Our First Tree

My wife still gets choked up when we talk about our first tree. In fact sometimes she can still manage a tear or two. I am of the belief that it is the finest tree that I have ever had.

When my wife and I first married, we didn’t have a lot of money. I had left my job and moved back to my hometown and that sapped the funds some. The father of my three step-children was not paying any child support and my wife was having a rough pregnancy with our son, spending time in the hospital with a bout of pneumonia that the doctors were having a hard time curing. I was spending my nights working in the plant and the days taking turns watching the kids and spending time with her in the hospital.

With funds low and my wife in the hospital, and since I couldn’t just cut down a cedar tree as she is allergic to them, I managed to come across the bottom half of one artificial tree and the top half of another. I took the top half of one tree and duct taped it to the bottom of the other tree; hiding the duct tape with a bit of garland. The girls and I popped some popcorn and fashioned a bit of garland to string around the tree. We went out and picked pine cones and tied fishing line to them in order to make ornaments. We had foraged at my mothers and came up with four boxes of red glass ornaments, so we used some blue spray paint from the garage and painted a box of them blue.

The girls and I were proud of this sad little tree. It wasn’t the prettiest in the world but with little money and a lot of love we had crafted this little bit of Christmas cheer. When my wife came home from the hospital and saw it, it so reminded her of the tree from the Charlie Brown Christmas Special that she cried.

One spray painted blue ball still hangs from our big fancy pre-lit Christmas tree. My wife still doesn’t have many fond memories regarding that tree. Maybe it was ugly and maybe you could throw a cat throught the middle of the tree without hitting anything, but in my mind it was the most beautiful tree in all the Christmas’s that I have ever had. And with my wife home and healthy with our expectant child, and a house filled with bright eyed children playing happily with the gifts from Santa, It might have been the best Christmas of all.