When my father died, there were many things we had to learn to do for the first time. Jobs such as finding a Christmas tree, carving meat and mowing the lawn were always his domain and were never taught or shared with his wife and daughters.
My sister, Joanna, and I were grown and on our own, but we always went home for Christmas. Year after year, thanks to Dad, our tree simply arrived. The details of its origin and selection were mysteries.
So when it came to facing our first holiday without him, Joanna and I weren't sure where to begin.
"It's got to be balsam fir," Mom said. "That's what your father always got. Those are the best."
"The best? Why?" I asked.
"Because they are, and that's what your father brought home."
I asked her where we should get one. "Oh, I don't know. A good tree place," she said. She would be of no further help as she struggled, alone now, to attempt writing cards.
On the Internet, Joanna found out that balsam firs have a narrow, spire-like crown. I consulted people about trees, and then my friend Karen invited us to join her and her boyfriend, Frank, on their drive to a tree farm a couple of hours outside the city.
"Surely," I said to Joanna, "this was the sort of 'good tree place' Mom must have meant."
It would take all day but it was probably our best chance of finding the right tree, and seemed easier than hunting in gas stations or churchyards.
I told Karen we were looking for a balsam fir. "They will absolutely have it," she said.
Karen pursued most things with a view to efficiency and style, so I imagined we were going to an elite country store that specialized in perfect Christmas trees.
We arrived at the farm but found no store, just a vast and silent landscape of snow-covered trees. Apparently, to select your own you needed an axe. After looking around, we found a few precut trees leaning against a small cabin, the farm's office.
"Are those balsam firs?" I asked a man inside.
"Nope. Spruces. And pines," he said. "If it's balsam you want, you've got to go to the back."
He motioned outward. "Take the path along there and go over the fence into the next acre. You should see a few of them."
The man handed me an axe. I guess he could tell we were city people.
Karen and Frank picked one of the bushy precut trees, then we went in search of a balsam fir. "Look for the narrow spire-like crown!" Joanna hollered as we trudged along the field.
We walked and walked. The snow was high and more was falling. I couldn't see how it was possible to tell which ones had the right crown — they were all obscured by tufts of snow.
"There. That's a crown!" Karen said.
"Do you think so?" Joanna asked.
"Sure. Totally," Karen said through chattering teeth. "With a spire."
"Really?" I said.
It was cold. The wind snapped. Better to be unsure than to go home empty-handed. Joanna held the tree and Frank made the first blow against the bark.
Hours later, we arrived at Mom's house. She was out, so we decided to surprise her. Joanna and I dragged the tree across the threshold and trussed it up into its holiday resting place. To us it looked glorious, like the trees that had always been in the same place.
We heard Mom return from her errands and waited quietly for her to find us in the living room. Mom took one look. "That's a spruce," she said. "Not a balsam fir."
"Are you sure?"
Mom sighed. "I know that a spruce has those thin needles, and thinner branches. They can't always take the weight of the decorations."
Joanna picked up one of the heavier ornaments. Sure enough, it bent the branch and began to slide off.
"What about the crown?" Joanna said.
We looked up. The treetop, free of snow, didn't look very spire-like. Maybe out in the cold back acre we had imagined it. Or perhaps through the prism of my mother's grief she hadn't remembered what the right tree was.
"Are you sure Dad always got a balsam fir?
"Well, I think so. He always got a good tree."
On Christmas Eve, we sat in the living room around a crackling fire. The tree glowed with lights and decorations — fewer than in other years, selected for their lighter weight.
Dad's face beamed from the photograph that stood in the centre of the mantle. To my surprise, it wasn't helplessness or the weight of grief that I felt, but the sweet closeness of him.
It was better that we had the wrong tree, that we wouldn't succeed in the jobs that had belonged to him — the jobs that would always belong to him. We would keep him beside us in the imperfect places where he was missing, and the helpless moments when we would forever need him.
Gillian Kerr lives in Toronto.
Illustration by Sylvia Nickerson.
