At the nursery, a collection of firs at the entrance. Your Beloved eyes the Grand. It does look like a Christmas tree. Still, you’re not convinced this is the one. But you let him touch it, and also you wonder: could I love this tree? You’re not sure, so you take him to the native tree section. Look them all over, touching a few to check for resiliency and practicality. Nothing is quite right. The delicate stems of the redcedars will never hold that stiletto heel ornament. The most splendid ones are too heavy and cumbersome to carry to the living room. But, there was one at the entrance—a Douglas fir. It caught your eye.
You walk back. Your Beloved isn’t sure. Too Charlie Brown? Maybe. He prefers the Grand. It’s too plump for your taste. You walk through the nursery again, back to the native tree section. Still, no. None of those are quite right. Then on through the Evergreen section, admiring the exotics and cultivars. They bedazzle you, but you can’t plant them in the woods when it’s all over.
You return again to the sparse Douglas fir. This fir is not as put together as the refined nobles and spruces which are trained, cut, and brought here for the trimming. But look at them! Hanging from ropes with their stubby, amputated trunk a foot off the ground. It looks like an execution. Once again, you go back to the Doug fir. It really is spindly. Your Beloved says, “I like it.” You don’t believe him, but you know you can work with this.
You put your holiday, teenage sapling on the front porch, next to the front door. You leave it there for five days to prepare it for the acclimation of indoor survival. Its trunk and limbs were never meant to thrive inside a heated home. You probably weren’t either, but that’s where we are, and that’s where all of us will spend the next two weeks together.
You’re no good at putting lights on the tree, but you’re too stubborn and proud to watch a YouTube video to help you figure out the proper way to do it. So, you wind and thread, wind and thread. Upon first glance, you think: this might be the best light stringing on a tree you’ve ever done. You retrieve the new extension cord (where all the ones you bought last year went, nobody knows) and plug it into the wall. Connect the string lights, and …
Shit.
Only half of the strand is lit. And you remember again…
…in your childhood living room, with the almost threadbare gray, wool carpet, and the fragrant, perfectly formed Christmas tree newly placed in the corner next to the fireplace. Your father has taken out the two strings of lights. Before making the effort to put the lights on the tree, he plugs the lights in to see if they’re all working. Several are not. So he asks you to unscrew the bulbs that are burnt out, and find a replacement in the box of loose C-9 bulbs. This is one of several boxes of Christmas gear that has been unearthed from that strange closet under the stairs. You rummage through the box of bulbs but there aren’t enough new ones to replace all those that have died. This man is not deterred.
The two of you get into the _________1 and drive to the Ace Hardware store in downtown Kirkland. There in one of the three Christmas aisles you will you’ll find individual boxes of orange, red, blue, white, and green C-9 bulbs. You grab two or three of each, and take them to the checkout counter, where the older, red-vested gentleman will put the bulbs into a plain brown paper bag. You drive back home, replace the lights, and your father strings them onto the tree. Meticulously.
You’re ten or eleven years old (maybe twelve), so you don’t know yet that someday, many years later, you’ll find yourself in an Ace Hardware store in Freeland, WA, looking for some mini-LED Christmas lights (which you always hated as child). You insist on the ‘warm’ white ones, and as you’re searching for them in the Christmas light section, you’ll notice, on the shelves below, a set of small brown boxes, filled with C-9 bulbs. There’s a box of orange ones and a box of red ones; a box of blue, a box of white and a box of green, and—dammit—you can’t even help yourself—you start crying right there in the Christmas light section. You are standing there. Crying (audibly). In the Christmas light section of Ace Hardware.
You’re not embarrassed. Why would you be? You’re alive, and you were loved by someone who can’t say that to you anymore, but somehow it doesn’t matter. They can’t say it, but they tell you. And when they do, you listen, wherever you happen to be.
Memory fails me on this point—it might have been the light brown Chrysler station wagon, or the robins egg blue Volkswagen bug, or even the dark brown Buick Station wagon with the wood paneling (and power steering!) but I don’t recall.
Awww .. Merry Christmas to you and your beloved Angela! 😘