Holy cats, that sure was a long meeting.

Got here at 7 and haven't stopped until now. And the fact that I used a moment's rest to blog is pretty disturbing, but hey, that's just me.

In any event, first thing is in response to Janis Gore's pitying [not really] tut-tutting--yes, the Possumclan has a plaskit Christmas tree. I am now in my 41st year on this earth, and I have known a live Christmas tree only one Christmas in there.

The first Christmas tree I ever recall was one of space-aged aluminum foil, which are now back in vogue as a sort of snotty self-referential ironic comment on the pop culture of the early 1960s. We thought it was nice though, and I always thought that if we ever got to the moon, the astronauts would surely like one planted right there by the rocket with all sorts of presents wrapped in Reynolds Wrap under it. A couple of years later saw the introduction of a four-color spinning light wheel, which truly was spectacular. After a while, the foil began to look a bit threadbare, so we made the leap into the luxurious lap of white flocked glory. It was a honkin' big puffy white Vegas Elvis tree, which are now back in vogue as a sort of snotty self-referential ironic comment on the pop culture of the late 1960s. But, as with the first, I thought it looked cool and with the blue and red glass balls, and the TWO four color spinning light wheels (we upgraded) it was something else. Not sure what, but whatever it was, it was Christmas. I would occasionally ask my mom why we never had a real tree. "Too messy." That's it.

Anyway, the white flocked tree spent time in the garage, along with our cats, which found the softly padded branches perfect for curling up in. We opened the box up after they had discovered this nice nest, and half the branches had been wallowed to the point that the flocking had disappeared right down to...little silver needles. Well, whaddya know. This is what happened to all the excess aluminum trees from 10 years earlier--they got new lives with flocking! We decided that the tree was too far gone, and since we had moved to a new house, it was time for another tree. This time we got a bit closer to a naturalistic tree, in that it was green. Like the ones before it, it had individual wire branches fit into holes on the side of the broomstick trunk, and it was a sparse covering, but green. Lots of decorations covered up the gappiness so we didn't care a bit.

It, too, finally got a bit mashed and flattened (although not by cats--my mom took to duct taping the boxes closed and keeping it in the attic) so we got another one. This one was also green like an almost tree, with the promise of easy assembly due to the use of long wire things that held a multitude of branches and hung from a center carrier, and had a separate piece for the top. We put it all together and you could see clean through it! Now THAT was a sad tree, so I salvaged the better looking individual branches from the previous tree and shoved them in between the new ones, and actually managed to make a pretty good looking fake tree. Again, with lots of decorations, it looked just fine. This is the tree that saw our family through most of the bad parts of our lives--my sister's divorce, my dad's death, my sister moving way out to St. Louis--along with my years away at Auburn (not bad--but not home, either). Putting this pile of branches together and decorating it became one of the things I really looked forward to on holiday break, and no matter what happened, it was one constant for my mom and sister and me. It sounds sort of goofy to say, but it was nice to have something like that, something comfortably corny yet something that held the promise of better times. Especially the year that I rounded up my fiancee to help me decorate it.

By this time, my mom had moved to where she is now, and my sister was coming back to Alabama (although still too far away in Mobile). And I had decided that my secret childhood crush was going to be proposed to on Valentine's Day, and so it was time to bring her into the ritual of tree assembly and decoration. She got to see the careful positioning of the extra filler branches, and the story behind each of the ornaments, some which were given to my sister by her patients, some which were gifts, some which were little colorful cloth Peruvian fertility baubles that someone got from the store at the art museum and gave my sister as a gag gift. (These were a big hit with Miss Reba). Great fun. And still is--my mom still has that nasty old tree.

The first year Reba and I were married, we decided to get a real live tree for our first Christmas. It was beautiful--large, symmetrical, nicely tapered, rich deep green. There were two ways into the living room--up twelve steps and through the front door, or up the hill in the back yard, up onto the deck and into the back door, through the kitchen and into the living room. Thinking that the front offered the path of least resistance, that was the route chosen. Did I mention that it was large? A seven and a half footer. Imagine trying to drag Manute Bol up a set of rickety wooden steps while he spread out his arms and tried to catch the porch railings at every step. At least it didn't scream. Finally got it in the door and set into a specially purchased stand. How pretty, and it smelled glorious.

It was our first tree and we loved it very much. Then Christmas came and went, and then New Year's came, and it was time to get rid of it. Which is sort of sad. All that energy and effort and now it was out to the curb. Oh well. Off came the decorations. Off came billions of needles. Despite my obsessive efforts to keep our pretty tree fed and watered and exercised, the inevitable process of shedding dead needles could not be abated. Up and out of its special stand, which turned over and spilled the gallon of specially prepared water, 7-Up and aspirin tablet mixture all over the carpet. Well, it got to the carpet after it got through the needles. Despite having lost a hefty load of water, the tree was still one big heavy piece of lumber, and unwieldily bulky. Oops! Dropped the butt end onto the middle of the carpet. Big nasty bark/pitch stain. Stupid friggin' tree. Back down the steps, leaving a one inch deep layer of needles from the front of the bookcase all the way down to the street. I got back in, looked at Reba and said, "We're gonna get us a nice fake tree next year." She concurred.

And so the next year I went to K-Mart and picked out a nice big fake tree that had the latest branch technology--little individual wired tips with soft textured polyester needles that looked just like fake fir needles, all attached to branches that were permanently attached to the tree--just put the stand on, turn it upright, and they all fall down into position. Well, except for the tips, all 1,876 of which have to be individually bent into lifelike poses (the criteria I used to detemine tree quality was this very same number of tips--I bought the one with the mostest). This tree will now have been through 10 Christmases. The birth of three kids, a move to a new house, and all the other stuff that comes with life. Even though I complain every year about bending down those tips, and every year have to explain why the porcelain ornament should not be thrown back and forth even though it looks like a ball, and have to keep a stern eye out for a certain small child who likes to hide completely under the tree, I still sort of like the way it looks, even if it is plastic.

I sure wish I had gotten to put it up last night--I got home with Ashley from her clarinet class to find the inmates had taken over and there had been a terrible inter-sibling poop smearing incident requiring the washing of various clothes and the hair of the tiniest antagonist, and there was a wife who was not in a good mood due to these occurences, and a small boy who just wanted to hide and not be blamed, and confirmation that my mother in law will have surgery for breast cancer tomorrow.

Wow.

Life, huh?
posted by Terry at 10:33:00 AM