments, the fossils of childhood. And my sister would be all the travel ornaments, because she’s a sum of her experiences.