Blogs

By Vicki Austin

My husband and mother appear to have reached a holiday truce. White flags wave. The drums of war pause.

The box addressed in Mom’s handwriting, To Allan, from Santa, reveals a miniature truck with Xmas tree, red. My children’s eyes widen, grasping its significance. Well played, Gram. But Allan only smiles and places it on the tree.

We took that trip home many Decembers ago. There was the Jenga tournament. My family loves humiliation by board games and saw a newly engaged, come-to-meet-the-parents boy with trembling hands as an easy mark. There was the expanse of carpet that came between our separate rooms over which Mom declared, “Maintain a sense of decorum.” And there was Santa U-Pick.

Mom’s eyes sparkled with anticipation. Driving deep into the wilds of Michigan, ignoring the minus-zero-degree temperatures, we sought a wooded North Pole of perfect pines. There, the heady scent of needles would fill our noses, as Santa and Mrs. Claus pressed steaming cocoa into our hands and helped us board a candy-cane sled to magically transport us to our perfect tree, ready for chopping.

One hour into the trip our Christmas caroling was not quite as robust. Two hours, and several wrong turns later, my spouse-to-be was suggesting we stealthily chop down any tree from the unsuspecting citizens’ yards we passed. Three hours on the road and I wondered if I was going to have to return the engagement ring.

Mom exclaimed triumphantly when the Santa U-Pick sign came into view. Energy briefly surged through our veins as we pulled into the drive and started a strained chorus of O Christmas Tree. Our smiles wavered as a crusty man in overalls emerged from a rundown garage. “You can pick any one you want!” he hollered, pulling on gloves…gesturing to the four cut trees that were scattered to the side, bagged and ready.

We have several snapshots tucked into an album, posing around our Charlie-Brown tree, propped up in that vacant lot by some bits of plywood and a few rusty nails. Icicles dangle from my husband’s numb face. There was no magical sleigh, no jolly pair of Clauses, not even a cheap candy cane. Mercifully, the anticlimactic transaction took seconds. “It was the best tree we’ve ever had!” Mom protests. Allan, however, recalls an endless wild-goose chase resulting in his frostbitten hands clamping a mangy trunk to the roof of our car.

My husband and I never darkened the door of a fresh tree lot again.

I catch Allan that evening, after the children are in bed, plucking the ornament from the tree. A few synthetic needles fall and he grinds them beneath his heel, a gleam in his eye. Game on, Gram.

 — Vicki Austin

Vicki Austin, faculty at Wyoming Seminary College Preparatory School, lives with her family in Kingston, Pennsylvania. Vicki has more than 25 years of experience in many facets of education and is currently shifting her writing focus from persuasive to creative. Vicki’s most recent work has been featured on the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop blog, included in the online journals Projected Letters and Wraparound South and printed in The Walls Between Us: Essays in Search of Truth, a Juncture publication. You can find Vicki on Twitter @VickiAustin02 and send encouragement as she finishes her first novel.