Buridan's Ass: A Christmas Tree Tale

For the last few days, I’ve been acting like Buridan's ass, who "died of misery between equidistant mangers, drawn first to the one then to the other." I’ve been frozen between dealing with my Christmas Tree and writing about it. This seems to be happening more often. I so easily become stove up, as we say in the South, stuck, suspended, incapable of useful action. It takes time to obsess really well, and, since retiring two years ago, I have all the time I need.  
Life seemed to have more forward motion to it when I was a young mother and my choices boiled down to laundry vs. laundry. Now, with the perspective of old age, I know that laundry can wait a bit. Apparently, I can’t handle that much freedom, for here I am in my dignified golden years, flailing like a blind man in a flat and featureless desert. I’m getting nowhere and, ultimately, dithering myself into paralysis. What appears to be a lack of motion is, in fact, my brain going like a metronome, beating a rhythm between should and ought, between caution and possibility. At last I understand that particular hesitancy the old folks showed; I thought they were being careful, but it turns out they were losing it. Hark, if you will, to the foolishness of it all.

 To begin, I’m highly suspicious of Christmas as a retail event...all those fever-pitch festivities of seasons past that we're paying for now. And there's hesitation about cutting down trees for any reason, even when they were expressly grown for the purpose, because I've watched one too many PBS documentaries on global warming. The Piggly Wiggly has a real Christmas tree and they still ask me if I want paper or plastic at the checkout…daunting enough. Christmas isn’t even about trees; that was a sixteenth century German solstice tradition, so no deities will be offended if I don’t put one up this year. We opted for one of those lego-type artificial trees when my son was a baby; when we finally chose a live tree on his fifth Christmas, he pitched a fit and wanted a “real Christmas tree.” Which option can we call green, really? Besides, getting a tree is like buying work.


Next, I am pole-axed by one of those powerful Southern admonitions I learned in my childhood. I have written about the number one criterion for evaluating mental health in women in the 1950’s South in “She Let’s Herself Go.” The second sure sign of senility is, “She Didn’t Even Put Up a Tree This Year”. With that, we’re just a broken hip away from the funeral home. We haven’t had a tree in four years and what does that say about us? Well, we were traveling, but maybe we should have put one up on a timer and had someone come in to water it. If the neighbors find out I’m treeless again, they’ll be peering in the windows and tapping on the doors. I’ll develop a sudden taste for SAS shoes. Okay, maybe just a tabletop tree, just to prove that we are still compos mentis, lest somebody call my kids, who are already talking about having us move closer to them. A smallish tree, then.       
I was deeply engaged in important and irrelevant activities elsewhere on Monday (see “dithering myself into paralysis,” above), so my darling husband volunteered to handle the tree. He said he'd have one all up and ready to trim, the dreaded green plastic tubs all down from the attic and waiting for me when I got home. He is the most well-intentioned soul I know, so I had no choice but to believe him when he told me that the gorgeous, lush, 7 ft. fir standing in my hall was the smallest tree left on the lot. It’s only fifteen shopping days ‘til Christmas, after all. He’d get’er started, as soon as he remembered the necessary steps. Do the lights on go first? The angel? The skirt? Where ARE the lights? And why do they never carry the same type at Lowes from one year to the next…warm yellow incandescents all messed up with bluish LED strands…it’s planned obsolescence! And where the hell were his glasses? The spirit of the holiday has descended on the house. We scurried to our corners lest one of us should spontaneously combust. We needed time to gather ourselves.

The poor tree sat, avoided, in embarrassing deshabille, with just lights and a tacky strand of faux pearls, looking rather like me slumped on the bed at half mast when I should be getting dressed for a holiday party. Just do it, I admonished myself. I’d have much rather been writing instead, but that would have been breaking the rules and flirting with a dangerous lack of self discipline that smacks of assisted living.

I was further hung up by the contents of those green tubs. Apparently,in the depressing grip of tree disassembly those winters ago, I had done some vigorous but random weeding out. What was left were a very few shabby, primary-colored remnants of the kid trees last used in Alaska, circa 1990; several dozen pearlescent glass balls painted with pink and red roses, my attempt at finding something to go with the Pepto Bismol pink carpet our builder unaccountably had installed when this house was new; the pretentious burgundy velvet Martha Stewart ornaments that I loved so much in those first years after the kids left home. The Ghosts of Christmases Past. I owned nothing to express the new old me. Just like my pants these days, nothing fit.
My kids are coming in two nuclear waves, one before and one after Christmas. My future DIL loves all things modern; I am entirely out of fashion. My SIL, in the second wave, has disparaged my trees and said they remind him of Belks. I couldn't bring myself to bust the miniscule gift budget by buying all new child-friendly ornaments; aren’t I supposed to be modeling frugality in this Recession? My brain delivered up this Depression chestnut: Use it up, wear it out, make it do. Thanks, brain. While the tree drops needles, I can spend hours ruminating on stuff like that.


I did ultimately answer the problem of tree-trimming versus tree-blogging yesterday. The tree, now dubbed The Intrimidator, was handled first, using my top technique for dealing with unpleasant chores in retirement: I popped on the iPod and sailed through my tree-trimming task listening to Patrick Tull read Patrick O’Brian. The tree trimmed itself with whatever came to hand, while I dashed through the seas on a battling square-rigger in the midst of the Napoleanic wars. You can see the outcome for yourself. I think it looks rather nice and Captain Jack Aubrey would approve.

I don't recommend zoning out to audiobooks for every task we retirees face...after all, Richard Alpert, himself, said, "Be Here Now," and I believed him...but I've yet to find much that doesn't go better with Patrick O'Brian and a pinot noir. Then, I blogged fabulously. And then Blogger ate it. This is the second version. I know you'll be kind, dear reader, and tell me it's got to be better than the first, but I swear to you that Version #1 was the best thing I've ever written.

Merry Tannenbaum. I'd love to have you top my tree story.