After some negotiation, Faith and I worked out a way for the boys to help me get a Christmas tree while it's still light out. I rushed home from work to buy a Christmas tree stand and some Walmartish things, and got the boys and got gas and got money and got us to the tree farm just in time, as the sun was setting. It was 4:00. Eli said "Dad, look!" as we were trudging up the hill, and we all turned, Joe and I, and saw the sun slide brightness under the huge cap of clouds that had covered the region all day. It was a pinkish wash against blue-gray. And we turned and walked in the snow up the hill, Joe talking excitedly: "Dad, do you think we will find a good tree?" and "Are those the Scotch pines up there on the hill? How can you tell? Are you sure?" We found them, and saw why they were only $10.00: there was hardly one that stood straight or was not brown with age. But we were tireless. Finally, with great excitement, we cut the top off of one tree. Now, I have dragged trees before; usually, it's not a problem. This tree, however, old and gnarled and generally wizened, was heavy as lead. I realized with relief that the path back was all downhill, but it was still maybe a quarter of a mile, and the snow was deep. So I pulled, with some vigor at first, but Dad got REAL TIRED near the end, switching hands and answering questions and hearing the boys wonder aloud. But we made it! The men tied the tree into our trunk and (among inevitable questions about whether the tree would fall out and how I knew it wouldn't), we made it home and now had a new chore: cleaning up the living room, which Henry had asked me to clean out months before. Now it was either my junk or a tree, and the tree was going to win. So we carried boxes up the attic, many, and Joe helped manfully. Finally clean, we tried to get the tree in the door, but NO: the tree we chose was too fat to even fit in the doorway. I pulled and pulled and finally it scratched its way in.
The boys were wonderful: excited, helpful, interested. They helped me twist the little anchor bolts that hold the tree in and we found to our dismay that the new Walmart stand was not made for trees like ours; ours was too thin and too crooked. So finally we just leaned it up in the corner, an accidental-seeming necklace of blue lights wrapped twice around its huge waist.
It is rather lovely, I think.
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