OH, CHRISTMAS TREE

From A Patchwork Memoir:

It’s hard to find the perfect tree.

In the first place, it’s got to be a noble fir, which staunchly hangs onto its needles—rather than a fickle Douglas fir, which can’t be bothered and carelessly drops them all at once—because Ella and I like to keep our tree up weeks after Christmas, as well as before. It just seems a shame to cut down such a beautiful thing for only a few days of contemplation. Of course, the city has stopped picking up discarded trees from the curbs by the time we’re ready to part with ours, so we take it to the zoo to be fed to the elephants.

It’s also true that Douglas firs smell wonderful, while noble firs hardly smell at all—at first. But as they start to dry out, they give off a wonderful fruity fragrance that only gets more pungent as the weeks go by.

In the second place, even though the perfect tree has got to be lush and full, it also has to have lots of nooks and crannies because I’ve been collecting traditional glass ornaments since my twenties—I used to spend money on them when I wouldn’t spend it on anything else, because they remind me of decorating the tree with my dad as a child—and glass ornaments need room to hang.

It goes without saying that the tree has to be symmetrical, but I’m affronted if a lot of the branches have been clipped to make it look as though it was, when it wasn’t.

And I don’t go in for two or three topknots—no, I prefer the traditional one, which is getting harder and harder to find.

It has to have a good length of trunk at the bottom, so it will fit in our tree stand. So often when you consider what a particular tree will look like after you’ve hacked the lower branches off to fit it in the stand, you realize that it will be completely ruined.

It can’t be very wide because the only space we’ve got is between the fireplace and my computer desk—not that much.

It should have a straight trunk.

And not too obvious gaps on its backside.

All of which means a lot of legwork, slogging through tree lots (and I do mean slogging; during rainy winters, the lots down by the freeway—with the enormous balloon snowmen and inflated pavilions where kids can bounce around—are like marshes). Anyway, it’s less than two weeks till Christmas now, and though Laurie and I have gone to seven lots between us, we still haven’t found the perfect tree. (If you think we’re weird, Earl’s grandfather used to drill holes in the trunk and stick in extra branches to fill the gaps.)

Which brings to mind a cooking apron I wore for years until it became too unsightly with stains (I may be a perfectionist, but I’m also die-hardedly loyal to things I like). “When all else fails,” it said, “lower your standards.”

It may be getting to be time, I consider, noting the holiday bags under my eyes, to lower mine.

By the time Arielle was old enough to help us pick out and decorate our Christmas trees, we’d resorted to buying them at East Bay Nursery instead—and swallowing hard when we saw the price tag. She’s twelve in the photo above.