A Christmas Treetop...

I heard my mom say that we needed a Christmas Tree and she wished would could have a real live one this year.  

Money was scarce, so we didn’t have $20 bucks to pick up a cheap 7ft. Scotch Pine at Ontario Orchards and still get our traditional stockings packed with essentials like underarm deodorant, Old Spice cologne, toothbrushes, socks, underwear, winter gloves, and candy of some sort…usually Lifesavers for me, since those were my favorite.  Unlike many, our stockings were filled with basic necessities mixed with one or two treats…twizzlers or cow tails, etc.  We usually would get between 1 to 3 bigger gifts each after mom and dad woke from their slumber, but even those gifts were things like pants, shirts, or winter boots.  A couple years life was so thin we just got a stocking and read the Christmas story.  

I didn’t know any different and didn’t really care about the stuff as long as there was snow outside and Christmas music on the radio.  Mom usually cooked us a killer Christmas brunch…and that took our eyes off any feelings of scarcity and filled us with gratitude and abundance.  We had a good life because we had each other and God had been so good to us.

Back to the Christmas Tree…

I couldn’t get it off my mind and I remember climbing a grove of pines back on Danny Dunsmoor’s property earlier that week and had a thought…

“What if I could climb one of these 25 ft. trees and cut the top out of one of them?  Surely there’s a perfectly good green treetop on one of these bad boys!”  

And armed with that juvenile thought, I put on my boots and headed out to the woods with a hatchet and this idea that was hatched in my head earlier in the day.  It made perfect sense in my mind’s eye.

When I got to the 30-40 year old grove of evergreens, I walked the rows, scanning the tops of these weathered and seasoned white pines.  I had climbed them before and noticed up closer to the top where the sun nourished them there was a section that resembled a regular ole’ Christmas Tree. As I scanned the treetops from the ground, I finally found one that felt full and decently cone-shaped, so I stuck my hatchet through my belt-loop and shimmied up to the top.  I found a part of a dead branch or two that felt sturdy enough to hold the weight of my feet and began to size up where I wanted to notch out one side and then come from the other side to make sure it fell as gracefully from 25 ft. in the air as possible.  I was hoping the violent fall wouldn’t snap off too many branches.  I imagined draggin’ it through the snow and presenting it to my mom and decorating it together as a family that night. We WOULD have a live Christmas Tree and I would be the woodsman to provide it.

As I came out of the last hedgerow and into our backyard dragging this treetop toward the barns behind our house my excitement was mounting.  I knew it wasn’t the well-trimmed perfectly groomed trees tilted on pallets being sold up the street, but it was green, it was quasi-cone-shaped, and with some adorning, I saw something that could bring the smell and feel that only a live Christmas Tree can bring.  I may have been a little blinded by my own effort and zany ideas, but looking back, I think idealism blinded me a good many days of my childhood. I had a way of seeing life mythically and I suppose in my eyes I was hauling back a tree that was ready to be erected at the Rockefeller in Times Square.  Everything was epic in my mind.

I went in to grab my mom and show her the spoils of war and my elation was quickly met with a reaction based on reality.  She may have been nice for a moment giving me an “A” for effort—you know—the thought-that-counts spiel, but it was soon followed with some chuckles of hilarity and absurdity.  I could sense that my dream wasn’t being met with open arms and that even my vision of what I thought I drug home wasn’t seen as I saw it.  I remember backing away from trying to defend the tree and what I thought it could be with some loving attention.  Some of the others in my family started to gather to see the spectacle themselves and weren’t nearly as kind in their interpretations of this whole event.  As I heard and felt the mockery and sarcasm, I tried to make like it wasn’t that big a deal and was more for the fun of it than anything else.

“What were you thinking?”

This question was one that I was used to be asked as a statement, usually by exasperated parents when I would do something without thinking it through.

“I just thought…”

This was the way I responded to try and explain the why behind the what, whatever ‘the what’ was on any given occasion.  

On this occasion it happened to be a kid that thought/felt he could find a way to have a live Christmas Tree by climbing an aged evergreen and harvesting it’s green top in the white of winter in late a New York November.  Looking back, it may have been like Charlie Brown’s Tree, but in my mind it was perfect.

I learned over the years that a lot of things I felt were perfect in my own mind were less so in reality. My imagination filled in lots of gaps. My feelings filled in lots of leaps of logic.  

“What were you thinking?”

Back then, I realize now I didn’t do so much of that.  I just felt and did.  It got me into a lot of trouble and led to a lot of embarrassment, but it sure was fun. Being carefree led me to being careless at times, but I think I’d trade it for this life of being careful all the time. I wish I didn’t think so much even if it meant dragging out a treetop from the woods for Christmas and looking silly.

That was my heart.  I think it’s still in there.