I can’t say for sure that it happened precisely on the winter solstice, but if it did not, it should have.
I had been self-medicating my deep winter funk by huffing woodland- pine-scented bubble bath, when my pal Molly had stopped by. She had a Ziploc bag filled with hand-cut snowflakes and an elementary-school- strong admonition that it was time for me to get some holiday cheer into the house.
We taped some of the flakes on the kitchen windows, and a few days later, we headed to a tree stand, selected as much for its role in preserving local forest health as the super-cute on-premises reindeer.
We chose a tall, slim pine to fill the chimney between the piano and the stairwell, and I followed, to the letter, instructions from the Christmas Tree Research Center in Nova Scotia, Canada, watering regularly and keeping the strings of lights on 24-7, to make sure my ‘baum kept its needles.
A few weeks later, as I removed a string of bubble lights bought as homage to my grandfather, I noticed whorls of pale green bursting from branch ends all over the tree.
As the days had lengthened and I had begun to emerge from my chill, the tree, too, had broken bud, emerging from the dark into the glimmering light of spring and the potential of the new season. Dana Coffield, The Denver Post
