A Partridge in a Beard Tree

We went to get our tree from some alcoholics and out of work carny workers. Everyone looked like they were either ex counselors from rehab, or had just finished a season of hauling and building a ferris wheel in different carnivals around the state.

It was Sunday, we came from bagel church with our civilized grandparents, and landed in this alternate world called the Tree Lot. I felt my heart crumbling for all the trees, growing happily and then chopped down and dragged out by humans wanting to make a buck. Must look into live tree like I did that one year and we planted it.

We stopped at the tree lot closest to bagels and they wanted 70 dollars for a tree that looked like it just got back from Vietnam. We got back in the car and kept driving until property values go down and we’re more in our skeevy neighborhood and then we pull into the one lot that’s across from the park where all the hobos live by the 7-11.

We spill out of the car and already my people are arguing about what kind of tree and what is the name of the tree and we are not going to get the one with the weird separated branches even though Emma likes that one best. I see a Douglas fir and explain that we have to get the bushy ones because, well that’s what we get, they’re the best. They’re smellier. I see the first one and say hey this one’s perfect. Nathan wants a big tree, like 70 feet tall. I say no let’s get a little tree and boost it up on books. He looks at me like I have killed Christmas. No we are not doing that, he says. How much is this tree, I ask the lady who is no stranger to the prison system.

She consults her scattered papers and says 56 dollars. Hmm I say. Let’s keep looking. I see another bushy one down the line and say that’s the one! It’s a fat tree with limbs that are drooping. I don’t care at this point because it noon and B is freaking out because he has to get home to wake up Poppa. I am ignoring him. What’s another five minutes, in my brain, everything is 5 minutes and in Barry’s brain (where the Real World stems from, no kidding) everything is half an hour. Because he counts things like finding your shoes, and starting the car and putting on seatbelts and turning safely and stuff.

So I say come on, Nathan, this is it. Nathan looks at the tree and almost explodes. NO MOM!!

I am startled. What? It’s fine! I say.

It’s DEAD!! He says. The branches are like FALLING DOWN. We are not getting that one!

Emma and Lilly are looking at it now, because there’s a nice hearty argument going on.

I don’t see why not, Emma says, wanting to leave because her leggings are too baggy and she feels exposed.

I want to get a little one, just for me Lilly says, picking up the top of a tree from the ground. Like this one.

I gesture again. This one is fine, I say to Nathan without actually looking at the tree, looking for the lady, while he is staring at it. He has his own showdown right there.

WE ARE NOT GETTING IT!! NO WAY!! MOM!!

NATHAN! I say, now I’m mad. IT DOESN’T MATTER!! IT’LL BE PERFECT!!

NO!! He says gesturing. LOOK AT IT!! And I look at the sad little tree, all deflating by our anger.

IT LOOKS LIKE A BEARD! He yells.

This makes me laugh so hard I can’t stop. Not right then but later, in the car. And right now. And while I was making breakfast this morning.

The tree totally looks like a beard, an innocent beard. Just fallen off some green giant and sitting there waiting to be plucked by some less scrupulous family.

We moved away from the beard and found our tree, all tied up in the back. Bondage tree. She popped the string, it flapped out, and at first it looked terrible, holey and uneven and spindly. Then shake shake shake, there comes the magic. The tree let out its breath from being cooped up in a truck and piled on other dead trees, and there was our tree, all robust and portly.

It demanded we take it home, and serve it some warm brandy. That’s the type of tree it was.

So we went to pay, and somehow the tree she quoted us as being 52 was 37 dollars. Plus a free stand. And some candy canes.

Then Barry was freaking because his dad is 99 and he CANNOT wait to have the tree tied on to the car. Our tree is laying there waiting to get its stand hammered on. We can’t just LEAVE it! But yes I have to, so I had to drive him home and Nathan had to go because he was SO HOT he had to change RIGHT THEN and Emma did not want to stay in the lot with the alcoholics in the outer ring of hell, but I didn’t want to leave the tree all alone (what if someone accidentally buys it? We have come SO FAR.) So Emma the quiet hero said she’d stay with Lilly and I ran them home, Nathan got ratchet ropes and we ran back up and our tree got hauled out by huge tall Nathan, thrown on top of the car, wrestled and tied into place by teenage son and his working man arms and brain, and I tipped the prison matron and picked up a branch of a tree getting run over in the parking lot and presented it to Lilly and said here’s your own little tree, and she was thrilled.

And now we have our beautiful tree and it smells like Christmas and she’s just standing there so much happier to be with us instead of out in the cold and gusty wind, sparkling with bright lights, every finger shall have its ring, as ee cummings says. We will string popcorn and cranberries and sing noel noel.

I sent a picture of our majestic tree wearing only its lights to my friend Rebecca, and she wrote back -- that tree could make Tiny Tim walk again.