Reflections - Ghosts, Cornucopias, and a Spruce
Halloween Tree
Spence tugged a piece of clothes line connected to a flat dolly. On the dolly, a three-foot spruce wobbled in an old wash tub.
Walking in, Spence toed off his boots, plopped onto the sofa, and picked up his computer as if nothing unusual had happened.
“You bought a Christmas tree when you were in Cleveland yesterday?” My surprise made the statement come out like a question.
“I went to Gale’s for grass seed.”
I let my eyebrows communicate that his purchase didn’t resemble grass seed.
“Their truck hauling live trees rolled in. I had the best selection of the season.” He gestured toward the spruce. “It’s deer resistant.”
Going out together, we inspected the baby tree. The plastic tag read Black Hills Spruce.
“It’s tilting a bit.” I leaned too. “Maybe you shove a shim under the root ball. You’ve done that for other Christmas trees.”
Spence rested a hand over his long-standing hernia. “I could have before.” He was scheduled for hernia repair surgery in six days. “I can’t lift it now.” He swiveled the tub. “Is that better?”
The tree appeared virtually straight. “It’s perfect.” I hustled inside and gazed through the sliding glass door at the diminutive spruce—adorable yet looking a bit forlorn with its bare branches.
Decorate it.
Ten days before Halloween? Too early for Christmas decorations.
Create a Halloween tree.
That’s crazy!
Crazy never stopped you yet.
I raced up the spiral stairs.
“Slow down,” Spence shouted from his sofa office.
Kneeling, I dug through a storage box of neglected holiday decorations. I unearthed a thirteen-foot string of candy corn light bulbs, the perfect size. Descending the stairs at an old lady pace earned me a, “That’s better,” from Spence.
“Do we have an outdoor extension cord?” I asked.
Groaning, he slid his computer onto the coffee table, tramped outside, connected an extension cord, and looped it through the sliding glass door handle. Hands on his hips he asked, “Do you need anything else?”
“Nope.” I plugged in the lights. They glowed orange at the tip and yellow on the bottom. “I’m set. Thanks.”
He disappeared.
Winding the lights around the spruce branches, I pried the double strands open with my fingers and slipped the cords over the flexible needles. The spruce released a spicy fragrance. Ande, monitoring from the other side of the glass door, put his paw up as if to touch the lights. I joined him inside to appraise my work. Still too bare.
My children had made simple ghosts in elementary school. Grabbing the tissue box and white thread, I set to work at the kitchen table. I puffed the center of each tissue into a head and tied a string around the neck.
Gilbert put his paws on my leg.
“Not a cuddling time, Gil.”
He jumped onto the table and whipped his tail, sending three of my creations to the floor.
“You’re a little thunderstorm.” I lifted him off the table and retrieved the ghosts. Their flimsy texture squished in my fingers. Gilbert had triggered a duh moment. Caught in rain, the tissue ornaments would melt into yuck. I tossed them.
Fetching pinking shears and white fabric from my scrap box, I settled at the kitchen table again.
Gilbert leapt into the clutter and kneaded the fabric.
The pinking shears crunched.
Gilbert’s tail fluffed and vibrated.
Hacking tissue-size squares with the crunching shears launched Gilbert. He leapt from the table, landed mid way across the great room, and scampered behind the dusty wood stove—still useful to hiding cats in our geothermal furnace days.
Later, I juggled double handfuls of cloth ghosts out to the deck. Wide cat eyes peeked around the stove and through the sliding screen door. The bright second summer sun warmed the spruce, me, and too many ladybugs. As I eased the strings over spruce needles, the polka-dotted bugs crawled across my fingers. Gritting my teeth, I resisted the urge to squish the uninvited-ticklers because they do belong outside. They also release a vengeful stench if bothered.
Flicking my fingers to fling the latest arriving ladybug, I hung the fifteenth ornament and stepped back. The candy corn lights glowed. The ghosts shimmied in the breeze. And I felt pleased. Dark doubled my delight.
The lights turned into a sparkling orange spiral radiating into the dark. The gaggle of ghosts, swaying under the modest deck light meant to discourage visiting bears, shone dazzling white. Though no trick-or-treaters passed the magical spruce on Halloween night, two babies rolled close in their double seated stroller.
Determined to shed extra pounds gained baring her youngsters, Gretchen, the township secretary-treasurer, walked up and down West Creek Road with her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter and nine-month-old son on random afternoons. “That is so cute,” she later emailed about the ghost tree. “What fun there is in little things.”
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| Sewing a Cornucopia Ornament |
A week after Halloween I rummaged through my sewing stash again—this time for the Thanksgiving fabric I’d bought at a quilt shop closing sale years back. Pairing opposite facing cornucopias with batting in between, I quilted the ornaments despite Gilbert’s tail whipping the black thread. He left when I trimmed the edges with the pinking shears—crunch, crunch—he dreads. That let me complete the other ornaments on my own.
Proud of the quilted cornucopias, I dangled one between Spence’s computer and his nose.
“Great.” He reached for the ornament and traced its edge with a finger. “Looks like a fish.”
A fish with pumpkins and sunflowers sticking out of a horn? He did have a point about the shape, though. I trudged outside.
Easing off the ghosts, I slipped on the cornucopias. A breeze fluttered the quilted ornaments like a flock of flitting sparrows. I had a notion that something about the tree had changed. Maybe the crows, squawking in the woods, knew, but the change eluded me. It wasn’t needles that fell off the tips of the branches and onto piles of dry needles below. As if caressing a baby’s cheek, I stroked other needles—still soft and supple.
Jogging inside to fetch the turkey ornament for the top, I said to Spence. “The spruce is dry and losing needles at the end of branches.”
“Oh. I forgot to water it yesterday.” He put his hands on my shoulders. “I’ll water it today. No worries.”
After endangering my fingers by twisting poky wires to attach the eight-inch feathered turkey ornament to the top, I stepped back and looked through the cell phone camera’s viewfinder. The elusive difference came into focus. Gravity tilted the spruce further. With Spence and I both post surgery (mine the end of September and his the end of October), neither of us could correct it. Instead, I would rotate the photo on the computer to straighten the tree.
Rotating the tree in the photo, however, tilted the deck railing at a reckless thirty-five degree angle, much worse than the deck had sunk before Sparky repaired it. I settled for cropping the photo to the top of the spruce. That enlarged the turkey—its soft brown tail feathers, bright red neck, and beady yellow eyes.
Dusk fell, the bear-deterrent light came on, and the new ornaments faded into the gray-green shadows of the branches. No dazzle. No magic. Only the spiral of orange lights sparkled.
I imagined our daughter Ellen, bubbling with stories, bouncing into the house ahead of her husband Chris and their corgi Lyra on Thanksgiving Eve at the end of their long drive from Indiana. Ellen would point at the spruce, bat her long eyelashes, and ask, “Why did you string orange lights on your Christmas tree?”
Comforted by this vision of her impending surprise and satisfied by my goal of transitioning the spruce from Halloween to Thanksgiving, I busied myself preparing for the Thanksgiving visitors—pureeing the pumpkins Spence bought along Route 322 and scrubbing the basement bathroom, which earned me a nickel size spider bite on my derriere.
Then the phone rang.
Tuesday morning before Thanksgiving the scraping of Spence stirring my oatmeal stopped. He answered. “Hello. Wells Wood.”
In the loft I stretched into downward facing dog pose and wondered if one of his co-volunteers had called to cancel a meeting during his Cleveland trip later that day.
A cheery, “Hi, Ellen,” floated up to the loft. Then Spence’s serious voice said, “She’s doing yoga.” Footsteps clanged up the metal stairs.
Ellen calling rather than texting and Spence interrupting my yoga rather than taking a message sent my heart plummeting to my knees. I paused the yoga video.
Spence reached the landing and gave me the phone. “Ellen has a nine o’clock meeting. Don’t talk long.” He patted my shoulder. “Your breakfast’s in the oven. I’m going.” And he left.
Holding the phone to my ear, I asked, “What’s up, honey?”
“Christopher’s got the flu. He’s in bed with a fever and chills.” She paused. “We would have to leave at this time tomorrow. We won’t be able to come.”
“So you’re canceling.” I slumped onto a chair.
“No. postponing.”
With wishes for Chris’s speedy recovery and her flu shot to protect her, I let her hustle off to her meeting. Perhaps they would see the spruce in its Christmas makeover.
In the meantime, our son Charlie, cradling and petting a Rills, stopped me in the great room with a question. “How are you going to decorate the tree for Martin Luther King Day?”
“I won’t. The tree needs to be planted as soon as possible after Christmas.” I gestured to the spruce on the other side of the sliding glass door. “It’s already dropping needles.”
Charlie shook his shaved head and set the cat down. “Not going to happen.” Grinning, his dimples deepened. “So, how are you going to decorate for Martin Luther King Day?”
Thanksgiving Tree
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