The Power to Transform, Redux

With the holidays bearing down hard, it seems there's little time to write. This piece (from last year at this time) seems to reflect my current state, so I'm whipping it back up for another run.

Not much has changed anyway, except that Tucker is now enamored with a deflated football.


The Power to Transform

I wrestled this past weekend with extension cords and Christmas lights and the indoor and outdoor trees that would hold them. I helped unpack villages and hung ornaments and I listened to the right kind of holiday mood music while everything was made just so. I even set up a Nativity scene, on a counter, with a little tiny porcelain baby; one that, I suppose, was overshadowed and perhaps drowned out by the whole exercise.

So it was somewhat surreal, as you can imagine, while sitting outside on the front step, detangling yet another strand of lights (that I should have put away nicely the year before), to see him ride up, ever so strident and sudden, and low to the ground--helmet less and out of place, again, right here on my cul-de-sac. I dropped my clump of lights and ran to him, and embraced him, for it had been a while.

You might know the feeling.

The fragrance of him had turned to all of my favorite outdoor winter smells, of evergreen and frost and northern winds, and it was obviously a cold day, so I offered him some hot chocolate, and he accepted.

“This is a bit awkward,” I said to him, “that you’re showing up as I’m hanging all of these lights and ornaments on all of these bushes and a huge tree in my living room, life size and then some, and all I’ve got of you is nestled in a miniature Nativity scene.”

I said that maybe it should be the other way around, you know: a life size Nativity scene, and a miniature tree.

He smiled, and inspected my half-lit trees and he told me that he really does like the lights, and the color, and he especially likes the music, which makes sense given the whole inspirational art thing. I assumed that he was particularly fond of the old carols, as if there’s somehow more purity there.

He walked around the house with me, into the backyard, where I had accomplished the lighting of three huge evergreens. He played with Tucker and threw him the old ragged soccer ball that he loves to chase. He talked some more, mostly about how this season makes him feel, how love is encouraged and welcomed and how it has the power to transform, if only for a moment. If only for a month or two.

And speaking of love, he loves to tell a good story, above all one that fits the moment, as you probably know, and so he sat down with me and I could see his breath as he launched into one about Christmas trees and how he rides by quite a few of those hastily constructed, pre-cut tree lots and really, there’s not much you can do to beautify them; especially late at night, the trees just huddle together in darkness, dying a little, waiting for something, anything.

“But then,” he continued, “a family comes along out of nowhere and selects one, carries it out of the darkness, pays for it, calls it their own, brings it home and actually takes it inside their house, right into the center of their living room and they put lights on it and ornaments and garland. And they water it and care for it and they make it quite beautiful.”

He let that hang there, but he said it with such a passion that I got a little choked up. I suppose I had never really thought about it that way, but then I came to my senses and swallowed the lump down deep because he was just talking about a stupid tree.

Still, I assume he wanted me to see a picture, and so I let my imagination stroll down that lane and I considered that some people are dead or dying, huddled in the darkness, waiting for something, anything, and we should go and get them. And bring them into our house. And prolong their lives, I guess.

Of course this seasonal metaphor couldn’t last because it was colliding with too many other practical things, and fearing that I might be left sitting all alone with unanswered questions that were based upon my all too rational thoughts on a cold Saturday with a hopelessly tangled mess of lights in front of me, I asked:

“Yeah, but what about January 2nd, when it’s all over and its needles have fallen off and we strip the dead tree of its ornaments and throw it out on the curb and pretty soon it ends up in a wood chipper and becomes mulch by spring time? Huh? What about that?”

Once again, he looked me deep in the eyes and he paused for a moment, too long really, the kind that made me squirm a bit. Even Tucker seemed uncomfortable and he whimpered a little.

He explained that he doesn’t go about telling faulty stories, and maybe it’s my imagination that’s a bit tangled.