My mother wants a 2-foot Christmas tree. A real one. Cut fresh from a Florida tree farm.
Only 2 feet tall!
“Two feet?!?” I gasped in horror when she told me this. “That’s not even a tree. That’s a weed!”
My mother likes scrub brush pines. The kind that grow in the sand or gravel. In my mother’s mind, it’s the classic Florida Christmas tree. They are so starved for water from the never-ending drought that they look like they have mange. We find them at a Christmas tree farm in Eustis where you cut them down yourself.
Actually, many of them look quite pretty. But to get the size my mother wants — before they grow to a normal height, fill out and look pleasant — you have to sift through a selection of odd-shaped sprouts and runts.
Since my mother doesn’t go — she just hands me a check and some strict orders — we have to make the call ourselves.
My mother doesn’t ever water her tree. By the time Christmas comes, the poor guy is little more than a shriveled stick with clumps of brown needles hanging on for dear life. The tree gets so dry that it risks spontaneously combusting, and for that reason, no one wants to sit by it as we pass around the presents.
Big patches of needles are always missing. That’s thanks to Little Joe, her cat. No one knows what he does with them, or where they go.
“It can’t be any taller than two feet!” my mother declared. “How else will it fit on the table like last year?”
On the table?!? Huh?
“No, Grandma Evie,” my daughter tried to explain. “We didn’t get you a real tree last year, remember? That was a fake tree … you were finishing your chemo. You said you didn’t want to decorate a real tree. You were afraid Little Joe would climb to the top and you wouldn’t be able to get him down.”
My mother stopped to think about it. A revelation. How long it had been. How different a life. All the compromises she had to make to live it. The things she had given up.
No bother. She shook it off. That was in the past now.
“Anyway … I can’t have a tall tree! What about Little Joe?!?”
We all looked at each other. Little Joe’s fur is blacker than coal dust, and he has mischievous yellow eyes like a movie villain. He does climb things — all sorts of things — but a Christmas tree? Why would he do that?
Only, you don’t argue with my mother. No … I take that back. You DO argue with my mother; you just don’t expect to win.
So this weekend I’ll be cutting down a two-foot pine scrub that will fit in the glove compartment of my car. If I’m lucky, it won’t burst into flames on the way back.
And if I’m REALLY lucky, Little Joe won’t get stuck at the top, doing whatever it is he does up there.