Putting a Bow On It

how decorating my Christmas tree became an enlightening experience

I spent a good hour of my Saturday night tying velvet ribbons into bows to delicately place on the branches of the fresh fraiser fir Christmas tree I purchased for my home last weekend. After the algorithms kept pushing videos of twenty-something girls effortlessly turning neutral-toned satin and velvet ribbons into picture-perfect bows to embellish their trees, I was inspired to do the same. I thought they were adorable, dainty, and even a bit whimsical. It is girly as girly gets and a tradition of my very own. What’s not to love?

In anticipation of this project, I headed to Joann Fabrics and wandered down the fluorescent-lit aisles with Christmasy items falling off the shelves. I was specifically searching for velvet ribbon like the ones from the videos. After some rummaging and standing on my tippy toes, I found several rolls of 1.5-inch wide velvet ribbon, and while they were not exactly like the ones from the video, I decided that would have to do. They only had one roll of red and one of the navy, so I grabbed as many pale pink as possible to ensure I had enough for this project. $19.21 later, I was headed out the door, pleased I didn’t need to run to another craft store on a Saturday at the start of the holiday season.

It’s worth noting that I am not the craftiest. I’m semi-creative, but executing my vision in a DIY fashion usually does not go as planned. As I unraveled the ribbons and reached for my sharpest pair of scissors, I found a few tutorials on tying bows. I was quickly bemused by the process of looping and twisting over and under, so I decided to ditch technique and go off intuition alone. Sixteen bows later, I staggered them on branches of my tree one by one and realized they were all a bit different. Some were bigger with floppy bows and long draping tails, and others were more taught and centered; most landed somewhere in-between asymmetrical and crooked. Taking a step back, they appear as whimsical and spirited as I imagined, but if you look too closely, they would never make the cut for a Better Homes and Gardens or Martha Stewart magazine cameo. 

Once I sank back into my couch and snuggled up to my laptop, I had a striking realization– I literally try to put a bow on things. I want what people perceive of me to be neat, pretty, and polished when I rarely ever feel that way. I want things to look effortless while simultaneously highlighting the amount of effort it took to get there. I want to come off as real and authentic, but not so much it scares people away. Like most people, I want to hide the messiness of my human condition but not feel like I’m a total fraud. 

I find that my writing illuminates this habit. I’m two years into writing and revising my memoir manuscript, digging up my early childhood experiences of losing my Dad and ten years later being diagnosed with leukemia. It’s been two years of exploring what story I really want to tell and trying to find the perfect words to let readers– any myself– know that yes, these awful, terrible things have happened, but I’m still an empathetic, compassionate, and humorous human being functioning in the world. 

During a Zoom with fellow memoir writers this past Thursday, we all agreed that writing about our lives and crafting a story from our experience is really hard. It is not as hard as enduring what we are writing about, but it may be a close second. Unlike fiction, we can’t make up the ending. In memoirs, we’re lucky if the narrator gets what they want in the end, but ultimately, it comes at a cost. No metaphorical bow is big enough to tie up all the loose ends, the heartache, trauma, and hardships we’ve endured. Writer or not, we don’t need to try to put a bow on things to convince ourselves everything is OK in the end. But if we insist on a bow, maybe it’s one that’s hand-tied and made of velvet ribbon, sitting a bit crooked on the branch of a fraiser fir, waiting to be adored by all who see it. 

xo
Nicole