A Forest of Memories...

The other day while rummaging through a folder of odds and ends, articles, newspaper clippings, and various print curiosities I've salted away over the years, I happened upon a cartoon. It works upon a familiar theme of cartoonists: two castaways on a desert isle, and as is the case with my discovery, a husband and wife. Barefoot and disheveled, the couple are wiling away their time on a small bulge of sand barely above sea level. Waves nibble at the tideline nearly licking their toes. Remnants of a doomed vessel, the "SS Banana": life rings, an oar, partial skeleton of hull litter the fringes of the tiny sandpile. A starfish (plus a distant pair of seabirds) are the only other visible life. The husband, peppered with beard, is roasting a fish over a small fire as if it were a marshmallow. Sprawled behind him like the hag of the sea, his missus (given her portly figure, it's obvious the seafood diet has yet to take effect) has her own priorities: "It will soon be Christmas," she says, "When are you going to get a tree?"

Aside from the desert isle scenario, hers is a question much on our minds this time of the year, and it prompted me to ask my missus if the tree of the season wasn't our fifty-second. "The fifty-third," she replied. "Our first Christmas tree was in my apartment, the one we shared after we were married." I had forgotten. Ah, yes, betrothed we were when we enjoyed that first tree. Nine days after Christmas we were married.

I think of them now, those Christmas trees.... Fifty-three Douglas firs, always Doug fir, our holiday icon of choice. Today, had they remained rooted in the soil of their planting, not severed and dragged indoors, the lot of them would make a small forest, a teeming ecosystem, fir-fragrant cover for forest animals and birds, a quiet sanctum in which the pensive hiker could escape the tumult of the world. But for our fifty-three that was not to be. They were destined to become a forest of another sort, a forest of memories.

There was that tree I purchased from a lot and carried several blocks to our Seattle apartment to make amends over a falling out we had about Christmas, its stress, and our tight budget. And then that tree whose trunk a lightning bolt would have been hard pressed to trace--our "scoliosis Christmas tree" we called it. We've had trees so tall they scraped the vaulted ceiling of our rec room, had to be wired to the wall to prevent toppling. And there were trees whose needles dropped less than a week into their indoor Christmas journey, transforming our carpet into the duff of a forest floor. One tree, if memory serves, had to be brought indoors to thaw when its trunk, submerged in a five gallon bucket, froze solid during a cold snap.

Of our holiday forest only one tree came from the wilderness. That was the year we spent in a rented cabin on the sparsely inhabited fringe of the North Cascades Wilderness. A dollar bought us a Forest Service permit to seek out and cut the tree of our choice.

One day at dusk we trudged up a snow laden hillside (where our tracks intersected those of a roaming cougar) to a small clump of firs, each dwarfed it seemed by their towering Ponderosa pine neighbors and bagged the perfect tree for our Christmas. Our prize nearly swallowed up our VW bug and fir-camouflaged we plowed our way back to our cabin where we had to lop off nearly one-third of the tree to make it fit the low ceilings.

After our friend Dick Hetland presumed himself a conifer connoisseur and carted home his pick of the lot, wife Nan exercised her veto, demanded he discard the ugly thing, select another and reminded him in the future that tree selection was a joint venture. Dick and Nan's polarity in artistic tastes ushered in a period when the Hetlands and our family drove our daughters to neighboring tree farms where after considerable scrutiny, wind chill exposure, and ring-around-the rosy with each and every tree in the grove was the saw employed, the season's "perfect" tree selected.

In the past we have bartered for trees from Dale Reiner's tree lots (To Tree or not to Tree), the Doug fir of our choice in exchange for a quart of local honey gathered in the Valley by my industrious bees. These days, however, we select the season's centerpiece from local box stores, each year crossing our fingers that our choice will last the season without denuding itself and embarrassing the household, thus putting us on par with our friends the Hetlands and what we jokingly termed their "tree of the week" protocol.

Now the tree is in its stand and perpendicular--not plumb bob perpendicular, perhaps--but to the eyes of the householders close enough.

Next come the ornaments one by one, each in itself an attic-archived memory. There's the Micky Mouse medallion from Disney World. The silver-tarnished pine cone from Wallace, Idaho, a stopover to and from "The Field of Dreams." The frosted orb from the Southern Ute Reservation in Ignacio, Colorado, a literature inspired bucket list destination.

The Welsh Corgi angel dog, in memory of a pet. The candy-apple red glittered "kinky boot" from my cousin, a shoe salesman at Nordstrom's. Delicate snowflakes crocheted by mother-in-law, her memory preserved in each loving stitch. A pair of miniature mittens, crocheted with blue yarn...blue...a boy, the first grandchild. The golden heart ornament we "filched" (with our waiter's permission--and blessing) from a holiday tree in the window of Seattle's Icon Grill, a gilded memento of our fiftieth wedding anniversary.

The photo ornaments which spotlight and chronicle our daughter's journey across her many Christmases with us. Tradition dictates her ornament be the first hung on the tree each year, an elementary school art project in the likeness of a pear, a marvel in paper mache slathered one coat upon the next in yellow tempera.

And so down the years each Christmas tree serves up for us all a memory of its own, adds its uniqueness to that forest, a forest of memories, wood fuel to fire the nostalgia of Christmases past, gifts that need no wrapping.

                                  *                    *                  *                  *

Once a car stops and the rich mill owner's lazy wife leans out and whines: 
"Giveya two-bits cash for that ol tree."

Ordinarily my friend is afraid of saying no; but on this occasion she promptly shakes her head: "We wouldn't take a dollar."

The mill owner's wife persists. "A dollar, my foot! Fifty cents. That's my last offer. Goodness, woman, you can get another one."

In answer, my friend gently reflects: "I doubt it. There's never two of anything." 

                         Truman Capote's Aunt Sook in A Christmas Memory

Editor's note: In the course of composing this post, the tree-laden VW ornament pictured above accidentally slipped from my hand during its photo session, hit the floor and shattered to pieces. The ornament was a gift from my mother. Years ago she happened upon the ornament and because it reminded her of our wilderness tree hunt and tree-smothered car, presented it to us that Christmas. Now the ornament itself has sadly passed into memory and cast a bittersweet cloud over this post.

A Place for Everything; Everything in its Place...

We were only separated two days, but I thought about you hour on the hour, even awoke in the night wondering--and worrying where you were. Previously I've always known that after a short search you'd turn up safe. Your recent disappearance, however, made me fear I'd lost you forever.

Until your latest vanishing we were inseparable, remarkable for a relationship that began decades ago...and in a tavern no less. I gambled, "Old Timer," and you were my prize--in fact the first thing I'd ever won in my life. The middleman in our relationship in those days long before lottery kiosks or scratch tickets were "just a gleam in the eye" of the State's general fund was a tavern punch board. I took a chance on you, old friend, sprung for one dollar, if memory serves. I paid the bartender, chose a remaining chance, and punched out a tiny scroll of paper. The number on the strip I unraveled was among the winning numbers listed on the board. When I presented the scrap of paper to the bartender, he said "Hummmph," turned and rummaged around on the cluttered shelves, budged a huge jar of pickled eggs to one side, and hauled you out. I can't remember if you came to me bare naked or in a box, but there you were heavy in my hand, a single bladed "jack" knife, "pocket" knife, "toad stabber"...and ever since you and I have been companions. "I'll give you five bucks for it," the barman offered. I smiled, shook my head and slipped you into my jeans pocket, your second home all these years. When not in my company, you reside in the top drawer of my writing desk. But of late I've gotten careless, taking to leaving you lying about the house just about anywhere. And so now you're lost.

We've spent hours, you and I, whittling away sliver after sliver until the wood shaped the way we wanted. You have slivered off the silver to fashion rings from silver dimes, carved a wizard's face into a peach pit half for a Boy Scout's neckerchief slide, peeled and fashioned the crotch from a willow tree into a slingshot. And let's not forget the countless yards of cardboard you've sliced for recycling purposes.

Over the years we have shaved wood into balls, carved an alder peace symbol, whittled away propellers on a stick (hand launched helicopters).

To date we have carved six and a half peach pit monkeys, quite a challenge for man and jackknife (no Dremel tools for us purists). In fact you were the unnamed principal in a previous Ripple post ("Just Whittlin' the Time Away").

At our family reunions you and I won every game of Stretch (Mumbley Peg) forcing one brother after another to do the splits until they nearly sprung their crotches. "Wanna use my knife?" I'd offer at gift opening occasions where you sliced through tape and wrapping paper with ease and scalpel-like precision. You have had so many sessions with the whetstone your thin blade has been ground concave. Slightly sprung from years of use, your blade no longer neatly folds into the handle bay, and these days I reach into my jeans' pocket gingerly lest I prick a finger in seeking you out. And, yes, you have drawn blood over the years, Old Timer---but mine only, the fault never yours. Always a careless slip of the hand or flagrant disregard of the woodcarver's adage: "Always whittle away from yourself." Whenever we began another peach pit monkey project, I thought to carry a couple band-aids in my wallet in case a random slip of your blade sliced a finger (not so much to staunch a wound but to avoid staining the project).

An article in The New Yorker magazine about missing or misplaced items stated that roughly six months of our lives are spent searching for things lost. Not only do we spend time actively searching for whatever's missing, but between these questing forays, we mentally rehash seek and rescue scenarios: "When and for what purpose did I last use the item? "When and where did I last have or see the item?" "Where have I found the lost item before?" And throughout the day (or waking hours of the night) these are the questions you ponder. All this I did and more. My biggest fear was you were now rusting away in the backyard grass somewhere only to be found by the riding lawnmower this spring. Perhaps you slipped from the pocket of my sweats or shirt? Seems to me I'd have heard a thump when you hit the ground. Regardless, I traced my last whereabouts outdoors--not just once but several times. Except for the exercise my search was futile.

I lost a paring knife several years ago. While turning the compost heap a year or two back, the little knife, much of its wooden handle rotted away, showed up in a spadeful of cured compost. I had long since forgotten about it. Our late neighbor Tina Streutker found a missing diamond ring in her compost heap. She figured it had slipped off her finger and was swept up in the vacuum during a routine carpet cleaning. She was in the habit of emptying the cleaner bag in the compost pile and gardener that she was, what she lost, she found sparkling away in shovelful of compost.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude offered this reasonable explanation of how things come to be lost:

"...every member of the family, without realizing it, repeated the same path every day, the same actions, and repeated the same words at the same time. Only when they deviated from meticulous routine did they run the risk of losing something....Fernanda, on the other hand looked for [her wedding ring] in vain along the paths of her every day itinerary without knowing that the search for lost things is hindered by routine habits and that is why it is so difficult to find them...."

The other day it rained, one of those late fall gully washers that overwhelmed the gutters and sent me rushing for a raincoat and ladder to unplug a couple clogged downspouts. When I set them to gushing again, I returned to the garage where I shed the raincoat, draped it over the riding mower to drain, and in the process of spreading out the sleeves, I spied something on the flat surface of the engine's recoil starter. And there you were, Old Timer, lying there forlorn, blade fully extended as if to say, "Whenever you find me, I'm at your service." A joyful reunion...and mystery solved: I had placed you there after you pried the dried cheese from the mousetrap bait plate which I needed to refresh with fresh cheddar. I reset the trap and went about my business, which a few short hours later became a preoccupation over your disappearance...wondering where you were and if I'd ever find you again.