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the perfect tree

some of my favorite christmas memories from my childhood surround getting a christmas tree.

because we lived in rural alaska, i thought the concept of buying a christmas tree was made up by some stupid hollywood executive who had never seen a pine tree in the wild. i also thought that fake christmas trees were for the elderly and nature-phobic.

every year in the middle of december we would all pile into my dads pickup and go hunt for the perfect tree.

my sister, mother, father, and myself squished into the trucks cab while the boys rode in the back as we drove up the mountain road known as East Hill Road.

it would take an entire saturday afternoon of traipsing through feet of heavy snow inspecting this tree and that tree and periodically considering the pretty top of that really really tall tree and why wont you climb it, dad?

after the required chopping, we would throw our choice into the back of the truck with the boys and bring it back home. only then would we notice the gigantic bald spot on the side.

that is why God made walls, son: to lean the bald side against.

this is the second year i have put up a fake tree in our apartment, and golly, does it ever look fake. if only it werent so... wide at the bottom. and if only it smelled like a spruce tree. a real spruce tree.

sadly, the trees surrounding fairbanks are as skinny and scraggly as they come. as long as we live here, this fake tree will have to do.