It starts with Lenore telling me that we’re
getting our Christmas tree on Sunday November 30th, a day you might
recall as being balmy and green and containing no scent of the impending
holiday whatsoever. I had a grant to
finish writing that day. I also some
qualms about such an early start to Christmas, so I resisted. ‘Fine’ she said, ‘but I want you to get a
tree with the boys in the next few days’.
‘Fine’ I replied.
On Tuesday Dec. 2, the weather had
turned. It was damp, cold and grey in
the kind of way that your soul gets when it’s finished writing a grant. Definitely more wintery, just not the kind of
wintery that you want for cutting a tree.
So I picked up the boys from school, drove to a gas station, and took
stock of how unprepared we were. Yes, I
brought a saw. No, I forgot bungees to secure the tree; no, we only have four
gloves between the three of us; no, my youngest is wearing water-absorbing surf
shoes; no, I don’t exactly remember
where the Cut-Your-Own tree place is.
No, I’m not in the holiday spirit.
I asked the children if they honestly,
logically felt that today was the right day to get a tree. They became quiet and then did the most manipulative thing imaginable; they became mature.
“Dad, we don’t want to make you get a tree...we’ll be okay”
So I start driving up Highway Six to tree
country. I notice on the way the leaning
pile of fulsome spruces outside the Terra Greenhouses. I say to the boys “you know, we could save
time and money and just buy one there.”
They agree, but I somehow can’t make myself do it.
We keep driving north. It begins to snow. Hard, angry snow. It makes the sign for ‘Safari Road’ sound
like an ironic joke. We find the Cut-Your-Own
place, the same place as always. We
tumble out of the car. All I am
thinking is that this is a mistake. We
are going to pay forty, maybe sixty dollars for a tree. We are going to get cold and miserable in
return for this extra expense.
As we walk through what is otherwise a
beautiful tree farm, I find that I am still trying to talk my kids out of
cutting a tree down. Instead of
convincing them, all I manage to do is whittle down their spirit.
We walk to the back end of the property. Instantly the snow turns from hard and biting
into soft puffy snow, holiday snow. It’s
the kind of snow that happens in the movies when the asshole has an epiphany
and then stops being an asshole and then suddenly there’s puffy snow. We find a tree by unanimous decision. A natty tiny tree, not what I would have expected
my kids to choose. The David Niven, the
Joel Grey, the Bruno Mars of Christmas trees.
I settle my knee onto the ground and start sawing. The cold wet begins to soak through my
jeans. It’s an uncomfortable sensation,
but it also connects me to every single other time I have cut a tree down in my
life. The first time my dad let me use
the saw; the first time I drove out and cut a Christmas tree entirely alone;
the first time I brought one of my own children.
We drag it back. My kids are elated. I give $45 to an older Dutch man whose look
and accent are eerily similar to my Norwegian father. I get in the car and feel a deep pang. My father has been dead for over a decade;
he never knew my kids. My sister died just
a few weeks ago after a heroic battle with cancer; she won’t be with us this
holiday. Crying right now I’m sure would
become one of those spooky ‘dad’s having a nervous breakdown’ moments, plus the
kids have only just had their good mood restored, so I decide not to.
We drive home. The snow has built up on the road just
enough to remove all the traction. I
start playing and re-playing the recent conversation I had with my mechanic
about ‘pushing one more season out of my winter tires’. I go up and down the steep hills that typify
Safari Road. I study the deep
embankments on either side, and start concocting strategies for getting
roadside assistance should a catastrophe occur.
I start calculating the regret I will feel if anything goes wrong. Meanwhile, the children are singing along to classic rock.
We hit highway 8. It’s slow to a crawl, but the roads are
safer. I somehow know that Highway 403 is backed up as a result of lingering
complications from the mudslide that disabled it last week, echoes of which
have reached this particular highway.
It takes us over an hour to get back to Hamilton. We are just in time to pick up Lenore from
an appointment in Westdale. She’s
waiting outside a supermarket, near a leaning stack of tree cadavers priced
less than half of what we just paid.
We drive home. Everyone is exhausted. We eat eggs and salad for dinner. We put the tree up in the living room. Everything is soothing and bouyant.
I don’t know what to take away from the
day. I can’t say that it was a pleasant
experience getting a tree this year, but I certainly don’t regret it. I guess the reason I cut a tree down for the
holiday is that it has never felt like an unconscious transaction. Even when it is fraught, the experience always seems to have merit. This year, cutting a tree
was like the very best kind of Christmas music or Christmas story, the kind
that seems to hold love, melancholy, trepidation and wonder together in a perfect balance.
