Last night we drove.

As we do most years.

We drove around town, listening to Christmas carols and sometimes singing along (badly, I might add), looking at Christmas lights. Watching for the houses with the best displays. Admiring those that were especially colorful, or intricate, or retina-searing.

As we drove, “The First Noel” came on the radio. It took me a minute to realize that I was lost in the song, imagining playing it on the piano when I was a girl, singing with all my pre-teen heart. “The First Noel” was one of my favorites. “Silent Night.” “Greensleeves.”  I played, and sang, and probably tortured my parents.

It was beautiful.

Christmases were beautiful. I remembered when I was five years old and got my first bicycle, dark blue and white with a sparkly banana seat and streamers flowing from the handlebars. I remembered the year my mother, inexplicably, crafted Santa and Mrs. Claus out of Reader’s Digests and red spray-paint. I remembered the Christmas Eve my cousins and I all received sleeping bags from our grandparents, unwrapping them in the glow of the tree. I remembered a shopping trip with Dad, sitting in a Hardee’s restaurant on the first day of winter in 1977. Or maybe it was 1978. He explained the solstice to me over hamburgers.

I remembered the sleigh bells that hung on the back door, and the enormous artificial wreath that my mom always put in the family room. And spaghetti dinners on Christmas Eve. And the annual sugar cookie cut-outs, when I was allowed to sort through all of Mom’s cookie cutters: the ancient metal reindeer and gingerbread man, the red plastic Santa, the green Christmas tree. And so many more. More cookie cutters. More memories.

Last night my memories of “The First Noel” told me the beautiful lie that my childhood was perfect. There is no possible way, I thought, that my children will have such magical memories. I shrank inside as I thought about yelling at them the evening before. And about the messy living room, and how a Christmas tree doesn’t look very pretty in a cluttered room.  About how we didn’t take them to Breakfast with Santa because I was just too tired. And about how I’m never able to follow through with all my Christmas plans. I never get it all done. And I will never, I thought, ever make the kind of memories that my parents made for me.

As if on cue, Evan piped up from the back seat, “Looking at all these Christmas lights makes me feel happy.” His voice was quivering with excitement. Jensen added, “I love that we do this every year.”

Of course my childhood wasn’t perfect. Of course there were arguments and tears. There was even lumpy gravy at Christmas dinner. It happens.

Nor did my parents manufacture my memories for memories’ sake. The things I remember are artifacts of a content childhood that had moments of discontent, and of a loving family that didn’t always see eye-to-eye. The memories were never the goal. The happiness was.

As we drove last night, it was this tree that made Evan’s happiness spill over. This tree is the only source of light on its street. There are no other Christmas displays, and not so much as a streetlight. Just this tree, ablaze in the pitch-black night. This tree has a name. It is called The Magic Tree.

And I don’t know if the boys will always remember this particular tree, on this particular night, at this particular Christmas.

But that is not the goal.