....Perfect Partner for Picking a Pine.
Traditions are important, but they can sometimes make me feel like a failure, when I fail to keep the tradition year after year. I'm still learning how to be flexible.
Our first Christmas together Matthew promised me he would always make sure we had a real tree to decorate. He has always kept that promise.
...it became our first tradition...
...always have a live tree...(OK, I know that once you cut it, it's no longer alive, but somehow it feels more alive than a plastic tree stored in a box all year)
Most of those years, we took the family and hiked "over the river and through the woods" to find the perfect tree that when brought inside filled our home with the fresh scent of pine.
I remember the year Matthew was in-between jobs while we lived in Montana. Matthew found the perfect tree on the mountain that overlooked his parent's home at the Bozeman dairy. He brought it home, threw a tarp over it, made a bed on top with pillows and quilts in the back of our old green and white International Scout and we drove to Kansas to celebrate a Bush Christmas(this was before car seats when kids bounced on the back of the seats and the only restraint system was their parent's arm thrown up in front of their face to keep them from having a cigarette lighter shoved up their nose). We arrived back in Bozeman just before New Year's with $.75 in our pocket.
It was a difficult year, but Matthew went out of his way to make it happy. Our kids didn't know that we lived off elk meat his dad had given us that year. It was the year I made Aubrey a pink flannel baby bed for her Strawberry Shortcake out of old scrap material Matthew's mom gave me and my dad bought Andy and Mike each a metal truck and trailer with horses(I will always remember my dad laughing as they opened them, shaking his head and saying he would have given anything to have had those when he was a kid). Money was scarce, but we had dreams of a bright future and the joy of being together kept us warm.
Last year's tree excursion turned into a 3 hour emergency room trip and 6 stitches in Abbie's hand. Though Chris was thousands of miles away in Afghanistan, Matthew and I had a fantasticly (is that a word) fun Christmas shooting darts at the grandkids and dressing dolls in their new clothes, while spending the night at Aubrey's.
I'm not sure where Matthew slept that night. I slept with Aubrey. I didn't want her to be alone. I will always remember shedding a tear as I saw her kneeling in the dark next to her bed as she asked Heavenly Father to bless Chris.
...traditions...
...family, stockings filled with Pringles, the nativity with Abigail as the angel, dad's waffles, jigsaw puzzles...
So when Matthew suggested we go to Home Depot to buy a tree this year, I wondered when he got so old??
...and I just knew this was
not going to be one of those holiday moments that I will always remember.
...until this...
...and then I realized I was married to the most Perfect Partner for Picking a Pine.
The tradition of going into the great outdoors to find our Christmas tree didn't happen this year, but I spent the evening with my favorite person.
...and that's all I really care about.
...and who knows, maybe this is the beginning of a new tradition.
