The paper tree

Searching for the spirit of/and Christmas spirit, a tree, burnt cakes and other impediments!

Dec 28, 2023

Hello dear friends, family and readers far and wide. However you’ve spent your Christmas I hope it’s been filled with love and sharing, peace and joy, a heap of smiles, laughter that made your belly and cheeks hurt and chocolate.

Here on the hill, miraculously, Christmas Day turned into a perfectly quiet, gentle, day; the sound of Seth’s diversely festive Christmas music mix tapped a rhythm with the bubbles in the champagne, phone calls were made to and from old friends, we even took a rare family walk because the sun appeared to celebrate the day with us too.

Making the day happen though, good grief I could have lived without that!

“Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.”
― Ray Bradbury

Saturday - two days to find my Christmas spirit, bake, shop, wrap, create something wonderful for the day.

06h00 - an ungodly hour for the first day of Christmas break. Regardless, I am already in the kitchen clattering pans in full cake bake preparation for Roger, delivery promised before Christmas Day. I glare at the smoking lump of iron smoldering on the hearth, willing it to behave, the room is freezing. It doesn’t, I throw on pine cones and poke the ashes, the cones catch immediately and puff more smoky sparks and ash about the kitchen.

A rumpled vision appears, apparently I’m making unacceptable noise for such an unearthly hour, the result is grumpy. I smile a good morning which somehow includes an are you surprised glance at the smoldering reason and make it a fresh pot of coffee by way of an apology - it helps but barely.

I prepare two cakes just in case but both are cremated on the bottom when I place them on the cooling rack. An unrepeatable torrent of abuse bounces about the kitchen. My beautiful famous french brand oven, as over worked as it was over priced is even more temperamental than stove, in absolutely no way am I culpable.

Damn!

This is not a good start! I have no choice but to make another, though there isn’t enough chocolate for the promised cake and time is running out. Lemons… I have lemons and it’s Roger’s second favourite, not very Christmassy but a zesty compromise. I rattle more pans, gather ingredients, mix, beat, spoon the mixture into a loaf tin, place it in the oven and I watch it like a hungry hawk waiting to pounce.

I dress finally, step out of my smoky lemon cake scented kitchen into a still gloomy morning slowly revealing blankets of soft grey cloud. Another day coloured bland despite a sunny forecast but it’s not raining, I breath an audible sigh of relief as I attach Wolfie’s lead for a walk and his morning needs. A magpie crosses the lane as we leave, I search hopefully but in vain for a second - “Hello Mr Magpie, how is Mrs Magpie today?” I don’t have a hat, I mime instead. This day is beginning to take a shape I dread.

I successfully deliver the lemon cake, still warm in its wrapping it smells divine. Roger agrees, he eats three quarters of it in a two hour unscheduled coffee break. In need of company, he is talkative, reminiscing and no matter the time, I don’t have the heart to leave. Eventually, with a Christmas hug and my apologies I have no choice. He declines my invite to share our Christmas lunch. He always does, it always saddens me

12h00 - it’s very late for calling by the farm for grain and Pierre is nowhere to be seen. I call his mobile. Two seconds later he skips from the house in shorts and sandals, smiling through the sun now glinting on deep farmyard mud and muck. I peer over at the granary where I know he keeps his grain. There is a swamp to cross and I’m wearing good shoes. As I try to map a route that won’t involve a bog trot Pierre walks expertly straight through with not a splash or a slip to show for it. I follow, cross my fingers and take the exact steps he takes. I am not as expert, good boots and clean jeans gather spatters of slimy farmyard filth but I remain upright, just. We fill three bags together. Pierre however, another single man in need of company, chatters away about the horrendous price of everything, general village gossip and another 45 minutes pass before I can leave. I have missed the quiet shopping slot during lunch hours, nobody shops in France at lunchtime.

Damn!

I drive my poor old VW like a race car home, burst into the kitchen, throw a sandwich in front of my two bored boys—how they can be bored when there is still no sign of the Christmas spirit defeats me—run out of the door, shopping bags flying and arrive at the supermarket still in muddy boots and jeans, ignore any unamused stares—do I smell bad?—finish surprisingly quickly and return loaded with bags of food and last minute gifts breathing a sigh of relief. Alas, too soon… I have forgotten the maple syrup to make Will Cooper’s bacon jam and streaky bacon for the capon.

Damn!

And, we still don’t have a Christmas tree.

Double damn! Or something like that, words that mean the same!

For 15 years we have designed and built a Christmas tree. An ecological, recyclable piece of artwork. Family discussion begins somewhere in the middle of November, designs are drawn up by each of us, agreed upon and handed to William to construct in his atelier. With so little time left, this year we are severely limited however and of course we can’t agree on anything. Seth would like a tree that looks like a real tree, rather than something I then cart off to my veggie patch for beans or squash to grow up. He is adamant.

15h30 - The two of us set off in the car on a clandestine mission to a forest owned by friends. We stick to animal tracks because I know there are no suitable conifers on the main path. But, this is woodland I am not aquatinted with or I would have chosen a different track, too quickly we are, no, Seth is, distracted by a pile of rotting, rusty cars and bikes long abandoned to the elements. I briefly remind him why we are here but my words fail to register. He is in a mini Seth heaven, all thought of a Christmas tree forgotten… There are old bikes! And renovating old bikes, his passion.

The scrap heap in the woods- renovating old bikes, his most recent passion.

Hours later with empty hands, we return, our path, lit up by the light of a fabulously huge and bright, almost full moon which helps only in highlighting the absence of a tree! My head is ringing with Seth’s incessant, excited chatter and questions about how we might be able to lever the cars from two Mobylettes trapped beneath. We will need the carjack, crow bar(s), a saw to cut away the trees growing through every rotten, rusty hole.

We, as in me and he.

I remind him I am just one woman!

Who knows of a tree we can borrow, albeit, horror of all horrors, an artificial one.

Thirty minutes later, starving and more than a little humbuggish about the entire Christmas farce we begin to unpack an ancient bag of pieces. A jigsaw puzzle of decrepit parts that perhaps, 100 years ago, once assembled, might possibly have resembled a Christmas tree. This one just crumbles in our hands like parchment. Tiny dark green shreds of tree float to the floor, I wonder, momentarily if they will take on a new form?

The shape of the spirit of Christmas perhaps?

At this point any shape would do…

They don’t, not even vaguely, even in the dim light of late evening.

We are tired, hungry and still treeless.

“Two things are necessary for great achievement: a plan and not quite enough time.”
― Leonard Bernstein

Christmas Eve I wake before dawn with a tree shaped black cloud hovering somewhere between food nightmares and wrapping of presents nightmares. I’d hoped to be finished with paper and tape yesterday—when does this holiday begin? I open shutters to another grey morning and eight woolly faces peering through the bars on the front gate.

No! Not today, please not today!

I ignore them, coffee has to come first. I think of Seth as I sit looking around our home still devoid of any sign of Christmas and less than 24 hours to go. He is young enough to care but too old to show me how much—don’t worry darling, I know. I have an idea. But can do nothing about it until both husband and son are awake. I have been warned.

By late morning, the sheep have been enticed back to their field with buckets of barley, the fence repaired and I’ve tiptoed around for more than two hours recreating something edible and festive out of two burnt chocolate cakes—it’s amazing what one can do with a knife and a few crystallised clementines—I’ve been back to the local supermarket praying a maple syrup miracle might be lurking on a shelf (prayers answered) and returned the bags of dark green dust that were the artificial tree to it’s owner with blushing apologies. When I return husband and son are awake, not dressed but up. I can begin carrying my boxed up plan down from the attic. One after the other, 15 in total—less than a third of those that remain—some so heavy I have to drag them, thump, thump, thump, down the stairs. I instruct both husband and son to stay in the kitchen until I’ve finished, they happily oblige.

A book tree is something we have already undertaken so I know of the necessity of precise positioning in order that the circle doesn’t fall in on itself as it grows, to erect it perfectly takes time. Also, there is another necessity when building a tree from books one hasn’t seen in years, each one has to picked up and a few words read. A book tree takes almost tunnel vision to complete. My tunnel has windows though, where tiny shards of light map out ideas. I wonder about taking a line from each book, rearranging them into a poem, or even a story. I lose an hour, more even, jotting down words and phrases, putting books aside that I would like to read again. I refill a whole box with these and have to bring down another and despite being as careful as possible not to make the base too large in the hope of saving a little time, twice I have to begin again; placing the largest books on the bottom, graduating slowly upwards in spirals until finally, way beyond lunchtime, I have built the perfect cone. It isn’t huge but it is something that to me, passes as a Christmas tree. It was after all, trees to begin with.

I spend a too long again stringing lights, filling gaps with mistletoe and small branches of fir gathered from the a past Christmas tree now 30 meters tall growing in the garden, add a few snowballs and step back.

As I feast my eyes on the literary Christmas tree vision before me, hot tears of relief burn my eyes and throat…

Of course, relief is short lived when I look around at the empty boxes and discarded books abandoned everywhere, when I realise nobody has eaten since breakfast and it’s mid afternoon, that I still have all the food preparation to take care of and not a gift is wrapped.

But we have a tree, it looks beautiful and my fiercest critics agree.

The spirit of Christmas is present!

On Christmas Day morning I wake to a heavy frost and mist hanging over the hills, a veil slowly opening to reveal a perfect day. Every tree outside is decorated in glistening frosty shapes far more expertly than I could ever hope for.

I vow, probably as I do every year, that next year Christmas will be simple…