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Tuesday December 18, 2001, 02:45
In my living room now stands a tree. Its lights are off, retiring, as I am, for the evening and sparing me an already too-high electric bill for the month. My computers purr incessantly, reminding me that I really must do something about the noise in this room before it drives me insane. My father asked me what kind of tree it is. "A Christmas tree" was about the best answer I could muster. It's rather difficult to be picky about the type of tree you can get in this city, where you must carry your bounty home with you, pine needles dropping in the hall, a hand grasped firmly around the sticky trunk of a dying evergreen (not so ever any more is it?) as you fumble for your keys and wonder if the neighbors' trees are bigger than your's.
In recent years, the shopping for and subsequent decorating of the Christmas tree was something that was left to my mother in more of a traditional obligation rather than any sort of family moment. When I was younger we would all pile into the family station wagon (and oh how we loved the station wagon, with the bench seats and the "way back" seats, facing backwards, vomit-inducing and so much fun) and head off to the nursery where we would choose the tree, carefully finding the one that was the right combination of size, fullness and price. We would carefully discuss the merits of various trees, the names of which I don't even remember (except to know that needle size was a determining factor as well) and with great fanfare would choose one, carry it up to the man with the plastic netting who would then bundle the tree up tightly bringing branches in to a nice neat package that then got strapped to the roof of the car with white plastic rope.
This year, I decided that I needed a tree. I could chalk it up to peer pressure (like that time I smoked a cigarette or got my eyebrow pierced) and the desire to be like all of my other settled friends, houses full of furniture and the like. My apartment still feels like castoffs from an episode of the Brady Bunch, without the style. Having the tree, it seems, lends an air of legitimacy to a residence. And makes it smell evergreen fresh. Or maybe the motivation comes from within. "Look!" I cry out. I made it through a year in this city and have found myself some work and something resembling a life. Well, at least work. I used to have much more of a life before all of this job business.
So I have a tree. Its needles have begun to fall already and the base sits a bit too high off the ground, but it's fun and it smells nice. And it's all mine.
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