The Wreath-Making Class

My mother and I signed up for a wreath-making class at a greenhouse on the last Saturday in November. It was her idea. She's seventy-four and has been making the same wreath from a kit for twenty years, and she wanted to "get serious."

The greenhouse was warm and smelled like a forest. Long tables were piled high with fresh evergreen branches: fir, cedar, pine, juniper with tiny blue berries. There were pinecones, dried oranges, cinnamon sticks and ribbons in every color.

The instructor showed us how to bundle the greens and wire them to a metal ring, overlapping each bundle so the stems were hidden. It sounds simple. My first few bundles stuck out like a bad haircut. My mother, of course, was a natural.

Two hours later, we each had a huge, fragrant wreath. Hers was elegant, with gold ribbon and pinecones. Mine was a little lopsided, with too many dried oranges. She said it had "personality."

Hers hangs on her front door now, and mine on mine, two blocks apart. Every time I come home, it smells like that greenhouse and that afternoon.