by Julie Prince
The tree first popped out of the ground…ohhh, goodness…twenty years ago, I’d say. At least. Long after I’d moved out of my parents’ house, but before the arrival of my first little one.
I liked to take Little Girl up there as often as I could. She loved to play in the big yard—romp in the snow, rustle in the leaves, splash in the stream depending on the season—and she loved to be doted on by her grandma and grandpa.
Dad pointed it out to me. It grew in the little garden outside the back door of the house (which we always thought of as “the front door.” In forty years, I’ve only been in or out of the real front door ten or twelve times, and even then I may be overestimating). It grew not six feet away in the little garden in the big rock bank. My mother had surrendered that garden to the wildflowers years before, since it was too shady to grow vegetables there. My father dug her a proper big garden in another part of the yard that he surrounded with chicken wire and which received the full benefit of the sun.
“Doesn’t that beat all?” my dad said. “A little spruce tree, right there next to that big rock, in the middle of all the bluebells.”
“You mean that’s not a pine tree?”
“Nooo,” said Dad. “It’s a spruce. I swear. I don’t know how a daughter of mine can know so little about trees.”
“It’s because I never pay attention to anything you say, hence, I am an abject failure when it comes to arboreal science.”
I made him smile; I saw it.
“Could we transplant it?” Mom asked. Dad thought we could, but we didn’t do anything about it right then. It was still little. We had time. We’d have to figure out where to move it, and we’d have to find a shovel. We’d do it soon.
Trees grow so fast when they’re young. They’re just like children, they change in the blink of an eye.
Dad brought up the subject again near the next Christmastime. “Those roots are spreading out down there and they’re going to upend the rocks and eventually compromise the foundation of the house.”
Little Girl didn’t listen to all of that (she was destined to be an abject failure in arboreal science, as well). Instead, she stood there and considered the tree and finally said she thought it needed some lights.
And Mom agreed, and that was that. We found some lights.
Baby Boy liked the tree too, when he came along and was big enough to know enough. It was way taller than he was, and taller than his big sister then, too. Hell, even I could look at it eye-to-eye.
The tree sat in the shadow of a big sycamore, which was what prevented the sun from hitting the weedy little patch and moved my mother and her gardening exploits on up the yard. That sycamore had “big, rake-eating leaves,” Dad liked to say, and it dropped big chunks of bark down everywhere, too. It had two big bends in the trunk—one turn over to the side, then another turn and up again—and looked like nothing so much as an arm with two elbows. It was huge, but it was rooted down where the ground sloped away on the far side of the rocky garden, so it didn’t endanger the house. And I don’t know, but I’d have to guess it was one of the oldest trees in the neighborhood.
“Sycamores are fine trees, majestic trees,” my own grandma—my dad’s mother—had said, when she traveled up from North Carolina for the first time.
“…but they’re a mess.”
We never got to hear her views on the little spruce; she was gone by then.
The “little” spruce, which grew bigger and bigger.
After my mom had to go into the nursing home, Dad made little mention of the tree, or of anything else. Mom was still pretty young, and certainly still vital, but some things just can’t be helped. She had stopped thinking right, and had stopped caring about transplanting the tree, or decorating it for Christmas…
…or eating, or dressing…
I’d drive up and get Dad every other day to go visit Mom. We had lots of discussions with doctors, lawyers, administrators, each other. What to do. What preparations we’d ultimately have to make.
But we had to talk about other things, at least occasionally.
“Look at the tree now,” he’d sometimes say, on the way out for a visit or after the long, sad, drive back from one. “It’s taller than you now. It’s taller than me. You have no idea about root systems and how they spread out. Those roots are three times as wide as the height of that tree. We’ll have to cut it down at some point now. Are you even listening to me?”
Yes. I always listened to my dad.
“It’s too late to transplant that tree. Remember, your mother said that years ago? We should have listened to your mother.”
Which was a true statement regardless of what subject we may have been talking about.
But we had no more of Mom’s wisdom regarding the tree, or regarding anything. When we’d go to see her, she didn’t speak. She just smiled, and if I brought along Little Girl and Baby Brother, she’d turn her full attention to them. The three of them would have a fine time. The kids would show Mom the toy they’d selected to bring along that day—I’d allow them each one—a doll, a truck. It was all so natural; they were doing their thing as if nothing were amiss. Kids playing. Grandma doting. Little Girl was old enough to understand. “We go to visit Grandma to make her happy when she’s sick.”
In that sense, I guess nothing was amiss. They were flowing on with the continuum, doing their thing, doing their jobs. Doing life.
The three of them were certainly doing better than Dad and I were doing, sitting there on plastic chairs, watching. Waiting.
We were way past hoping for a miracle by that time. And when the time drew near, and Mom was no longer able to play with the kids and no longer able to get out of bed or even be awake for more than a few minutes at a time, I only allowed myself to hope for three things. That she wouldn’t be in pain. That she wouldn’t be scared. That it wouldn’t happen on Dad’s and my birthday. We shared a birthday.
Those wishes were granted.
It was December.
Dad didn’t want to come down for Christmas. “It’s too cold for me to go out, and I don’t want you to have to drive up to get me. You’ve done enough driving lately. And I’m just not up to it, to be honest. I’d ruin it for the kids. I’ll give you some money, and you’ll get them some extra-special presents this year from Grandpa.” He started to cry.
This was not how Christmas was going to be. Never in a million years would Mom have wanted us to have a sad Christmas because of bad timing.
I took the kids, and we went up to Dad. We went two whole days early, and with all that “not being up to it” business, he was glad to see us. Nobody could make Grandpa smile (even if you had to look closely to catch it) like sassy Little Girl lighting up whatever room she entered, and sweet-natured Baby Brother, toddling along behind. We didn’t go crazy with decorations, or with gingerbread houses, or with singing Christmas carols. But then, we never did that, anyway.
But you have to have a tree.
It was the perfect size now.
“What do you think, Dad? Is it finally time?”
Dad thought it was a good idea.
“What do you think, Little Girl? Do you think it’s ready to be a Christmas Tree?”
Little Girl knew what happens when a tree in the ground becomes a Christmas Tree. “Yes! Maybe when we cut it down, it will be a Christmas Tree up there with Grandma, too?”
Whoa.
Baby Brother agreed. He’s always agreed with everything Little Girl says, smart boy.
“Where are the lights?”
I chopped it down myself. I’d never chopped down a tree before, and don’t sit around waiting to see me do it again. But it wasn’t all that much bigger than I was; I could do it; it didn’t take long at all. I dragged it in through the “front” door, and set it up in the living room and swept up the needles that it trailed through the kitchen. We put on the lights, and just a few ornaments.
It was time.
Time for Mom. Time for the tree.
Whoever makes these decisions.