The author’s family has a tree-fetching tradition, and kept it up after her father had strokes. Pictured here are Nate Halloran, Kevin Halloran, Jack Magai, Amy Halloran, Felix Magai, Francis Magai, and Brad Fortier.
Courtesy of Amy Halloran
Every year, my dad would pick out the family Christmas tree at a nearby farm.After he had strokes, we figured out a way to continue to include him in the tradition.We kept up this new version of our ritual for over a decade.
We want holiday traditions to be static, each year repeating the last. In reality, kids grow, parents age, divorces happen, and jobs change, forcing us to adjust to suit new circumstances. We learned this when my father had strokes, and we fought to keep him involved in our annual tree fetch — a ritual that he’d started.
Decorating for Christmas was a task my dad adored, and finding the perfect tree was a contemplative task. At Nick’s, the sheep farm with a few trees we went to every year, he studied spruce, fir, and balsam. When he found a promising one, he shook the snow off a branch, picturing how the lights would drape. Most trees were too fat, too full, and after what seemed like forever, my dad finally made his decision.
Our family repeated the tree-fetching ritual year after year
The older I got, the less I minded my father’s measured pace. I didn’t grow less impatient, just more appreciative. We kept coming to Nick’s, and the trip unfolded sweetly and predictably. When my father asked our opinions, I knew that voting for a fuller Christmas tree was useless. The request for input was an opportunity for us to agree with his vision. Once he cut the tree down with his rusty handsaw, we dragged it to a clearing for a snapshot. The three of us beamed beside our scrawny tree, a scarf of impossibly soft hills behind us.
Dad took pictures using modest Kodaks and flimsy disposables, tracking time, and the expansion of our family. First, we added Jack, my husband-to-be, and then our first son. I valued the moment, a spot in the year that always happened.
So, when Dad had strokes, going from a spry and goofy 70-year-old to a stunned and humbled fellow, we had to keep him connected. The first year, we couldn’t bring him because he was just regaining his strength. But when we brought the tree to my parents’ house, we drank hot cocoa at the kitchen table and told him Nick said hello.
The author’s brother Nate drove her dad to the Christmas trees on a four-wheeler.
Courtesy of Amy Halloran
After my dad’s strokes, we were determined to include him again
The next year, my husband was determined to get my dad back to Nick’s. The idea terrified me. How could we get a wheelchair up the stony field? My mother wouldn’t let it happen! Luckily, Jack ignored my resistance and made a plan with Nick to use a hay wagon, with a four-wheeler as backup, to get my father up to the trees.
When Jack proposed this, my parents said yes. They trusted him. He is a dancer and a tree surgeon, and when my dad was still able, he sometimes helped Jack at work. Wearing a hard hat, he dragged branches and helped lower limbs to the ground. Jack’s use of trigonometry to get the branches away from a house really impressed him. “He’s a wonder,” my dad said. Yes, he was, but this was the first time he’d be assisting anyone in a wheelchair up a half-frozen field.
My mom sent us off to the farm. We were a caravan of minivans, holding my sister and her daughters, my brother, my family, and my dad. My sister and I helped our kids out of their car seats and fit their mittens into place. We helped Dad transfer from the car to his wheelchair and pulled on his gloves.
The event went without a hitch. Most of us climbed onto the hay wagon, but it was too high to hoist my dad. Jack and my brother helped him on the four-wheeler, and my brother sat in front of him and drove. I was in awe that Jack had imagined this day into a new shape.
At the top, Jack and my brother transferred Dad back to his wheelchair and took turns pushing him through the patch of trees. The rolling was rough, so he didn’t survey every possible one, but he got a good sample. When he found what he wanted, Jack got him in place so he could saw it down himself.
Pictures of this day show a gray sky and patchy snow, all of us smiling. We were just a family fetching our Christmas trees, a normal and joyful thing. Did we lament that the day was different? We couldn’t, because the tradition was still repeating, just altered.
The author’s father sawed down his own Christmas tree every year.
Photo credit: Nate Halloran
We continued the tradition in this new way until my dad died
For the next dozen years, we kept going to Nick’s. Instead of using the four-wheeler, Jack — and later, our eldest son — towed my father uphill. They looked like beasts of burden, pulling the patriarch. Jack tied a length of rope to the chair, and stepped into the loop, pulling it up to his chest. We made our selections — ours was always sculptural, a twist of pine regrown from a stump. The one for my parents’ house went on the deck, so it could be 15 or 20 feet tall. We arranged ourselves at the outdoor photo studio and posed.
The year my father died, I don’t remember what happened.
We still get our tree at Nick’s. A young family now shares the tradition, and this makes me miss my father a little less. The trees are so tall that they’ve lost most of their lower limbs, and made a bed of needles. When the little boys run through the small forest, they kick up a terrific perfume of pine.
Their father is a tree surgeon, too, and this year climbed 15 feet up to cut down the top of a tree, which was still 20 feet of pine, to use at a community square. My family chose a 20-footer too, and have it on the deck that my youngest, a 21-year-old, built this summer. All of this rhymes with the traditions Dad began.
Family rituals don’t work because we repeat them by rote. They work because we thread a feeling through a moment, sewing up time. We work like tailors, making adjustments to keep everyone, living and remembered, inside.
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