Blue Christmas

With a giant tree!

My housemate Lou clapped his gloved hands and squealed, “THIS IS IT!”

I looked up at our perspective Christmas tree. “Wow, it’s lovely.”

Lou broke into an awkward victory dance, owing to the forty-five degree angle of the slope. He stumbled into me, knocking us both down the hill and into a thorny holly bush.

“Sorry.” He said, removing his size-eleven boot from on top of mine. “Don’t you think the tree’s gorgeous?”

“Sure, but isn’t it kind of big?”

His eyebrows knitted. “No, it’s perfect.”

We both cocked our heads from side to side and circled, trying to envision the monster in our living room. Hunting for the perfect tree had a taken us all over town. Lou rejected Christmas tree lots, saying the trees weren’t fresh and would quickly lose needles. So we drove to a farm situated at the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Lou rejected a few fine specimens near the parking field. The longer we walked up the mountain, the more convinced I was that he was a crazy perfectionist.

Somehow I found myself sharing a house with three men, none of which I slept with, or cared too. The attraction/love thing just wasn’t happening, not with my housemates or men in general. I tried not to think about it as the pressure of the holiday season drew near and with me now living a zillion miles from my family home.

“You better take over,” said Lou, handing me the saw after only a few minutes. “This bending over is killing me.”

“Alright,” I said, “better stand back.”

The tree came crashing down in the right direction. We got on either side and began to drag the tree down the hill.

“Oh no!” cried Lou with a dramatic shudder. “Now my low back muscles are completely cramping. I’m having painful contractions, almost as if I’m giving birth.”

“Give me a break,” I said, shaking my head. “It couldn’t be that bad.”

“It is to me. You’ve got to deal with the tree your self. You’re strong. I’m sure you can do it.”

“Sheesh, thanks for the compliment?” Though he was four inches taller, I weighed at least thirty more pounds.

After I pulled the tree the rest of the way down the hill, the farmer helped me load it onto the roof of the car. On the way home, Lou moaned whenever I took a turn around a curve.

“You’ve got to have Rick or Ed help,” he said. “I really need to get vertical and take a strong pain pill.”

“Neither one is going to be happy. They don’t seem to give a shit about getting a tree.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. Everyone loves Christmas.”

Back home, I found Rick reading and begged for his help in getting the tree into the house.

“What the hell were you two thinking?” he groaned when he saw my car. “This tree is way too large. It will never fit in our living room.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I thought it was kind of big.”

“I’ll get the saw and hack some off the bottom.”

Eliminating two feet from the trunk, we clamped the base of the tree trunk into the surprisingly complicated three-legged holder. Unfortunately, without its bottom branches, the tree looked horridly misshapen. And the only way it stood up was by leaning it against the living room wall. The tree did fill the house with a nice aroma, but it remained undecorated for the next couple days. Since none of us owned ornaments, I bought lights and strung them myself. Since my budget didn’t cover ornaments, I planned to string popcorn, but then I decided not to bother. My other housemates weren’t interested and Lou had taken to his bed like a sick hermit on sabbatical.

After placing an old white sheet around the bottom of the tree, I wrapped my housemates’ gifts of socks in newspaper, held together with red rubber bands. Kind of sad, though the colorful comic pages added a festive touch.

Then with drink in hand and Joni Mitchell’s album Blue playing in a constant loop, I flopped onto the couch for an extended melancholy meltdown. Little did I know that the following year would be much better and that I would never have to cut down a Christmas tree again. And that on Christmas morning, my three housemates would squeal like children opening their presents, which they did simply to make me happy.

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