It’s the age-old question: Do you tell your mother it was her ex-husband who picked her Christmas tree?
On the one hand, she might throw it out. She might burn it, causing a fire that incinerates half the town.
On the other hand, it’s delicious information. It might be fun to see her reaction … if used at just the right moment … like when she criticizes me for letting my daughter wear this or that. “Oh yeah!” I could retort. “Well, dad picked your Christmas tree. HA! Your house has ex-husband cooties.”
Maturity is the hallmark of our relationship.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. It just did. Nobody says to their father, “Hey, pop, whatcha’ say you pick out your ex-wife’s tree? That will really get her.” It just happened, and now I’m locked in this epic, Shakespearean struggle: whether to tell her or let it go. (Luckily, she doesn’t read my column. So I’m in the clear there.)
My mother gave up traveling after she moved here from Tampa. Anything farther than Publix is too far.
She no longer makes our traditional trek to a Christmas tree farm a couple counties down. Instead, she slaps $25 in my hand like she’s placing a bet on a horse and says, “Give me one my height!”
“Make sure it’s not crooked,” she adds. “And not too tall. Don’t get one that has those Yankee needles on it. I want a sand pine. A tree that looks like Florida and smells like muskrat. One that won’t lose all its needles or need a lot of water. You know I’m not going to water it. Last year it dried up so bad it caught fire when I turned on the heat.”
“Would you like one with a squirrel nest in it?” I ask. She doesn’t find this amusing and usually hits me. “Not too tall!” she repeats for emphasis. “Tall trees scare the cats. Except for Little Joe. He likes to climb it. And if it’s a tall tree, I won’t be able to get him down.”
I always sigh.
We met my father and my sister at the Christmas tree farm on a cool Saturday morning after Thanksgiving. There are pony rides and kettle corn and tractors pulling rickety carts full of hay. People sit on the bales with sharp saws as they’re driven out into the middle of the pines. Most are beautiful, but sand pines are scrawny and brown from the drought, hunched over in odd positions like twisted pipe cleaners.
They are scraggly scrub bushes. If one were growing in your yard, you would take a weed whacker to it or douse it in the most toxic chemical sold on the market. Already starved for water, every single needle falls off the minute you cut it down. You’re left with a toothpick for decorating, and my mother wouldn’t have it any other way.
We stood amongst the wretched field of misshapen trees, trying to find one that hadn’t contracted vegetative mange. We thought we had one, except for the big gaping hole in the back that looked like it had taken a hit from a cannon. But who would notice after the rest of its needles fell out?
At that moment I heard my dad call out, “How about this one?”
Oh no! No, this can’t be. Don’t let it be good. Don’t let it be nice. Don’t let it be the perfect tree.
But damn if he hadn’t done it. The ideal specimen among this odd assortment of misfit trees. Its DNA must have been spliced with one of them Yankee trees — a Fraser Fir or a Blue Spruce. It was too pretty.
I walked around it, eyeing it carefully, hoping to find some horrible flaw. Too many dead needles. A trunk like a roller coaster. A dead skunk in it. Anything! You can’t take your mother a tree her ex-husband picked out. It’s not accepted in modern society.
But nothing. If such a thing is possible, it was the perfect sand pine. So we sawed it down and brought it back.
“My God, Brian!” my mother said. “You picked a beautiful tree. So much nicer than last year’s.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her. Didn’t know how she would react. They get along fine these days, but why risk it. Why stir the pot. Besides, the tree will be dead in a week. The minute she turns on the heat, it will burst into flames. And who picked it out won’t matter much then.