Faking It

When I was growing up, my parents had a fake Christmas tree. Every single year they brought that tired thing out and set it up in the same spot in the living room and every year it seemed smaller and more miserable. I can barely remember my mom picking me up in front of the tree when it was new with a can of flocking spray in my little hands, and Mimzi's voice in my ear telling me to push the button just a little bit harder. I pushed that button as hard as my teeny-tiny little fingers could, the can trembling in my hands from the effort, and a glob of gooey white mess droobled onto a plastic tree branch and I was never so proud as I was at that moment. It was my first time flocking anything.

Fast forward to four years ago (yeah, that's weird-- moving forward into the past, isn't it?) to Booie's, Biscuit's and my first Christmas together in our own place and our passionately anti-fake-tree conversation. We were all in complete agreement that fake Christmas trees are unAmerican, unGodly, unChristmasy, and overall doubleplus unGood. Happy to have the matter settled, we eventually hauled ourselves to a tree lot, then another and another, and finally in exasperated defeat dropped about a hundred bucks on the least miserable, least forlorn and neglected-looking Douglas Fir we could find.

We were good little Christmas-tree parents, leaving it outside for an hour, shaking off all the needles before bringing it inside, putting a penny in the base, making him all nice and festive for the holiday and watering him twice every day. But apparently all of this was not good enough for him because he turned almost totally brown and dropped all his needles in the week leading up to Christmas and, since he was in the living room at the front of the house, most of those needles were tracked all through the house and I was still finding the suckers when we moved out the following May.

Undeterred the following year, we passionately declared that a few measly old pine needles wouldn't make Scrooges out of us so off we went again for a real tree. This time it was a seven-foot-tall White Fir-- unusual and very Seussy-- that caught our eyes. It sang to us and we brought him home, wrapped him top-to-bottom in lights, all the way up the trunk and all over the branches, and stuck him proudly in our new living room window. Our overexuberant lighting style totally overpowered the tree (seriously, from the street it just looked like seven hundred billion lights roughly arranged into an upside-down cone shape that was probably visible from the planet Pluto) but we loved him nonetheless. He held all his needles and sheltered the presents, even holding a few on his branches and we declared that we'd always have a White Fir for every Christmas yet to come. When it was time to say goodbye, he was kind enough to leave the unexpected gift of sap all over the hardwood floors, which required an incredible amount of time, energy and effort to remove.

The next year, we returned to the same Christmas tree farm with only a mildly tart (and still sticky) taste in the backs of our mouths, willing to give the White Fir another go only to discover that demand for them was so low that they no longer offered them. Bummed out that we'd not enjoy our quirky Seuss-like tree again, we walked around and around, finally settling for a Noble that was too bushy in some places and not bushy enough in others. We brought him home (he almost slid off of Putt-Putt twice and Hubby's never driven as slowly as he did that ride home), did the tap-tap on the porch, which left a disappointing mound of needles in that spot, much to our dismay, gingerly carried it inside (whispering sweet nothings to it all the while) and watched as, within ten days, its branches drooped-- every single one of them like a super-sad, upside-down happyface mouth-- and dropped about eighty percent of its needles which the two busy dogs promptly scattered all over the house-- upstairs, downstairs, under the beds, in the closets, the garage, the back yard and both cars. Still enough needles remained that it passed for a ragamuffin little Christmas tree but the thing was dry as the Hollywood hills in July so we didn't dare plug in the lights or even look at it for too long out of fear that it would spontaneously combust and burn the house down. Obviously, that tree didn't want to share the holiday with us, either.

Then I started feeling very tired. Four days after Christmas we discovered that I was pregnant and my energy level crashed and nausea levels rose accordingly. The tree died an unceremonious death in the living room, still bedecked in lights and ornaments in early February, its branches all stiffly dried in their please-return-us-to-the-earth-from-which-we-sprung posture. And I just didn't care. I finally got Mimzi to come out to the house with me one day while Hubby was in Boston. Mimzi supervised while I, in all my sloppy, clumsy, pregnant glory climbed the stepladder to remove the ornaments and lights, ate a sandwich (and a bowl of soup and a plate of spaghetti), and eventually hauled the thing out to the sideyard where it stayed until Hubby had a fabulous time cutting it up with a Sawz-All and piecing it out in the recyclables can over the span of a couple of months. As far as I'm concerned, it was a fitting end to that bastard of a tree. And again I swept and swept and swept and still found more pine needles, although this time it became harder to see them as my belly grew and grew.

Last year, our first with the Beans, Hubby and I scooted out to the farm, grabbed a tree that didn't piss us off too badly, threw it on the car and were home within an hour. We brought it inside and watered it every now and again when we remembered, made sure none of the ornaments had fallen victim to Katie's mischief (she really does try so hard to be good) and took it down the weekend following New Year's and left it out at the curb for the Boy Scouts with a donation.

And the next day I started thinking about the merits of a fake Christmas tree.

Last year we got away with so much. The Beans weren't even sitting up and didn't have a clue they could get around all by themselves. This year, EVERYTHING goes into their mouths-- and neither one is afraid of using her teeth on every square millimeter of anything she can get her hands on. Our last house was all hardwoods except for the closets and the guest room-- here carpet is the exception and not the norm and I'll know I'm on something I shouldn't quit if I can convince myself that I won't have to vaccuum every single day of my life from now until May if we get a real tree. There are a TON more cracks to gather tree needles (and yes, I am referring to Bean cracks as well as all other bodily orifices) and I can't erase the image of the howling fantods that will ensue when I glance down at a dirty diaper and discover needles there too, of all places.


Like all the changes in our lives that have come aong with the Beans, I'm sure we'll find a way to embrace this one too. No, we don't have a fake plastic, gloopily-flocked tree in our living room yet, but it's just a matter of time. I guess it's a growing-up-into-your-responsibilities thing. And another thing that goes along with that is the realization that the reason for the flocking fake tree I hated so much as a kid was none other than yours truly.

But I still don't have to be happy about it. I refuse. No flocking way.