o tannenbaum

Yesterday I pulled sturdy jeans over a pair of old nylons, layered up in sweaters, donned the only hat that becomes me, and headed up to Michigan to fetch myself a fine-lookin' tree with Boss Meg and her husband Phillip.

Christmas tree selection, transportation, and installation is possibly a greater difficulty to the modern single woman than the pointlessness of hanging mistletoe. A dear friend (an attached young man) once asked, "Why do all these TV shows and movies make a big deal out of single women having to drag Christmas trees into their apartments through their windows?" Because it's the starkest thing about the single life. A woman can be content, even satisfied, with her life as a Singleton; but managing a Christmas tree by herself throws into sharp relief the inherent wrongness of having to navigate life alone. There should be someone to help her with the damn tree. When there isn't, it goes beyond a feeling of cosmic mockery and violates the sensibility that lies at the marrow of Christmas: connection. Divine connection to humanity, human connection to humanity. A woman falling back on her own resources to set up her isolated celebration of connection is a terribly ironic tragedy.

I've been blessed so far by not having to set up makeshift pulleys out my living room window. Last year when I couldn't go home for any of the holidays because of the demands of retail, my parents visited for Thanksgiving and brought with them a Scotch pine to set up in my living room. (One of these days I'll post on the necessity of having parents, even and especially as an adult, and how glad I am that my parents maintain an active involvement in my life, or I might be lost.) They helped me purchase the lights, the ornaments, the tinsel. I decorated it alone, but even though I cried as I did it, I did not feel abandoned.

This year I could not have done it without Meg and Phillip. And I had a wonderful time. We drove to a Christmas tree farm in the middle of nowhere, which supplies its customers with saws and hayrides (horse- or tractor-drawn) to the tree fields, where you can wander at will and select your very own tree. Phillip cut mine down for me (a tall, full Douglas fir -- I'm drawn to triangular trees the way some people are drawn to certain body types), and we hauled our trees back to meet the next hayride and headed to the home base where our trees were mechanically shaken free of dead needles, measured, priced, and bundled. Then we went into a log-cabin style general store for complimentary hot cocoa and to pay for the trees. Phillip strapped the trees to the top of their SUV and we returned to their place for chili and tree decoration, after which they drove my tree to my apartment, carried it upstairs, and went about the messy business of setting it up in my living room.

I had already rearranged all the furniture to accomodate the beautiful annual intruder, but we hadn't factored on the difficulty of forcing the tree into my ancient tree stand. In the end my living room carpet was littered with branches, bark, sawdust, pinesap, needles, and twigs as Meg and Phillip hacked away at interfering tree limbs. (At one point Phillip was doing the sawing while Meg and I straddled the still-bundled tree to keep it still, and I laughed and said, "Meg, we're having a treesome!")

So now I have armfuls of fir boughs to adorn the apartment, a clean carpet, and a fully decorated tree. Every family decorates differently; mine favors large colored lights, some of which randomly blink (and the first half-hour or forty-five minutes of tree decoration involves unscrewing and moving bulbs around to eliminate clusters of one color throughout the branches) and no particular theme to the ornaments. The tree is a hodgepodge of homemade, inherited, bought, and acquired ornaments placed to fill its spaces, some hung as far back as possible, layered over with silver tinsel icicles (no garland for me!) and topped with an angel. The overall effect is friendly, warm, and delightful; my favorite evening advent activity is to turn off all lights in the house except the tree just before bed, and sit listening to Christmas music or in silence, watching the tree and the needly patterns of colored light it throws against the white walls and ceiling.

It's still odd, decorating by myself and for myself, but this year I feel I have friends with which to share it. Next weekend sometime Meg and I are getting together for a Christmas cookie-baking bonanza (such fun, to swap recipes), and she'll be stopping by during the week to see what I've done with the tree. I'll have Colette over soon, and I'm pretty sure I can drag MP over for some insane Christmas cheer.

This is a new and glowing facet to celebrating Christmas: sharing and experiencing the traditions of fully grown friends. Everyone has a different story, and story, as Leigh Ann and I enthusiastically discuss, is life.

So I'm single. So I'm living alone. But I didn't have to wrestle my tree in place by myself, and I am beginning to feel more and more connected where I am.

And my tree is fragrant and gorgeous.