Today I took down the Christmas tree. I hadn't watered it for over a week, so the needles were dry and turning brown. The patches of turning color started in the center of the tree and spiralled out, like swirled chocolate in a pudding cake. I knelt in the scattered pine needles beside the tree and untwisted the bolts that held the trunk in place. Eight bolts in total--a perfect amount for tweaking the tree during set-up, an annoying excess when putting things away. As I removed the pressure from the tree trunk, a sweet odor rose to my nose, as if the tree were exhaling in relief.
Sap covered the bolt heads where they had gripped the tree, and deep wounds gouged the trunk. I lifted the tree from the tree stand and carried it out to the porch. The tree was lighter and thinner than when I had brought it into the house. My wife and I may have gained weight over the holidays--evidently the tree hadn't. I glanced at the corner where the tree had stood, and marveled at the stark nudity. The tree had perfectly filled the corner. Now an entire half of our living room looked as skewed as the one-eyed cat I saw this morning. Grabbing the bow-saw I had borrowed from my father, I stepped outside, hoisted the tree to my shoulder, and took it behind the house.
After laying the tree on the ground, I began sawing it to pieces. I felt a bit like Procrustes, shortening the limbs of the guests who didn't fit his bed. The fragrance of the tree increased as I sawed. The trunk and limbs weren't so young that the sawing was difficult, but the tree clearly wasn't dead either. It was a tree in its prime, and I was cutting it up and throwing the segments into the yard recycling can. As I picked up the boughs and tossed them into the receptacle, they brushed onto my hands a bit of sap that won't come off. Once I'd thrown the entire tree into the can, I closed the lid and walked away, feeling the tree-blood on my palms. And I find myself hoping that some of my skin rubbed off onto the tree.
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