Something odd…

…I don’t know quite what it means.

I noticed tonight. Uhm.

Back up.

We are spending the holiday at parents homes, not ours. This isn’t all bad, as Cinderella & Othello & I will share a Christmas morning for the first time in years — Othello is excited about Christmas morning crepes, and crowed to Bridgette about my crepe-making skills. After Christmas Othello will go busabout until the new year, and we will be working. Bridgette had little or no need for a tree. She wasn’t opposed, just wasn’t enthused.

A small thing. I’ve been treeless other years. Doesn’t bother me. If I need a tree, I get one.

Othello has been brutally uprooted this year; I felt he would probably want defining touches of “I’m home”, and predicted (correctly, it turns out) that a tree would be one of those things.

A small thing to grant him. I’ve gotten trees. Doesn’t bother me.

Othello’s default state is nonaction. Having expressed his wish for a tree and a chance to decorate it (I had asked him what told him it was Christmas, and that was his answer), he would contentedly fall into torpor, slaying aliens on the computer and living a treeless life.

I’ve been swamped by a variety of things; Bridgette has been ill (torn rotator cuff) and I have been sole adult, work has up-tempoed, I am writing more or less diligently…Christmas started its preparations this last weekend. Shopping and preparing to leave this weekend has taken all our time. Tonight, I realized we were yet treeless. It is Tuesday. We could have a tree tonight, enjoy it for two nights, and then leave it to a cold and empty house.

I resented Othello’s need for a tree, when there would be so little gotten from it and they so hard to come by here (true, if astonishing. No tree lots with trees for two weeks now.). I resented Bridgette for correctly saying that there isn’t much point in having one at this stage. I resented how difficult it is to get a tree around here (the pines that grow around here resemble Charlie Brown’s tree).

Bridgette suggested a potted tree from Walmart, an Alberta Spruce that is 18″ tall and four wide. I didn’t snarl. I could picture the half-yard tree, barely taller than the cats, loomed over by the dogs, occasionally kicked over and pathetic looking even when upright. The sheer wistful impotence of the hypothetical tree made me want to purchase it and then hurl it across the room, just to take out the agression.

There were others, thrice the height for thrice the price. That, I decided, was what we should get. I pointed and said so, prepared to defend the bare adequacy of the larger shrub to my wife, who had no problem with it and thought it was lovely. I took it home to Othello, prepared to explain to him why it was the best we could manage, but he had no issues with it and decorated it with energy and initiative.

It’s a silvery green needled shrub, and, festooned with white lights and silver-toned balls, it was very pale. I broke out the box of wrapping bows, and we tarted it up a bit, and a shimmery opalescent bow as large as my fist made the star at the top, our first tree-top ornament.

They are abed, now, but I’ve been restless and reading. I just turned out the lights and was preparing to unplug the tree.

It’s beautiful.

I want to cry, I am so pleased to have it.

I don’t know what I wanted, but I got it.

I’m not sure what I noticed. Something in there about having wishes that are different from spouse’s and offsprings, and having them anyway. Maybe that’s it. I don’t know.

I wonder what sorts of fillings I’ll get for the crepes this weekend.

I’m going to get a Kleenex and watch my tree.

Crossposted from Epinepherine & Sophistry