December 5, 2007
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I love Christmas
Two Saturdays ago, our little central California outpost caught the unlucky tailend of a vicious Santa Ana wind. It tore at everything for much of the night, well into the early morning. We slept fitfully, to the sound of random things banging and creaking and falling in the yard. I was convinced we'd wake up the next morning and find a dented car with shattered windows, if there was even a car left. This comes from having a garage too full of dumb crap which we can't throw away because if we took the time to stuff it into a box and sling it into the garage then it must be worth something, right? So the car sits out front and gets buffeted by everything while a hundred somethings are stacked chest high in the space which should be housing... the car.
It was still there the next morning. The skeletal plum tree at the end of the driveway looked as though a giant hand had taken ahold of the trunk, giving it one almighty shake. And, lying on the ground a scant foot from the car, was the tree to the left of the plum, a huge purple hopseed bush, snapped in two at the base.
This past Sunday we sawed off one of the longer branches, and clipped away its sad leaves. Then we brought it indoors and dug through our ornament stash, extracting all the clear ones. We had to work quickly: Hannah was at the theater with her grandparents and there was no way in hell she'd let us put any ornaments back, much less allow us any pretension to a theme. My worry was that it'd end up looking sterile and joyless, but I was so blown away by how pretty and magical it all turned out. It seemed as though bubbles were caught in the branches, which is exactly what Hannah said when she walked in.
We left a stack of ornaments for Hannah to place, which she did, as carefully as a 6-year-old could, while hopping from one foot to the other.
And we may just be keeping this one for a while since we've now agreed to a New Year tree, a Valentine tree, a birthday tree, an easter tree, a summer tree, a halloween tree, and on and on through all the months of the coming year. The child does not have an off button.
