Red things,
things that sparkle with memory,
Christmas mugs ~
the porcelain one with a Santa or
the big bellied one for hot chocolate,
satiny slippers and fuzzy pyjamas
snowmen with red scarfs
and holly tucked in the hat band
shiny red balls with gold trim
candles, squat and round
a delicate glass reindeer on the tree
a cheerful gnome in long winter cap!
“Remembrance, like a candle, burns brightest at Christmastime.”
~ Charles Dickens
“Hey Joe! What about this one? Should we leave it? Doesn’t look like much more than firewood to me.”
“Nope, we’re supposed to take everything. They can figure out what to do with it. We just cut’em and haul'em.”
*****
A deafening buzz in the snowy quietness, ended my life in the forest. I was the last tree cut and tossed on top of the load of my neighbours on a smelly grumbling thing. Cold air rushed through my sparse branches when we started to move. It didn’t make sense. I was lying down!
And now look at me. If you can. Down here, now at the bottom of a pile of lush, soft green trees. All shapes and sizes of humans come in here pawing through us all. When their hands find me, always by accident, they think I am part of some other much handsomer tree. At first they’d pull at me and then let go in disgust when they saw how bent my branches were.
*****
“Firewood – that’s all it’s good for.”
“That’s a charley brown Christmas tree if I ever saw one.”
“Someone will buy him – someone with no sense and too many decorations."
“Our room is far too grand for that ugly old stump. I don’t even know why they’ve kept it in this lot.”
****
Finally. I’m alone in the Christmas tree lot, lights still blinking over the sign that announced in big bold letters: ‘Fresh cut Christmas trees!’ Fresh! Hmph! I’ve been lying here in this muck moon to moon. All the others have gone and here I am – cold and lonely, with my bare bottom exposed for all to see. Soggy branches on one side and drying up on top! My branches feel stiffer and colder with each incredibly slow day. Being fire wood is beginning to sound good. Oh, I do wish that child would stop crying. He’s dripping salt water all over me. He’s holding my top branch so tight he’s going to take all my few remaining needles off!
Then I heard a soft voice reminding me of the breezes in the forest in springtime: “OK sweetie, he’s really not much! I don’t know what your dad’s going to think. You know what he said. He wanted a tall, bushy tree and this one is short and stumpy.”
Then I was being picked up out of the muck. It felt so good to at last to have the dirty half melted snow shaken onto the ground. I could hear my branches sigh with relief as the young mother tucked me in the back of the little family’s beat up old car. My branches began to relax, and my crooked trunk lay on a soft blanket in the warmth of the old car. The little one was no longer crying, thank goodness. One chubby little hand stretched from the front seat to hold onto an unruly twig at my very top. In old car’s warmth, I felt like a real decorated Christmas tree.
“I never thought it was such a bad little tree.
It’s not bad at all, really. Maybe it just needs a little love.”
~ A Charle Brown Christmas
**Author’s note: This is one of the first stories that I posted on my blog (December 2012). I have revised it considerably. It was an early attempt at telling a story from the perspective of a tree - with pretty good grammar and vocabulary!
“Get the organized-brain person on board”
Anxiety about upcoming Christmas contributions sends the chaotic part of my brain into a twirl and a panic.
“Put your daily routine into gear”
(I have to give myself directions sometimes)
A good day’s work rolled out:
Feed the sourdough starter
order groceries for Christmas
Set bread dough for baking in the afternoon
Bake the bread
Shovel powder dry snow off the balcony
(There was a blizzard yesterday)
Make granola for the next 10 days
(Just about missed an ingredient, but I fixed it)
and everything in-between
My last note to self:
“Brush your teeth and go to bed.”
“You must find the place inside yourself where nothing is impossible.”
~ Deepak Chopra
To try when muscle and brain
tell another story
To ignore normal,
to slip into cosy,
to nap,
to let turbulent waters settle.
Reasons are of little use,
mere curiosities.
Only knowing that
challenges physical and mental
slow drained eagerness and energy
until only a drop or two were left.
Challenges set by little old me
to participate in life as it is
to learn and to share.
to develop a community of writers.
It is a draining, but rewarding journey.
“When you put the hard work in…reward will come out.”
~ Johnnie Dent Jr., author
A good book full of
mystery and enchantment.
Grandchildren and all children
Scrambled eggs - or eggs ..
Colouring:
inside or outside the lines
Taking a challenge just because
Coffee: strong and hot made
from beans from the tropics
Seasons that rotate through
green leaves and flowers to gold to drifts of snow
Trees for beauty, shade and breath.
My big black kitty
that loves me just because
Strength of mind, body and spirit
A blank page, and a pen
A cosy sweater in winter
just for home.
The aroma and taste of fresh bread
The moon, the sun and the stars in the sky
Parents to honour and to love,
warts and all.
A cup of delicious hot chocolate
topped with marshmallows.
“The things that matter don’t necessarily make sense.”
~ Russell Hoban, writer
(1925 ~ 2011)
I like to think I’m
turning on the radio.
like the old brown one
we had at the farm,
with the gold trim on
the front and the grey
knob that we twisted past
the static until we found
either CJME or CKRM.
It was usually to hear the
news, the grain report or
football or baseball game.
On the weekend it was
Howdy Doody. In the fall,
before moving to town,
the hockey season would
start. Howie Meeker called
the play. Were any of the
curling matches broadcast?
I don’t recall - maybe they
weren’t as interesting to me.
Now it’s all wireless.
“I’m going to get myself one of those, um,
movable computers ~ what do you call them….?
Laptops! I am bad. I still call my radio a wireless,”
~ Katherine Parkinson, actress
