merry christmas.

i never really noticed how much of a big deal it is to get an actual tree for christmas. growing up, we busted out the same tattered boxes holding pieces of our fake (but awesome) tree from our crawl-space... straightened out the wire "branches" piece by piece and stuck them into the designated slots on the plastic "trunk" of our tree. i loved that tree. and every single ornament we put on it. baby's first christmas, popsicle sticks glued together in some sort of awkward "frame" holding that year's school photo (c'mon, you know what i'm talking about.) it's hanging by a thread (literally) and your mom insisted on putting up all throughout high school. actually for me, that's a lie. we stopped putting that tree up some time in middle school, but it's one of the few fond memories i hold onto.

some years had gone by, i moved to new york and never really had a tree of my own. until a few years ago when i was dating this character... we'll call, drew. he was living in my apartment (i made no errors in the wording of that sentence,) and without shedding too much negative light on this guy - one of his prize moments of our relationship was when he thought it'd be a good idea to bring a 7' tree into our modest sized railroad apartment in fort greene, brooklyn. not only did he bring this tree in, but had no intentions of watering, or trimming it -- and it just sat there... for months... until finally, i used all my sad upper body strength and dragged that thing out to the curb, dry needles everywhere.

a few years go by and now it's 2010. every november the streets of new york line up with farmers selling beautiful christmas trees. trees of all sizes. this year, we got lucky and one morning i woke up and there was a guy selling trees right across the street from our apartment. of course my first instinct, was that i wanted a tree. i knew we couldn't have a big one, but a charlie-brown christmas tree would suffice. every time i brought it up to david, he refused... and said trees are a pain the ass. i couldn't really argue because if i wanted a tree that badly, i would just go haul one over myself. guess no tree this year.

until one day i get home from work, open the door -- and the fresh smell of pine wafts through the hallway. all i see is this beautiful tree and a simple, "surprise... merry christmas," from david.