By Popular Demand: The Great Tree-Knocking-Over incident of 2008

We had a little tree for Christmas last year when were stuck in that truly craptacular apartment in Waikiki. We had arrived on the Island December 10, and our house wasn’t ready for us. So, we lived there and muddled through as best a family of five can in a two-bedroom apartment. That is poorly, at least for me. I got a total of zero nights of decent sleep in the 29 days we lived in that place.

But, I digress. We had a little tree, no more than 24 inches at its best. We put the Snoopy tree blanket around it as it sat on the glass table. That glass table…that mother of toddler facial bruises that it was…was the worst, but it was home to last year’s Christmas tree. Our first Hawaiian Christmas.

It was weak at best. But it sufficed. We had the tree, and watched the Grinch and “Charlie Brown Christmas” on Youtube on the old laptop, and we made it through.

This year, I had hoped that we could do better. After all, we were in our house, and have been here almost a year. It’s become our home, and our kids, as one of their Godfather’s once said, “Dude, they are old enough to remember this stuff now…make with a tree!”

And so, with that in mind, all three kids and I made a sojourn to the Waikele K-Mart. I’ll admit I didn’t even consider a live tree, although they were available at K-Mart, and elsewhere. They cost way too damn much here, and there’s nowhere to plant it after the fact, and in this economy, I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay that much for something that’s going to die and leave needles all over that I have to vacuum up, not to mention the fact that I was still unsure if the kids would be able to handle having the tree out and about.

I am certain that there are families that have children in a variety of quantities and ages who manage to enjoy having their Christmas Tree out and about in various states of repose. I’m sure “John and Kate Plus Eight” have a tree in everyone’s room, and everyone behaves, as they fear, quite rightly I would think, that Kate might actually bite their heads off both figuratively, and perhaps, well, I‘ll leave it there...

But, I was concerned as it relates to my children’s ability to co-exist with a large fake tree adorned with cool things under which at some point presents would appear.

Call me crazy.

You see, my children are an interesting amalgamation of personages: the twins are four now. Their little sister is two. They can communicate across the board now and work together on any number of missions, both productive and destructive.

The kids and I put the tree together in the foyer of our upstairs area, which is a common area in between everyone’s bedrooms. While I shall avoid, out of good taste the opportunity to rail against the term “Easy to Install,” I am pleased to say that we got it done in something less than two hours. There is only one piece of furniture in the landing area, and that is the Wife’s Grandfather’s old Leather Easy chair. It is more often than not an open area that they bring their toys into and have a variety of adventures and so forth. The tree made it through the first night, and the kids were promised a tree-trimming with Mommy and Daddy a few nights later as work schedules allowed.

While the tree was an object of interest the first few days before the ornaments went up, it was a casual one at best. There was interest when we put it up and I added lights, but without the ornaments, it was a bit dull to their sensibilities. They left it alone, and that, I am sorry to say, gave me the false sense of security that would later prove problematic.

The tree survived, and was left very much to its own devices for the first few days of its time with us. It had a place of prominence in the main foyer upstairs, abreast the largest window in our home. It was a prominent feature in our daily lives those days, those all too brief days…as we awoke in the morning, it was among the first things we saw.

Those were good days. Those four days that the tree lasted.

As I said, the first two, it was just a tree with lights. Then we did the ornaments…and all Snoop broke loose. Once the tree was adorned with Snoopy, and colorful balls, birdies, and angels, and lacrosse sticks, and toy soldiers, and, man, I fear to say it as the kids might wake up and run down here and tackle the computer….once S-A-N-T-A showed up on the tree, the sheer enthusiasm alone was nearly enough to blow a hole in the kid-waiting-for-present-time-continuum….

And the event was fraught with Holiday albums: Johnny Mathis, Charlie Brown, and Sinatra, along with John Denver and The Muppets, carried us though an evening of Pizza, Spicy Ahi, and Egg Nog. That everyone’s stomachs were off the next day is irrelevant. Mele Kalikimaka…

So we trimmed the tree and it was good. And the children were told that the tree was to look at, and not to play with. The more delicate ornaments were either put high atop our glorious six-foot artificial tree from K-Mart, or they were tucked away for safe keeping. We talked about where some of the ornaments were from, and each of the kids clearly had their favorites. Little Bear loved the Snoopy ornaments. Much like her Mother, which explains the bevy of them on the tree. The Girl liked Snoopy too, but she enjoyed far more the ones that had pictures on them: some of her and her twin brother, and another that was a wedding favor at her Aunt and Uncle’s wedding.

I took that picture that they used. Took the ones of the twins too.

The boyo liked the ones that looked like “houses” but are actually replicas of old-school ornaments of church houses. He liked the one that looked like Gracie too. I like that one too.

And the tree was very welcome in our home. The weather here, which rarely wavers, did in fact just that, and there was a period of heavy rain so hard that the twins pre-school was cancelled. It was one of those time that I really understood that I am still an East Coast guy, as I said, “What, people can’t drive in this? C’mon…” Much like people from Minnesota ride people from Ohio for their small amounts of snow, and people from Buffalo ridicule people from New Jersey (at their peril…) and people from Maryland laugh out loud at people from Georgia who cancel school when it snows 1 inch. It’s all relative I suppose.

But the storms were pretty severe, and I saw some serious lightning and there were flash floods all over the Islands. This relates to our story in the manner in which it meant we were homebound a bit more, and as Daddy is not one to throw extra TV at the problem, we were upstairs a bit more, and the tree was right there…and it had all this cool stuff on it.

I should have known it was short for the house when school was cancelled. It was midmorning when I heard the crash. I had already been upstairs several times, and I had give a few timeouts for messing with the tree, though truth be told, I knew it was only a matter of time. I had gone downstairs to start on lunch, when I heard it.

Oddly, if not for the twins reaction, I might not have thought anything of the slight shuffling and crunchy noise I heard. But, alas, I heard the thunderous thuderousness of the boyo hopping down the steps…and felt a sense of dread as he reached the bottom step, calling out:

“Um, Daaad?”

To which I replied: “What is it Boyo?”

“Um, Dad, Did you hear that crash?”

And I looked over, as he stood at the bottom of the stairs, his face scrunched up in thought. And as I flew to the stair well, and bounded up the stairs, I knew halfway up that this tree was not long for our house.

And there it lay, our first genuine Tree, all six-feet of it, fully knocked over on its right side, the little bear standing on her great-grandfather’s leather chair, truly resplendent in her joy at having reached the ornament of Snoopy kicking a soccer ball.

I sighed. And then, I picked the whole tree up, and moved it into our bedroom, moved Grandpa’s Chair, and gave the tree a new home.

The kids would later earn visitation rights, which became far more popular once gifts started collecting beneath the tree. Truth be told, it has turned out to be a blessing: the tree has survived, and I’ve enjoyed having the chance to sleep in a room with a Christmas tree.

In addition, I wrote in my last column about “Grandpa’s Radio Time.” That might never have occurred had not the tree been there. That first Sunday, when I gathered around the radio with the kids before bed was motivated by a number of things, one of which was the kids desire to visit their Christmas Tree.

And as I wrote last time-it has been the beginning of something really cool for me and the kids.
The kids consistently ask for “radio time” during the week now. We had one last night, and caught the end of a cool broadcast of Tchaikovsky. The kids enjoyed it, and I asked them if they liked the radio time just because of the tree…and the presents...

The girl told me, when I asked her “No Daddy…” and then proceeded to dance around the room, at least in the moment oblivious of the tree.

I hope it continues.

Happy holidays, and thank you for reading.