JustOlder

Wrestling with the Christmas Tree

We finally got our Christmas tree up but, as I write this, we are recouping with cups of hot cider and a box of Band-Aids. We’ve also started to speak to each other again, although we’re using very short sentences.

It started when we got the Christmas tree out of storage. I know that sounds simple enough, but I could probably sell tickets to the event because it always resembles one of those wrestling matches in the old movies, where the smoky crowd boos and screams, "Pound him! Twist ‘im into a pretzel!"

I’m convinced men and Christmas trees have a unique, if not complex, natural relationship that goes way back to historic woodsmen and their axes. Nature has a long memory you know, but that wouldn’t explain why a fake tree would give my husband so much trouble. Perhaps it contains just enough wood product to recall an ancient animosity, and that’s what makes it want to take my husband to the mat every year.

So Why'd You Get Married, Anyway?

Before I met and settled down with the love of my life, I asked lots of people what it was that made them decide to get married. No one ever gave me a cogent answer, or at least not one that satisfied me. Nothing they said was rational. Instead, it was always the usual, "Because we were in love," or, "We just wanted to be together." It was all emotion, and I couldn’t relate.

I waited a long time to get married, so of course I was asked why I stayed single so long. All I could say was that I had never met anyone I couldn’t live without. I still haven’t, but I met someone I didn’t want to live without. Now that I am married, I can’t give a rational answer to why I was willing to become half of a whole either, but I guess that isn’t as bad as it sounds.