The parent knew, even as they helped untangle lights and straighten ornaments, that these moments were numbered.
Someday—sooner than felt possible—he’d be too big to beg them to decorate the tree with him. Too busy with friends, sports, homework, the consuming priorities of teenage life. Too cool to care about crooked ornaments or clumpy lights.
Too grown up to make puppy-dog eyes when asking if they could do it together this year. Just the two of them. Like always.
But not yet. Not this year.
This year, he still sprinted back to the living room when decorating time came, proud of the wonky little masterpiece they’d created together. Mismatched ornaments hung at odd heights—some clustered together, others spaced too far apart. Lights that should have been evenly distributed were bunched in sections, creating pockets of brightness and shadow. The tree topper sat slightly askew, placed by small hands that couldn’t quite reach the top even standing on tiptoes.
It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t Instagram-worthy. It would never make the cover of a holiday magazine or win neighborhood decorating contests.
It was better than perfect. It was theirs.
The photo captured him standing beside it, wearing an Illinois sweatshirt, grinning with the unselfconscious joy of someone who’d created something and was genuinely proud of it. Behind him, the tree glowed—lopsided, love-soaked, beautiful in its imperfection.
The parent who posted it wrote from the heart: So as far as I’m concerned, it is—because someday he’ll be too big to beg me to decorate a tree with him, too busy to make puppy-dog eyes, too cool to care about crooked ornaments or clumpy lights, and I’ll miss the year he sprinted back to the living room, proud of a wonky little masterpiece made of mismatched ornaments and pure joy.
Let the internet have its perfect, ribbon-wrapped showroom trees; I’ll take this lopsided, love-soaked, Fortnite-pausing creation every single time.
The post resonated because every parent understood exactly what it meant. That childhood is fleeting. That the years when they want your help, your presence, your time—those years pass faster than you think possible. That one day you turn around and they’re teenagers, then adults, and the moments when they asked you to decorate trees together exist only in photographs and memory.
So you take the wonky trees. The mismatched ornaments. The clumpy lights. You take the Fortnite-pausing, living-room-sprinting, puppy-dog-eyed requests for one more year of tradition.
You take it because it’s offered freely, joyfully, without understanding that someday it won’t be offered anymore. You take it because perfect trees are replaceable, but the years when your child wants to create something imperfect with you are not.
The tree would come down in a few weeks. The ornaments would be packed away. The lights would be wound back into storage. And next year, maybe he’d still want to decorate together. Maybe he wouldn’t.
But this year—this lopsided, love-soaked, beautifully imperfect year—they’d created something together. And that mattered more than symmetry, more than magazine-worthy aesthetics, more than any perfectly decorated showroom tree ever could.
Because the best decorations aren’t the ones that look flawless. They’re the ones made with small hands that are growing bigger every day. They’re the ones that capture moments—wonky, joyful, unrepeatable moments—when your child still wants you there.
Let the internet have its perfection. This parent would take the lopsided tree every single time.
And someday, when he’s grown, when he’s decorating his own trees, he’ll remember. Not that the tree was perfect.
But that they made it together. And that his parent treasured every crooked ornament, every clumpy light, every moment of their tradition.
That’s the real masterpiece. Not the tree.
The time spent creating it.