His mother declared that for Christmas they were going to do everything
the old fashioned way because they couldn't afford to go buy things
like they usually did. So the boy helped her make lanterns out of
empty coffee cans, stenciling deer and wreaths on them, and using a
nail to punch star patterns in their sides. They made paper
chains. They used old knives to cut armloads of evergreens from
the woods, bringing them into the house to hang above windows and
doors. With all the commotion and hurrying his mother seemed to
have forgotten that they weren't doing this just for
the fun of it. She took great care in positioning the branches
above the kitchen cabinets and along the molding which framed the
doorways. She made sure the bows were just-so. Who was she
trying to fool, anyway?
Then
suddenly it was the week before Christmas Eve and there was still no
tree. His father said they were going to go into the woods to
find one. The boy thought this was great news, not because he
wanted to do it the old-fashioned way, but because he was eager to get
away from his mother's
antics.
They
went up into the woods. Past the pond. Past the
trails. Past the place where the skunk cabbage grew in the bog,
which was now frozen. They spent hours looking for the right
tree. But none of them were the right height, and none of them
were full enough. They moved from stand of trees to stand of
trees. Finally they found what they were looking for, only it
wasn't what the boy thought they'd been looking for. They were
standing at the base of a tall spindly pine that towered over them,
tall as a flagpole. His father said he was going to climb
up the tree and cut the top off, that the top would make a fine
tree. "Don't you think?" his father
said.
"Sure," said the boy. |
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He watched as his father gripped branches and climbed the
tree. The boy had never seen his father do such a thing. When he
reached the top, he used the saw to quickly cut through the trunk.
The boy saw the top fall off with a whoosh and land in the snow. He saw the tree standing there
like a giant whose head had been lopped off and didn't know it, or like
a man in agony standing despite his pain because he had something to
prove. Or had
already proven something, which the boy couldn't quite put his finger
on. But no matter how he looked at it, what was left was ugly, and so
he turned his head away.
They put the tree up as soon as they returned home. It
stood in a corner awkwardly. There were empty places all over it where
branches should be. And it was crooked. They had to tie a length of
twine to the top of the trunk and attach it to the wall to keep it from
falling. When it was finally decorated, the tree was a wreck.
That night before he went to bed the boy stopped to look
into the kitchen and saw his mother, still at the table, her hands and
arms stained with pitch, binding yet another set of pine branches
together with twine. In his anguish he stood at the edge of the room.
He remained there until she lifted her head to look at him. At first
he struggled to escape. But then, fixed to the doorway by her look of
tender concern, and faced with a wisdom which he didn't want to grasp,
he allowed himself to discover the meaning of defiance instead.
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