Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you Barrhead. Well, belated wishes at this point.
I have returned from my journey to the homeland of Dundas, where I had a marvelous Christmas holiday.
I was reunited with my family and friends. I spent evenings with my parents, brother and beloved family dog in front of our fireplace. I saw a beautiful performance of Les Miserables in Toronto. I also seemed to have brought the cold and less than desireable weather to Ontario with me, so I’ll be accepting thanks and gratitude from the community of Barrhead in the form of cookies.
I have many tales I could tell, as I always do from my traveling adventures, but one sticks out in my mind: The Brooks family Christmas tree.
The first mistake was letting my mother and I pick a tree unsupervised. There were many beautiful evergreens at our local Rona Home Centre. Some tall and majestic, others slim and sleek. And then, we saw it.
Sitting cold and alone, coated with frozen rain and snow, was our tree. It was not much taller than me, and it seemed rather patchy, but it looked so unwanted and woebegone that we needed to rescue it.
I mustered my strength and wrapped my arms around the scraggly shrub, and dragged it to the car. At this point it had begun to rain, which was really a continuation of the freezing rain storm the area was just pummeled with.
Why try tie the tree to the top of a slippery car with one piece of rope when it would so easily sit in the vehicle?
We swaddled our precious tree in a sleeping bag and shoved it, with some force, into the front seat of our Toyota Echo. It fit like a glove.
Our arrival back home brought much excitement. The tree had arrived!
Now let me tell you something about the trees at Rona. Because they are tightly wound with twine, you never really know what you’re going to get until the tree is fully released from its chains.
As my dad grasped a pair of hefty scissors in his hand and cut the cords, the tree burst from the strands full of life and began to grow. And grow, and grow, and grow.
Because we managed to choose a tree with no stump, out came the saw for some branch trimming. I think the two branches my dad cut off the bottom were enough to create a whole other tree...would there be any left to decorate? I was a little worried, but thought it best to set it up in our living room and let it to dry out overnight.
Nothing could have prepared me for what I came upon the next morning.
Our dejected cluster of crippled branches had blossomed into some kind of Christmas tree ball three times the size of what had been standing there the night before. What monstrous beast had we brought into our home?
The Goliath tree had grown to, and I’m not exaggerating, a 15 foot circumference. It was still but a few inches taller than I, so it really was just an orb of evergreen.
With decorations, it was actually a gorgeous tree. The presents had to be set about four feet from the base, but that’s beside the point.
Of course I left before the issue of removing the tree from the house came about. How my parents are going to manage to get it through the front door is beyond me.
Last I heard it had been undecorated, but was still standing short and proud in the living room.
The merriest of Christmas tree balls.
