Oh Christmas Tree

Now how sweet is a family's first true Christmas tree excursion? Picture in your mind a beautiful forest of strong pines, motionless in their sturdy roots, dusted with the most beautiful, glistening, powdery snow on the ends of their branches. The still silence surrounding them giving the greatest sense of peace on earth you could ever experience. Breathtaking. I said picture it in your mind; I didn't say we actually got our tree in that setting!

I have some majorly fond memories of picking out a Christmas tree when I was a kid. YEARS of picking out Christmas trees with my mom & dad. I loved it. Somehow the weather was always perfect ~ not bitterly cold, not windy. We went to a lovely Christmas tree farm down a side road about 5 miles away from our home. The owner knew my parents & I kind of always felt like we were treated well. The chore of choosing the perfect tree was equally exciting, fun & difficult. It somewhat saddened me to leave certain trees behind.....the ones that weren't so perfect. Would they get chosen at all? Or would they just sit there, alone, all through Christmas and beyond? And then what happened to them? I felt bad for them. So I'm sensitive. Sue me. I've long attached feeling to completely inanimate objects (those tiny Cheetos were cute, darn it!).

I picture my dad in his outdoor coveralls, with his slightly hunched over shoulders & somewhat subtle side-to-side walk, always asking me which one I liked. I picture my mom, close by my side, pointing out the different types of trees & teaching me yet one more thing in life. I see her choosing left behind branch clippings, forming for herself a now beautiful bundle of trimmed greens.....ones just right for the classy arrangements she always whipped up.

One day I want to go to an out of the way tree farm like this one was, but for our first year with a monumentally bored 6-year old (who attempted to make a Fairy Snow Village in any whisper of snow she could find on our stops), a 2-year old who would surely need a nap, and a Mother who was trying not to think of the umpteen million things she had to do at home. It so happened that our 3rd try was the charm. (Stop #1: no real selection. Stop #2: $110 trees?!?! Ty said that even if George Clooney would have been helping us, we still wouldn't have bought one. I said we certainly would have lingered though.)

(Pause, pause, pause..............)

Huh? Oh, yeah, right, the tree. I got a little Clooney gooney there for a bit.

Beautiful tree. Really a nice one. Balsam fir. Almost perfect shape. Great size. So great, in fact, that it didn't exactly fit in the corner we planned on putting it in. A couple more feet & we'd have even been out of luck in the 13' corner of the living room. Truly, it looked much smaller out in the wild.