Bacon is good, though. The nitrates will kill you, but once in a while—maybe it won’t hurt.
We takethe Range Rover to the tree farm. I bought the vehicle to haul my rowing shell to regattas, but it’s become something of a family car.
Cora is subdued, and she’s moving slower than usual, but she doesn’t have that awful dead look in her eyesanymore. She’s being almost shy with me, casting me side glances and letting me do things that I wouldn’t have dared try this past month. I help her on with her winter coat before we leave, and she stands patiently while I zip her up. On the drive to the farm, I rest my hand on her thigh, and she doesn’t push it away.
When I get to the farm, I help her down and wrap her scarf an extra time around her neck before I extract Winnie from her seat. By the time I help Cora settle Winnie in her carrier, Pearl has lowered herself down backward from the car, and she’s splatting in muddy puddles from last night’s snow that have filled the tire tracks. She’s amped.
As far as I know, none of us have chopped down our own tree before. The staff usually handles it.
“Have you ever done this before?” I ask Cora as we herd Pearl toward the barn with the carts and saws. Thank goodness they provide what you need. It didn’t even occur to me to bring my own.
Cora casts me an incredulous look. “No. You?”
I shake my head. “When I was young, we had a plastic tree. Once my mother left, we didn’t really do Christmas anymore.”
We walk slowly, letting Pearl lead the way. After a few moments of silence, Cora says, “Christmas was always something different, year to year. I liked the real trees better than the fake ones.”
“Your grandmother didn’t have a particular tradition?”
Her face shutters. “No. She was always changing it up.”
“Mommy, look at all of the Christmas trees!” Pearl has circled back to grab Cora’s hand, and she’s finally looked up from the puddles and noticed the world around her. “Are we going to get one?”
“We are.”
“Daddy’s going to cut it down?”
“Yup.”
“Are you really?” Pearl asks me, highly skeptical.
“Absolutely.” I was born and raised in the city, and I’ve never chopped a tree down before, but it can’t be that hard. I’m not the only man out here today who looks more stockbroker than lumberjack.
There’s no one greeting customers, and no directions except “all trees must be over five feet” and “all dogs must be leashed,” so I follow the crowd and grab a saw and a two-wheeled cart.
“Lead the way, ladies. You pick, and I’ll cut.”
“Come on, Mommy. This way.” Pearl takes off uphill, into the rows.
“Slow down,” I call after her. Cora is not only stiff from yesterday, but she’s carrying Winnie on ground still dusted with yesterday’s snow. I take Cora’s hand and tuck it in the crook of my elbow. Last thing we need is a slip and fall.
“What about this one?” Pearl has stopped next to a white pine.
“I don’t know. The needles are so long.”
Pearl pets a branch with her mittened hand. “But they’re soft.”
That tree is drooping now under only the weight of its needles. It would not be my pick.
Cora runs her gloved fingers along a branch. “So soft,” she agrees. “But maybe we should keep going. We’ve hardly seen anything yet.”
“Okay. Come on!” Pearl takes off again.
That’s Cora. Where my instinct is to shut a bad idea down, hers is to question, redirect, reframe. I understand that you can’t use business tactics with children, but I can’t seem to graduate past merely not being an asshole with them. The best I can do is keep my mouth shut, which is not good enough for parenting.
I honestly believed it would come naturally. I didn’t know fatherhood would involve so muchnotdoing what was done to me. Nathaniel Maddox would’ve said, “No. What are you stupid? That one’s garbage.” But then again, he would never be here, trekking through the slush to do unnecessary manual labor.
We follow Pearl through the blue spruce and end up in the balsam firs where Pearl stops in front of the saddest, spindliestA Charlie Brown Christmastree. It doesn’t help that the trees around it have been chopped down, so it’s standing alone in a small clearing.
