The Pleasures of Life Dept

O Christmas Tree

Poor, r ust ed Chr istm as tree

By ruth Moose When water

is up to your waist, the last thing you think about is Christmas. And certainly not Christmas trees. You rescue what you can at hand. You bless sump pumps and those who make them. Same goes for wet vacuums. You are amazed that sofas can swim, but armchairs cannot. And you cr y over books. Thousands of pages, sodden wads of pages, glued together, their backs forever warped and bucked in humps and waves. How heavy they are as you cart them to the curb. How wasted their lives.

Hurricane Florence got all the publicit y, but the hurricane af ter got us. In A lbemarle, our usually sunny (and the site of my ar tist husband ’s studio) daylight basement ended up with nearly 3 feet of water. At least it was clear, cold and clean water, but still a f rightening sight. Here were my husband ’s sketches and paintings, ar t books, ar t supplies and f rames. His work ing easels and drawing board, paints and br ushes. It’s a sickening feeling to pull open a drawer of paint tubes and water pours out. Not to mention a lifetime collection of ar t books with glorious color reproductions of paintings he’d used for study and inspiration. In other sections of the basement he also had a woodwork ing shop f urnished with years of accumulated equipment and tools.

T hen there was the household par t of the basement with the water heater, f urnace and 35 -year-old food f reezer, all standing in water. Plus various assor ted items we’d stored over the years. Never had water, four sump pumps going simultaneously, receded so slowly. You can only haul f urniture out to dr y, watch the sk ies and wait. Pray. And when the water is gone, you wet vac and wet vac and wet vac. You hear the roar of the motor in your sleep.

T hen you begin to dr y out sketches and wipe of f oil paintings and cr y over lost watercolors who went to meet their medium. You open cabinet doors, and drawers and water pours out.

Somewhere in the flood I heard my librarian aunt’s voice when she said, more than once, she never tr usted basements. Neither did she like attics. “Basements are too wet,” she said, “and attics are too dr y.” At least I thought what we had stored in the attic was dr y and better dr y any day than wet, wet and wetter. But, miracle of miracles, af ter the water went, the air conditioner came back on, the water heater began to purr and the ancient food f reezer hummed its hear t out. So, I emptied and cleaned it and began all over again. T hir t y-five years old, hauled through four complete household moves, the f reezer kept going and going and going. Gave one hear t and hope.

In all that water and wetness, nobody thought about the Christmas tree until months later. We were too busy mopping and dr ying out and saving what could be saved. W hen it came time to do the tree, we remember what had been in some of those sodden boxes in the basement. T hat ar tificial tree I’d arg ued and fought against and finally been persuaded (for ecological reasons) to tolerate. Not accept. A ll our married life my husband and I had fought the real vs. ar tificial Christmas tree fight. And for years I’d won. Real was a cedar tree that permeated the whole house with the smell of Christmas. No ar tificial tree had ever come close to that. For years we’d had the advantage of family land to tromp as a family, choose and cut a tree. We never found the perfect tree. Just ones that could be trimmed or branches spliced to suf fice. It didn’t matter, as long as they were real. A ll Christmas trees when trimmed and lighted are beautif ul.

W hen family lands were no longer available, I had no choice but an ar tificial tree. Somehow the picture of my husband assembling those branches that still look and feel — to me — like giant green bottle br ushes, never matched the one in my memor y of tramping through the woods on a winter Sunday, k ids and dog ahead, a x and saw in hand, to bring home bundled and tied atop the station wagon, this year’s Christmas tree.

T hankf ully, the tree ornaments and decorations were in the attic. T he tree itself had been stored in boxes too big to go through the crawl space and had to go to the basement. T he basement flooded. So we had dr y ornaments and a r ust y tree. We dried out the branches, shook the r ust out, stuck them back into a shape that still looked like a pyramid of green bottle br ushes and said, “Merr y Christmas to all and to all a work ing sump pump.” OH

Ruth Moose taught creative writing at the University of North CarolinaChapel Hill for 15 years and tacked on 10 more at Chatham County Community College.