A Christmas season, many years from now, one of my future children will ask wistfully why we, as Christmas-celebrating Catholics, don't partake in the ritual of the Christmas tree. I just know I'm going to have to recount the story of how their mother, who even though knew she shouldn't have had that cup of coffee at 10:00 at night, sat on a couch at 2:30 in the morning staring at a sad, dead, Christmas tree -- a Christmas tree standing in a living room on a date two days shy of March 1.
Then I'm going to have to explain how we had an opportunity to discard the tree but we didn't. Why? Because we going out of town for business and I couldn't bring myself to leave the tree on a curb for the three days until the trash/recycle crew could pick it up. I imagined this sad, dead tree feeling completely worthless and discarded and figured that it would be better if we just left it in the living room until it sort of just nobly disintegrated -- sort of like a phoenix but without the rebirth and stuff.
And then, hopefully, I'll end my yarn by saying that there was once a time that Mommy and Daddy didn't notice that spiderwebs were forming in the windows and doorways of their apartment -- including on their Christmas tree -- because they had such a sad routine to their lives, a routine that consisted of work and sleep and complaining about a tree that neither one of them wanted to throw out.
Of course by the end of my story, my daughter or son will already be late for their therapy session and they will have forgotten the question that started all this.
