Six a.m. My dad’s headlights shine onto my living room’s walls. I down my coffee, lock the doors, and snag my luggage. We’re ski-tripping to Colorado and should be there by late-afternoon, but only if the conditions hold. As the garage door rolls up, I see the driveway’s dusted white. Could get nasty on I-70.
I nod to my dad, readying to dash under the garage door, but I take one last glance inside my living room. I see it: my three-foot-tall Christmas tree. Shit. Gifted by my grandpa, who works at a nursery, the fir was to be ornamental through the holidays, then, given its roots were balled, it was to be planted.
Looking at my dad, looking at the tree, I give him the universal“just one minute” signal, meaning universally “you’ll be waiting longer than you’d like.”
I snag a shovel, identify an open space just outside the garage, and throw the spade into the earth. Frozen clay. My palms feel like I’ve slapped bricks. It’s a wonder; the shovel moves enough dirt and snow to cover the fir’s roots.
Ten minutes for the worse, we’re driving on the highway and my dad seems amused. I ask him what he thinks the odds are the fir survives.
“Well, you gave it a chance,” he says, head shaking in a chuckle. “Anything can happen now.”
Today, a decade later, that fir is eight feet wide and 15 feet tall. It’s the first thing you see when you turn onto our street. From where I sit, writing this, it obscures the western views from both living room windows.
Moralistic takeaways aplenty, I’ll opt for the surefire: perfection ain’t necessary. Frozen clay. Inhospitable Great Plains climate. Neglectful owner. Trivialities for the fir. For us too, anything can happen, just as long as we’re not forgotten in the living room, just as long as we get ourselves into the ground.
To livin’ a life we love,
Ryan Fightmaster, MD
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