By Mark E. Smith
It was the poorest we’d ever been – a literal food-stamps Christmas. But, despite the fact that my father had split, leaving my mother with my brother and me, just six and seven, and an eviction notice served on our rental house, my mother somehow came up with a $20 bill for a Christmas tree, just a week before the holiday.
It was the 1970s, so I can reason that $20 could buy a stunning Christmas tree – and that’s all my brother and I really wanted. A decorated Christmas tree in the living room of our tiny place would make everything OK, at least for a moment. The shiny ornaments and shimmering tinsel would cancel-out Dad’s leaving, the eviction notice, the plan to move into our mom’s friend’s one-room finished garage. With all of the promise that Christmas brings – miracles of Santa – a Christmas tree would make everything OK, and a $20 Christmas tree might even make things spectacular.
So, Mom loaded us up in the barely-running, old station wagon, my wheelchair in the back, and drove us to the tree stand that magically popped up in the parking lot in front of the grocery store each year – a scene that so captivated me, with its trees forming a fantasy forest, that I could take you to its location today, some 35 years later. Where the old grocery store and parking lot once stood is now an upscale strip mall; but, I could still take you there, and we could picture the tree lot on a California night in December, strands of lights hung above the trees like stars.
We worked our way through the maze of trees, sawdust lightly covering the asphalt, an occasional white parking space line breaking through. And, we picked a perfectly-shaped tree – maybe only a five-foot Douglas Fur? – but fit for the White House in our eyes, children’s eyes, thinking of shiny ornaments, shimmering tinsel, and Santa.
But, when we got up to the gate to pay, Mom reached in her pants’ pocket, discovering that the $20 bill was missing. She quickly pulled open her purse, dropping an empty 5th-of-Vodka bottle on the ground, shattering as it hit the pavement. But, she ignored it as she frantically looked through her wallet, then dug through her purse, then checked around the seats of the barely-running, old station-wagon, my brother scouring the ground of the tree lot. But, the $20 bill was gone.
Sobbing, my mother pleaded with the guy running the tree stand to let us have the tree, that she would somehow come back before Christmas and pay him, that there would likely be no presents that year, but that her boys could at least have a tree.
The tree stand guy argued back that my mom was drunk, that none of this was his problem, that she’d better come up with money or we weren’t getting a tree from him. …And, we didn’t get one.
However, my brother and I weren’t terribly disappointed. See, at that age, when you’ve lived with extreme volatility, you develop a naive optimism that everything will workout, that everything will eventually be OK. We had no tree, no presents, no real promise that adults could see. But, it was Christmas time, and every six- and seven-year-old knows the promise that it brings, that Santa will make everything OK, if only for one day.
And, on Christmas Day, that promise came. See, the tree stand closed on Christmas Eve, leaving unsold trees as garbage in the parking lot, tossed on their sides as if tornado had come through and destroyed the magical forest. But, to my mom, brother, and me, the left trees weren’t garbage, but an amazing assortment for us to choose from that Christmas morning, where each one offered the promise of Christmas that we knew would ultimately come.
