Weasel Of Doom

I took down our Christmas tree last night.* As I was taking off the ornaments, needles rained down onto the table and carpet in a soft whisper, and for some reason it was almost unbearably sad. A few times in my life, we had great Christmas trees – I remember the one in Russia that actually grew soft new needles from the tips of the branches, and the one we got in our second year in the house in New Berlin, that looked like a skinny carrot in its netting and opened up to be the most perfectly shaped and full tree we ever had. My parents picked the tree out this year. We drove to a tree farm an hour away, and walked around in the cold and snow, and my mother-in-law found a pine she liked and we finally decided on a little five-foot spruce, almost as wide as it was tall. My parents decorated it, and put it on top of a table, to lessen the temptation for DemonChild. It stood there for two months. The great room smelled of fir, the clean smell of the outdoors. And now the tree is gone, and only a lingering smell of vacuumed-up needles remains.

* I am not one of those people who take down their Christmas trees the day after Christmas. Nope. Our trees stay until the New Year, and the Russian Christmas, and the Russian Old New Year, and frequently Valentine’s Day. And it’s not (just) because I am lazy. What can I say? I like my Christmas trees, and am never in a hurry to get rid of them. Perhaps it’s a Russian thing. The tree that started growing new needles stuck around until March, I think…