“Do you want to go out to the woods and look for a tree?” asked my father one cold December day. It was mid-afternoon, after he had gotten the noon milking started and come back to the house.
My father never slept a full night after my family started the dairy, when I was almost four years old. He was stuck with managing the dairy after the manager they initially hired quit, and neither of my uncles wanted to take on the responsibility. Cows were milked in the afternoon, and again in the hours from midnight to dawn.
He slept a little in the evening, after dinner, and again in the morning after the milking was done. Sometimes he slept a little on a cot at the dairy, where I also slept some nights if I had gone with him to help bring the cows in from the feed lots to the holding area by the milking parlor. Two milkers worked those shifts, each managing three machines with three cows in a row on each side of two pits. While the cows on one side of the pit were being milked, cows on the other side were being cleaned and prepared for milking, and the milker shifted the machines from side to side. On the frequent occasions when a milker didn’t show up, my father would milk.
He was always exhausted.
So when he wanted to look for a tree, I knew he was taking time from work or sleep. And also that Christmas was coming, and that time was short.
I hopped in the truck. We carried an ax and a saw, heading out Buckeye Road toward the cowpens where we worked the beef cattle several times a year. This area was called Long Prairie, a cleared area in deep woods, where it was often difficult to flush out the cows. But on this day we weren’t looking to work cows. We were searching for a reasonably symmetrical cedar tree, which was a rare find.
Our Christmas trees were always cedars. They were thin trees, growing with difficulty in the little light that filtered through the canopy of old oaks and pine trees that towered above them.
Sometimes we would find a tree that was too small, and decide to leave it for another year. And sometimes we would find a tree that would look good on a side or two, but was bare where it was growing next to a larger pine or oak, or a side that just didn’t get enough light. At some point, we would decide one tree was the best we could find that year, and cut it down.
When we got home, we showed it to my mother, who always said it was a beautiful tree. My father sawed the trunk flat and we put it in a stand; sometimes a bought stand, and sometimes a stand my father rigged out of scrap wood. The trees were rarely straight, and never very symmetrical, so it took a lot of fiddling to mount them in a way that they looked ok once we stood them up.
When we took the tree inside, we had to decide where to put it so that the barest side was somewhat hidden. Usually that meant a corner.
Long, artificial, plastic icicles camouflaged holes in the foliage. For many years, our strings of lights contained a few round, dim, neon bulbs that dated to lights my late grandfather had bought before his death in 1949. There were other ornaments that spanned generations.
For many years of my childhood, our decorations also included Christmas displays that had been tossed out the year before at the A&P grocery store in Bradenton. There was Santa holding a Coke bottle, except my mother had cut away the bottle and in its place glued a box wrapped in Christmas paper and ribbon. There was a paper street lamp that might be propped in another corner.
My mother and I decorated the tree. When we were finished, it was always “the prettiest tree yet”.
And it always was.
This second year without my mother, I have had many old holiday memories well up into my consciousness. They come unasked, at odd moments. Holidays are difficult for many people, fraught with memories that can be traumatic, as well as those which may remind of good times. I have a lot of both.
For this Christmas, my second “free” Christmas with no obligations to anyone but myself, I have decided to continue my journeys to Spanish-speaking countries. I will spend the second half of December in Bogotá. This will be my second time in Colombia, and my first in the capitol city. It’s time to make new memories.
Levels
I’ve only done one piece the past few weeks, another in a series of 28” x 28” collages using images of sky and water. I’m having fun finding new geometric relationships with similar thematic material.
I hope you like it.
Levels, 28 in x 28in collage on mat, 2024
