Turning to look more closely at the bushes on my right, curious about what had been planted, my interest stopped at a small spruce and I unexpectedly announced, “Christmas in July,” momentarily surprising. Rather than holding with the moment though and thinking of tradition, I questioned whether or not I remembered ever having had a Colorado blue spruce—as I’d identified it by its tag—for a Christmas tree, as if my imagination needed validation.
I remembered going with my dad to tree stands of tightly closed trees delivered in early December. In rows they leaned with tags against poles. We’d walk between every row, stopping as he chose one then another to examine for fullness and height for the living room ceiling. Each tree he stood upright then carefully opened its branches as they resisted. I learned pine needles were long and in groups and spruce needles were short and single and made my own investigations. When the correctly chosen tree came off the porch and into the house, it was put in a stand. My shared job was to keep the stand full of water so our tree stayed fresh until Christmas day.
Back at Meherabad, a month later, one of my first books read was from the Mitford series. When I reached a certain page, I turned its corner down because it’s the day before Christmas. Father Tim, a retired Episcopal minister, serving as needed, who’d married his wife Cynthia in his sixties, is contemplating the beauty of their family tree. His reminiscence is of the different trees that he’d had over the years: “white pine, cedar, blue spruce, and Fraser fir.”* So the little blue spruce had qualified.
My realization is, “As we are open in our relationship to nature, and to the mystery of life, we are apt later to find a sign telling us a connection questioned, had been true.
*Jan Karon, Mitford series, Shepherds Abiding