Mission Accomplished

It had been a rough year for our family. The year, which in retrospect, we’ve come to reference as “the dark time.”  We battled through that year by keeping our heads down, determined to just remain standing. Knowing that everywhere we went, everything we did, people were watching.  To see how we were doing.  To make sure we were keeping it together.  Which, when you’re not keeping it together, is the very last thing you want people to be doing.  

Money was really tight that year.  The thought of Christmas brought an almost desperate stress.  How in the world were we going to be able to do anything to celebrate Christmas that year?  How were we even going to be able to afford a Christmas tree?  Normally we bought our Christmas tree every year from the Boy Scouts. But that year it was an extravagant expense which we couldn’t afford.  That year everything was different.  Getting our Christmas tree would have to be different, too.  

So on a Saturday morning in early December I loaded up our kids and grabbed a handsaw out of the garage.  Determined to make Christmas time as special as possible, I told them we were headed out to the woods to cut down a Christmas tree.  I wasn’t sure if it was legal or not, so I decided we would go way out on a logging road, as far as we could drive.  Because if I was going to risk illegally cutting down a Christmas tree, I at least didn’t want to ruin it for the kids by getting caught.

We listened to a favorite Christmas CD in the car as we headed out.  I tried to assure the kids about what we were going to do. That this was “an adventure.”  I tried to give them a false sense that I knew all about how to do this.  Hoping the whole way that they wouldn’t guess that the real reason we were doing this was because it was the only way we could afford a tree that year.

By the time we made it out to where I had planned to look for our tree, there was several feet of snow piled up on the side of the old logging road we were on.  I pulled to the side and stopped the car, and we all piled out.  We walked a little while, picking our way through the snow in our tennis shoes, trying to find a good tree.  One I could actually reach from the road.  I didn’t really care what the tree even looked like.  My biggest hope for this morning was actually just that it be a fun Christmas memory for the kids.  A fun Christmas memory in the middle of what had been a really rough year.

The kids were excited.  It was a lovely day, clear and cold.  They weren’t really sure exactly how this was all going to work.  But we were “on an adventure.”  And they were eager to find our tree and cut it down.  

We found the tree.  It was a small spruce, just a few feet off the shoulder of the road.  I knelt down on the snow bank and started to cut while the kids all stood behind me excitedly chattering about cutting down our own tree, and what a great tree it was.

I finished cutting the tree and moved my position so that I could grab hold of it to drag it to the car.  In the process, I made the mistake of stepping down on the snow bank.  The bank of newly fallen snow had held up really well when I laid across it to saw the tree trunk.  But when I stepped down onto it, it gave up, and I quickly sunk in up to my hip.  

I may have quietly uttered a curse under my breath.

I levered myself onto my other leg and my hands in order to pull that leg out of the hole in the snow.  But when my leg came up out of the hole my shoe was no longer on my foot.

It’s possible that I uttered another cuss word at that point.

Still balancing on my hands and my one shoed foot, with my now-socked foot in the air, I looked down into the hole where my leg had been just seconds ago.  And sure enough, there in the bottom of the hole was my shoe.  Although I’m puzzled now why it was that I thought I needed to actually look in the hole to see if my shoe was there.

And, I probably swore again then.

For the next few minutes I wriggled and scooted, lying down across that snow bank again, this time muttering almost constantly and no longer quietly.  No matter how far I stretched, or which way I moved, I couldn’t quite get my hand down into that hole as deep as my foot had gone.  I couldn’t quite reach that shoe.  

All I’d wanted was to have a fun, memorable, tree-cutting adventure with our kids.  A moment of fun which they could remember from this otherwise dark year.

Swearing like a sailor, I kept at it, forcing myself to stretch just a little further, and then a little further still, moving my position to get just a teensy bit more leverage.  Desperately trying to retrieve my shoe so that I could walk out of this God-forsaken forest and drive back to town with our flipping Christmas tree.  

The kids weren’t chattering anymore.  There were no more giggles coming from them.  The excitement was gone.  They were silent.  And once again, as had been the case so often in that year, they were worried.  So much for our fun, memorable Christmas experience.

I finally grabbed hold of my shoe and pulled it from the hole and slipped it back onto my foot.  I grabbed the stupid spruce tree by its upper branches and started hauling it behind me. Dammit all anyway.  Nothing had been easy about that year.  I don’t know why I had expected this to be any different.

The kids were all up ahead of me, walking five-abreast in a line toward the car.  I followed, dragging the stupid tree, and cussing a blue streak.  The front of my sweatshirt and my jeans were soaked from lying in the snow trying to retrieve my stupid shoe.

It wasn’t until we were nearly to the car that I noticed all five of our kids’ shoulders shaking.  I stopped in my tracks.  Were they crying?  I watched for a second or two trying to figure out what was happening.  I finally said something so they’d stop and turn around.

When they did, it was obvious that they were working hard.  All of them.  Trying to keep it together.  Trying to keep straight faces.  But a second or two under my irritated scrutiny and the dam burst for one of them.  And within seconds of that first snort the other four each doubled over.

“Oh my gosh, Mom, that was hysterical!”

“Yeah! We had to start walkin’ away ‘cause we couldn’t not laugh!”

“You were so funny, Mom!  Layin’ in the snow tryin’ to get your shoe out of that hole!  Cussin’ the whole time!”

“Haha, yeah.  Gettin’ madder and madder!  That was pretty funny!”

“You’re funny, Mom.”

It took me a few minutes to catch up to their enjoyment of the situation.  As I wrestled the tree into the back of the car, hearing their enthusiastic re-telling of the events, I eventually started to smile.

“This was really fun, Mom,” they said as we all piled back into the car to head home with our new Christmas tree.

“Yeah, can we do this again next year?”

“This was way more fun that just getting the tree from the Boy Scouts!”

All I had wanted was to have a fun, memorable Christmas experience with the kids. What I’d envisioned had been somewhat more of a Norman Rockwell kind of outing.  Instead, I had lost my shoe, become frustrated and angry, gotten soaked, and had sworn enough to make a logger proud.  And in the process our kids had a great time.  A fun, memorable Christmas experience.

To this day anytime someone brings up favorite Christmas time memories this is still one of the first stories that gets told.  

“Remember that time Mom lost her shoe in that snow bank while we were cutting down our Christmas tree?!”  Followed by gales of laughter, and imitations of me.  

“Haha, yeah.  That was so funny!” And they’ll retell the story, again and again.

For me, it was a lesson in accepting that what I plan may not be how things actually end up.  And that what may seem disastrous in the moment, may actually end up being priceless.   

All I’d wanted was to give our kids a fun, memorable Christmas experience that year. 

Yeah. Mission accomplished.