A well-oiled tradition

These are not the lights on my parents' house but the lights on my home's balcony. 

Initially, I tread cautiously when I am up on my parent's roof. I tend to imagine falling through the roof and smashing through the ceiling so if my mother happened to walk into her computer room, she would see my legs dangling in the air.

Soon though I feel as though I am some sort of variation of a fiddler on the roof- keeping my balance while handling strands of Christmas lights. It takes practice to effectively illuminate a house with Christmas lights. Luckily, my father and I have had years of experience.
How this particular tradition of my father and I trimming the house with white Christmas lights began is a bit of mystery to me but it doesn't matter-I am just happy that it did.  

The tradition started out with some kinks. We dealt with huge snarls in the light strands' forest-green wires and there was the complicated procedure of addressing faulty lights. Back in Colorado, our home had an enormous conifer tree and my father and I would tilt our heads up, stare at the tree's height and ponder how we would get white twinkle lights at the very tip of the pine tree. My father rigged up a pole with a large nail at end, hoping the extension would turn our vision into reality but it just never quite panned out.
When my parents moved to their current home, my father and I would wrap light strands around the house's wooden posts and twirl the wires around small hooks embedded in the house's pergola.
Nowadays, we skip the hooks in favor of duct tape. We work in a two-man assembly line-one of us running the light strands along the edge of the roof line while the other tears and tamps down square of duct tape to hold the strands in place.
So the days of de-tangling lights and attempting to lasso the tip of a conifer tree with white lights are done. Even the time it takes us to get the job done has dwindled. It now seems we can accomplish trimming the house with lights in less than an hour.
One thing, however, remains unchanged. I always feel awe and pride when the sun goes down and the lights blink on for the first time in the season. We always make our way out to the driveway to observe the house being cast in a glow of warm, white light. Starting Dec. 1, the house appears to be a little transformed at night; those strands of lights elevate it to another level. At this moment, my father and I give each other a high-five in celebration of once again executing our tradition to perfection.