Dad slowed his steps to match my short-legged ones as we climbed the hill behind the house. He carried a saw on his shoulder and stopped now and then to take advantage of a teaching moment, pointing to a pile of pellets in the snow. “There, see the rabbit tracks?”
Dad said the owl we heard at bedtime most nights probably lived in the pine grove we were approaching, and told me he had planted those trees when he was a teenager. I think now of all the pails of water he carried to keep them alive and wonder that he was willing to sacrifice even one branch to December traditions.
We wandered a while under the trees until Dad chose a fluffy branch and sawed it to a length that he thought would fit the southeast corner of our kitchen/living room, well away from the coal range that that cooked our meals and warmed our home. A five-gallon bucket of gravel was brought in to hold the makeshift tree while Mom fussed about snow and needles on her clean floor. Dad put the flat side of the branch to the wall, then left her to the broom and her complaining. His part in the preparations was complete.
Mom brought put an old quilt around the bucket and brought out the box of decorations so we could spend the afternoon making our Christmas tree lovely. She said that in old times people put candles on the tree and I thought how pretty that must have been.
“Could we do that?”
“Mercy no, we don’t want to burn the house down!”
I remembered the pretty Christmas trees at the neighbors who had electricity and lights for their tree, but all in all, ours was pretty gorgeous with the afternoon sun sparking on the tinsel. Christmas was going to happen, lights or no, and I was content.
Three quarters of a century has passed. I keep house in two camps and have Christmas trees in both. Every year, I question my decision to put one up on the home place, because we don’t spend many December days there, but it always happens. The house is larger now, because the folks built a new one the year I left for college. Mom thought maybe they didn’t need a tree any more—just the two of them, but Dad wouldn’t hear of not. Mom told me once that Dad had said he and his friends used to stand outside the church in Thedford when they were small and admire the tree with families gathered around sharing treats. They never had a tree at his house.
When my kids were at home, their dad and I took them to the canyon on the ranch where he grew up, and we loudly discussed which tree to cut. Their dad always won, because he carried the saw. It somehow grew bigger on the way home, and had to be trimmed to fit the house.
I don’t often place flowers in cemeteries on Memorial Day. I plant a rose at home instead, because my parents and the father of my kids loved roses. And a Christmas tree shines from the front window at the home place, in memory of them all.