Innermost Thought

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December 13, 2002

Tree Envy

At one point when I first met Rhett, we were extoling the virtues of a live Christmas tree over those nasty (sorry, Dad. I know you love 'em) fake ones and he carelessly mentions that he usually gets his trees from "the farm". He picks out the tree and chops it down himself. These trees are beautiful, he says, and last forever!!! Rhett loves Christmas. It's obvious. Who else but a true Christmas lover could sing the words to all the music from "Santa Claus is Coming to Town"? Who else insists on watching a show of which I had never heard, "The March of the Wooden Soldiers"? This year Rhett lives in a small yet stylish apartment with little room for Christmas fair. He won't even get a tree this year but instead settle for getting his holiday fix at his mom's house or while watching Rudolph.

I love Christmas too. When I toured with A Christmas Carol at the Nebraska Theatre Caravan I never, ever got tired of the Carols. "God Rest ye Merry Gentlemen...." But truth to tell, I have never really embraced the holiday season while in New York/ New Jersey. I've always known I would be flying out before Christmas Day and wouldn't return till after. What's the point of a tree and all that? Come to think of it, my wandering past has rarely allowed me an opportunity to deck the halls in the manner they deserve. I don't know that I have ever bought my very own Christmas tree. And I love the Christmas season. This year could be no different. I am leaving for Texas on the 19th and won't be back until the 26th. But last year's Christmas was overlayed with the pall of missing people in New York and we were all just happy to live through it. Despite Bush's and Bloomberg's best efforts to put working class people in the poorhouse, this Christmas feels different. I am ready to embrace it and I have a floor through 2+ bedroom apartment with high ceilings. So on the coldest day of the year so far, sunny but with a windchill in the early teens, Rhett and I trekked out to the Wycoff Christmas Tree Farm in New Jersey and picked out a winner. We found one, smaller than the rest (They were all huge.) and began the task of cutting down my very own tree. I did an okay job of cutting down the tree but I think Rhett was a little better at it. I sawed for just as long but he was actually cutting more tree when he was doing the work. This baby, a douglas fir, was beautiful. After finally cutting down the tree, the farm guys loaded it onto a truck to be wrapped up and measured. They said it was 10 and 1/2 feet long. Holy Cow! I am not 100% sure my ceilings are 10 feet tall or not. We'll just have to wait and see. So we haul my little bundle of Christmas joy onto Rhett's SUV and make way for the apartment. Once there we somehow managed to get this monstrosity up the flight of stairs to my apartment and upright, in the stand, in the living room. It took a little time, but it is now anchored to the back wall and erect and beautiful. For the record, we measured it at the house. It was almost 11 feet. We had to cut off a little over half a foot to get it to fit. I water it. The stand leaks...SHIT.

F*cking Tree

So Rhett and I are staring at my perfectly centered and upright tree and pondering how to fix this. The stand is new and industrial strength. We thought we got a good deal on it. Not so good if it leaks. I could take it back but that does me no good now and my tree, MY BABY, won't last without water. Now this is how I know that Rhett is a good and patient guy. He doesn't freak out. He doesn't yell, scream or kick the tree. He just sits there...staring and exhausted....trying to figure out a solution to our problem. This reminds me briefly of a time when my mom tried to give my sister and I home perms when we were kids. She was not quite so patient with those slippery tissue paper stays and tiny pink and baby blue rollers. I think if we had video of the event we'd all have to laugh at my mom cursing a blue streak and literally trying to maim a little blue plastic and rubber curler while I or my sister where desperately hoping the stinky stuff wouldn't get into our eyes and our hair wouldn't be an unwitting victim in my mom's Curler Carnage. What can I say? We've all grown up alot since then...and I get my hair done professionally now thank you.

Rhett and I finally decide to go to Home Depot and get a tarp. We (okay, mostly he) will lift my 10+ foot tree out of the stand, find the leak and cover it with tarp. That should hold us through the Epiphany party on the 5th of January. I think Rhett may be doing drugs. It looked awfully easy for him to lift that tree. I was more of the navigator in the event and he was the brute force. ahh. My hero and I am little turned on by this...THINK OF THE TREE, MEREDITH. So we extract our perfectly upright tree, free the stand and lo! and behold, it's mostly full of water. We dump the water refill it and there are still no leaks. Finally we discover that the stand has a point about an inch and a half from the top edge that serves as a water line. Any water that goes past that will leak through a bottom crack. The stand was fine and no tarp was needed. So we put the tree back in the stand and try our best to recreate the perfect scenario we had destroyed just moments earlier. Lesson learned. Check out the stand BEFORE putting a 10 foot tree in it.

Tree Hugger

Days later, Rhett and the tree are doing just fine. Rhett was a little sore for a day or two after. The tree gets watered regularly. I even give it a little tree steroid I got from "a guy" who swears it's made of all natural products. Now the tree is surrounded in the glow of white lights and a few ornaments I found in one of my boxes. It's still sparse on the ornaments, but I have to tell you...It is BEAUTIFUL.

Posted by mermu at December 13, 2002 06:40 PM

Comments

Posted by: Patrick at December 14, 2002 11:54 AM

Posted by: Elizabeth (cousin) at December 13, 2002 11:21 PM

Posted by: mom (aka Rita) at December 13, 2002 11:02 PM