After working out, I remembered we still needed a Christmas tree and stopped by a village on the way home where two farmers had competing Christmas tree businesses. I stopped at the first one, where we had bought trees previous years and looked around.
The farmer asked me what I needed. Regular room height, I said, about 2.30 meters. Any particular tree? he asked me. I said they all looked good to me, but no matter which one I picked, someone at home was likely to find something wrong with it.
I have a nice tree over here, he said, and took me around the corner, past the sold trees, where he had stashed a nice one. There was a tag on it reading, “Onkel Franz”. My uncle never showed up to get it today, so you can have it, he said. I had picked it out for him. He can pick out another one whenever he shows up.
It was like the Arnold Schwarzenegger of Christmas trees.
I paid. The farmer offered me a cup of punch, which had gone lukewarm as it was late evening and he was ready to close shop. He asked me where I was from and what had brought me to Austria. Work?
I thought about it and said, my love of Austria, actually. He seemed to like that. I unpacked my habitual conversational nugget about how my wife and I had debated where to move to from our last place in Japan, she for the United States and me for Austria. It’s an easily told anecdote, much-practiced. It makes me sound adventurous, maybe, but I wonder if maybe my wife was just more ready to face her past than I was.
He told me about a trip he had taken through the US ten years ago. Then I guess he had enough. Enough of this, he said. If we keep talking, I’ll get in the mood to travel again and you’ll get homesick. He said he’d deliver the tree sometime after the 20th of December and asked if I had any kids. I said I did, and he said he’d be careful that no one saw him bring the tree, which the Christkind officially brings on the 24th, blazing with candles. He remembered where our house was, he said he liked our fence.
I bought a tree
Posted in Metamorphosism
I admire you for being organized and forward-thinking.
We traditionally buy our tree on the 24th in the morning from whatever is left at the tree lots here in the 15th district. Then we start decorating, which reveals that — while we have 5 banana boxes full of decorations — the specific color in which we wnt to decorate this year is missing and I have to go to the christmas market to get some stuff, by which it is around 4 to 5 p.m. and there may have been creative decision obviating my scrounging mission, but no matter, whoever is decorating the tree this year is doing it, I’m drinking coffee somewhere, sometims I even leave as not to be underfoot.
And while this sounds incredibly hectic, it usually manages to be all in a fun atmosphere and pretty relaxed actually. usually.
that sounds like a nice system to me. my wife tells a story of when she was a little girl and her father went out on the 24th to get a tree and all they had left was one about a meter tall, with a forked trunk, scroungy and crooked. i feel sorry for my father-in-law, standing there with the only tree available, as his wife and two young daughters cried. that image motivates me to plan ahead on trees. btw, gamma and i were planning our summer barbecue party last night, speaking of forward-looking. really? she said, real fire-breathers?
Thank Mig…I haven’t been feeling particularly Christmasy and finally, after reading this one, I want a tree….RIGHT NOW. I am officially in the Christmas kind of mood.
I’ve been hearing a lot of French in the streets lately – some of the tree farmers who set up shop along 86th Street and around the corners appear to hail from Qu
Hi all,
First time hear I have just came across the site. We have an artificial tree, and usually put the tree and decorations up 13 days befor christmas and take them down 13 days after. But I think it sounds so christmassy to go to a farm and pick your tree. Have a great christmas.
sounds wonderful. i think it’s cool your wife and you were in japan before austria.