Wrapped in a dense, softest gray blanket of fog, hidden from lake and woods and road, our house is quiet. I should be sleeping late on this morning meant for snuggling deep in my clean sheeted bed. Really, I did sleep late. 6:30 is extraordinarily late when my internal clock usually wakes me a bit after 5. I am typically the first up and thus the first to move our elf on the shelf and turn the tree lights on, but Bell and Jack camped out in the living room last night according to their usual Friday night custom. I hesitate to wake either up, though barking Kate outside is sure to do it for me. The dears need their sleep. Today is to be our first real family photo ever taken by someone other than Jack. We have an appointment and everything, just like normal people. This is a hardship to the man used to being in charge of the camera and a gross inconvenience to the kid who just wants to stay home and watch YouTube videos about minecraft. I need them to sleep in and be in their best moods possible.
As I sip my Saturday coffee ( good coffee is saved for weekends when it can be savored and we slurp ordinary coffee on weekdays) and nibble one of Bell's sugar cookies, I am pondering our Christmas traditions. Since I first put up my own tree and we blew all those eggs as friends, Jack and I had only one year when we didn't share Christmas in some way. Some years were lean years for us and some were richer; we typically made some craft or crazy food together whether it be the eggs or the fruitcake; there was always a tree. And unlike this year that is going ever so normal and tame, there is usual an element of slap stick craziness. I am not sure what it is, but when Rucker and Wilson combine in efforts, things just go a bit nutty. Poor Bell hasn't a chance at being ordinary.
One of my favorite years was the winter of 2000. I was living outside Apache in a little farmhouse, perched atop a lonely hill, a mile from the nearest neighbor. Jack was here on the farm with his folks that winter, between leaving his building in Chickasha and moving to Guthrie. As usual, Jack was the designated tree procurer. It never occurred to me to buy a tree, artificial or real. Both our families had always cut down cedar trees from pastures and so that is what we did. On a dirt road with no houses, Jack had spotted a pasture full of good looking cedar trees several miles from my house. I do not know who owned that pasture and those cedars. Had I, we could have saved ourselves much trouble. No decent farmer wants a pasture of western red cedar. They are a menace, eating up good land and providing nothing put a fire hazard. In case of grass fires, those cedars do not just smolder, but literally explode, sending sparks and embers even further afield. But Jack and I didn't think quite like that. We knew those cedars were of no value, but we didn't know whose land it was so we would have to use stealth to capture a tree. A plan was hatched.
We would wait until dark and then Jack would pick me up at my house. We would drive to the field. Jack would get out, hop the fence, snag said tree, and come back. I was the getaway driver in his Rodeo. If a car came along before he got back, I was to circle the section and come back. Jack had a flashlight and would flash it on when I came by so I could find him. Sounds good, right?
It all started well. Jack found the field and relinquished the driver's seat to me. I familiarized my self with the Rodeo's lights and all that while he climbed the fence with a small saw. Before he was gone more than a few minutes into the black night, a car did come up behind me so I moved along, driving an unfamiliar road in an unfamiliar car. I made to circle the section, but the car stayed on my tail. I began to feel a bit threatened, a bit scared to be a lone girl on an unfamiliar dirt road at night with a car tailing me, right on my bumper. I turned towards the nearest town, zigzagging down these country lanes for what seemed like miles, a quarter mile east, a quarter mile south. When we were nearly to town, the car finally took a different turn. I would have driven all the way to Fletcher if need be because by that time I was truly scared, close to panic, wondering why I was driving around in the dark without a gun. I was safely on my own again, but I wasn't entirely sure I could find that field where 30 minutes before I had left Jack in the dark with a bunch of worthless cedar trees. Of course I could. I had to. I couldn't very well leave him in below freezing temperatures miles from anywhere in the dark.
I have no idea which of us was more relieved to see the other when I got to the right section and he popped up next to the fence, tree in tow. He didn't yell at me or even gripe at me for having left him in the dark, bitterly cold night. He must have been frozen and he certainly looked glad to see me. I told him the story, and teeth chattering, we got the tree atop the Rodeo. Here we hit snag number two. No rope. So, we popped the sun roof and took turns sticking our hands awkwardly through the tilted glass to hold onto the tree on the roof as he drove that winding road back to my house. I remember my hands aching, going numb from the effort to hold on to scratchy tree trunk with only thin gloves in twenty degree air. By the time we got to my house, only an hour had gone by since our departure. He had moved past any annoyance, and I had moved past fear and it became a ludicrous story.
Jack, always the good sport, wrestled that tree into a stand for me before calling it quits. I remember decorating my tree the next day. I remember it being a bitter cold Christmas with inches and inches of snow. I am not sure why I even needed a tree because I went to my Grandparents for a few days at Christmas. I certainly do not remember if it was a good tree or if that tree picked in the dark was hideous. I just remember how Jack made sure I had a tree because I wanted one.
The next time Jack and I mucked about with Christmas trees, we had figured out who we each were and had made the leap from friends to being a family. Twelve trees later, our traditions have shifted to going out to the well house and getting the artificial tree we got when I was pregnant with Bell and couldn't take anything for allergies (so no cedars). Our trees are now decorated with the help of little hands, and there are no dangerous excursions in the night. My pushing forty bones much prefer these domesticated holidays, but every year we take out that memory of tree thievery and laugh at our silliness.
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