There have been 50 trees in my lifetime.
I don’t remember the first few, of course, but I remember the sixth tree. I remember because my little sister was just two, and she sat beneath it so itty-bitty, with her fuzzy red curls standing off her head. I remember my 23rd tree, fake, and so tiny it fit into a pringles can, which is how it was shipped to me in Costa Rica by my sweet mama. My 26th tree, a Charlie Brown if there ever was one, was the first of so many I have since shared with my sweetie. My 30th tree stands out in memory as I sat in a rocking chair beside it, night after night, nursing one month old baby Adam, watching the lights swim and blur amid high and low postpartum tears. And of course there was #48, our first tree from the genuine forest, and the trek that caused so many tears, provided so many practical lessons, and was ultimately the most stunning tree to grace our home. The 49th was anticlimactic though comedic; a stubby hardware store tree with silly long branches hidden inside that earned it the nic-name Harry, a last-resort-tree after the forestry service permits sold out early.
This year I put a reminder on my calendar to call the forestry office early, and bought my tree permit on the first day they were available. We planned to head out the Saturday after Thanksgiving, unheard of for folks who used to pick through the tree lots as late as the second week in December, but an early snow storm came, tarping the mountainsides in 2 feet of snow, and leaving heaped and bending trees indistinguishable from the hillsides they stood on.
After a few warm days in a row, I took a shot and drove “Upcountry” to find the white stuff well melted and the trees green and waiting. Saturday would be the perfect day to try our venture again, but a heavy winter-like storm pressed Friday night’s forecast, and I knew we had just one shot left. Friday afternoon between horseback riding and the church Christmas party we had a window of about four hours. Though I was sick, and Adam planned to work that evening, it should be plenty of time. Guy would be at work, but the kids and I could manage one tree, right? (cue sinister music here).
I planned it out and we were well equipped; a saw and hatchet, clippers for pesky low branches, and a hammer to tap out the saw blade if it got stuck (experience!). I had work gloves for the bigs, warm gloves for the littles, and boots for a few. I brought straps for carrying the beast out once it had been wrangled to the ground, and even grabbed a snow shovel and a bag of road salt… just in case (think tree #48).
We charted the path to the very nearest patch of cuttable green on the forestry map. Surely, one lovely tree could be found in those few dozen acres. And there was. Many, in fact. Many lovely 75 foot trees, surrounded by bumbles and bramble. Not one for cutting. Slopes were steep and there were few places to park the van on the narrow mountain road. We stopped three times and unloaded our clown show at each stop, trudging up and down hills and through random shaded piles of snow, before Adam announced that he had, sometime in the past 40 minutes, dropped his phone. Ugh.
We went from hunting for a tree to searching for a phone… somewhere. We visited and revisited each of our spots twice, Adam growing more concerned at each failed pass. Finally, I announced, “We are going to have a prayer and ask Heavenly Father to help us find Adam’s phone (and as an aside), and a good tree.” Then, in that moment I felt suddenly compelled, “...and Adam, I‘d like you to offer the prayer.” He looked a little surprised, having left behind our ways now some six years back, but said okay, and then offered a sweet and simple prayer for help.
The big kids piled out and headed up the well visited path as I helped Natalie untangle from her seatbelt. Before she and I had made it ten paces up the path I heard Ellie’s voice ring out, “I found it!” There was actual cheering, and no lack of excitement. Adam marveled that she had found it in a small spot he had looked over four times, and praised Ellie. I looked at Adam intently and said, “That was because you prayed.” He shyly glanced away.
Back in the van as the kids loaded in, Adam sat beside me wiping his phone screen with his sleeve. “I want you to know, Adam, that God probably doesn’t worry much about phones, but this was important to you, so it was important to Him. He loves you, and knows you. It mattered to Him because YOU matter to Him.” Adam met my gaze and gave me the kind of sweet smile I only get from him a few tender times every couple of years.
Phone found, and with daylight fleeting over the other side of the mountain, we returned to the task of the tree. I headed down the road in the direction I had avoided earlier because of snow on the road, and Natalie cautioned, “I have a bad feeling about this”, but it looked clear enough, so I pushed our way past the dicey stretch and back onto clear blacktop (note to reader: always listen to the six year old when she has a bad feeling). But in just a mile we suddenly found ourselves on a snow covered road with just two black tracks showing the road face. I followed in them for a while, hoping the road would clear around the next bend, only to see that soon we would be on solid snow, with no place to turn around.
I put the van into reverse, and guided by our bless-ed back-up camera, I focused on keeping the tires aligned with the two black tire strips in the otherwise white screen. At one point I got a little off, and that was all it took. I struggled to get back in line, and had to pull forward, but then, even in the tracks, my wheels spun in black slush.
“Good thing you thought of the salt,” Adam said, and he and Ellie got out and salted the ground behind my tires. I got us underway again, focusing on the screen video-game style until we reached a place I could safely do a 57 point turn on the narrow mountain hillside, snowbank to the left, drop off to the right.
The sun was threateningly low now, throwing orange and pink around like a child with fingerpaints. Ellie suggested that we could do this another day, but I reminded her of the pressing snow storm. “This is our last chance.” Though it might make Adam late, I took us further up the mountain, looking to find a flat area that had trees which would remotely fit in our livingroom.
The road here was carved neatly through 2 feet of snow, but there were small clusters of trees 500 or so feet from the road, and some of them seemed promising. My cold was really hitting me then, so I sent the big kids over the snowy field, tools in hand, with the simple direction to “choose something nice”. The further they walked from me, the tinier they looked, and the taller the trees seemed. I worried over the 20 foot height limit. In a few minutes, Adam pointed to a smaller pine in a group of silver tip trees. “Looks good from here,” I called, assuming that between the three of them, my children would pick a handsome tree. But I had over-estimated their tree hunting skills in the face of cold, wet jeans and frozen fingers, and we all knew it the moment the tree began to fall.
When you pick a bad tree in the forest, you can’t put it back. The ten-ish foot tree fell away from it’s noble companions, revealing one completely bald side. Not comb-over thin, not hide-it-with-a-hat sparce, we’re talking shiny-dome bald. Where they had stood in formation, the trees made a gorgeous thicket, but it turns out the lazy bunch hadn’t bothered to grow branches anywhere they touched. This tree was butt-ugly, and now, by virtue of a hot pink ten dollar tree tag from the state of California, it was ours.
Adam and Ellie began wrestling the tree through the thigh-high snow, like twice as much quicksand, the 500 feet to the car. Tessa joined in the effort, but to no avail, as each kid fell into the snow over and over in a fine imitation of the critters in whack-a-mole. Adam, now fully frustrated, finally gave up on his sisters and surged ahead alone, dragging the tree like a madman. Fueled by wet-legged, late-for-work agitation, he moved fast and wild, throwing the tree along beside him. By the time he reached the van, he chucked the tree onto the road in the closest thing to a rage I may have ever seen in the man-boy.
Words were said. Then silence.
The car ride home through the late grey sunset was mute. A steady stream of quiet tears melted down my face. I felt terrible. As has happened so often, my plans for a “spontaneous” picture perfect family moment were hampered by my unrealistic expectations. With Adam’s pending departure I had envisioned a special “last tree cutting together”, and knowing that his life could take him anywhere from here, I had tried to control things. Woe to she who over-plans. I felt like I had ruined ...something.
A few days later we got around to putting up the tree. There were no branches on the back, and weird long ones on the port side that we had to amputate. It was so weak that I had to anchor every branch to the one above it with florist wire just to support the weight of the ornaments. If the top wire were to break, the whole tree might fold up like an evergreen umbrella. But you know, it turns out when your expectations drop really, really low, a really ugly tree can only get better.
Or look at the back...
