THE PERFECT CHRISTMAS TREE

THE PERFECT CHRISTMAS TREE

A fictional story inspired by a non-fictional event

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We lived in an apartment on the 6th floor of a 12 family Brooklyn apartment house. Living in that area offered many advantages. It was close to my job in Manhattan and my husband's in the borough of Queens.

Every corner hosted some sort of shop whether it was a deli, dinette, drug store - didn't matter - whatever you needed you found it.

Although we had our clothing stores, a trip to the nearest mall was a short one and driving along Emmons Avenue, gave us a breathtaking view of the Bay. We enjoyed every inch of the drive and depending on traffic there were times when it seemed as though we crept along one inch at a time.

My husband, Luke often joked about the ”poor souls” living on Long Island who needed, every winter to shovel their driveways and clean their walks. Every summer required tree trimming and grass cutting, and every fall you had mounds a leaves to rake.

He seemed to forget that while our landlord shoveled the sidewalk, and we had no grass to mow or leaves to rake, we still needed to shovel the snow from around our car that sat at the curb.

City snow plows can cause more snow drifts than the falling snow. All too often we found our car prisoner in the mounds of snow heaped around it by the plows.

We planned someday, moving to either a larger apartment with its own parking garage or maybe even a home in Queens with its own garage - someday when we decided to increase our family and give our puppy some badly needed company. However, that particular year wasn't the time and so our small five-room apartment suited us just fine.

Holiday season was approaching, and I wanted it to be extra special since this would be our first Christmas as a married couple.

As soon as the stores began setting up for Christmas, I began shopping.

After looking around the apartment I knew what kind of decorations I wanted, and began my search store after store.

My purchases included wall decorations of every kind, tabletop ornaments, a wreath for our door, electric candles and rope lighting for our windows, a cute little Christmas tree neckerchief and hat for our six-month-old puppy, Trouble, and naturally, the most important of them, all the perfect Christmas tree for our very first Christmas.

We didn't use our dining room often and many of our friends made comments about the extra rent being paid and that it was just an extra room to clean.

Yet, my husband and I wanted it for those times when we planned to entertain families and friends. With the kitchen being so small, we found that the dining room came in very handy for dinners on such occasions as Mother's Day and Father's Day, not to mention Thanksgiving, and our Christmases yet to come.

Having that extra room, however, did increase our rent but with the holidays around the corner I knew we made the right choice of apartments.

For a whole week after work, I scrubbed the apartment: waxed the furniture, vacuumed our bedroom rug, and steam cleaned the ceramic tile floors in the kitchen and bathroom. I made sure our new holiday tablecloth and napkin set was cleaned and ironed and the China and crystal sparkled.

We were now one week away from Christmas, and it was time to buy our tree.

Walking the streets of Brooklyn NY during the summer one could never imagine seeing almost every corner roped off and jammed with pine trees of every shape and size and, yet those corner kiosks never seemed out of place during our Christmas season.

With so many trees from which to choose, you would think that finding one would be easy. It should be easy, yet according to Luke, I made it as difficult as possible. We already looked at dozens of trees and none came close to my expectations.

As I said it was our first Christmas as a married couple and I wanted the tree to be perfect

Luke laughed at me when I pouted after telling him that. He laughed again when I threw a wet dishcloth at his head for laughing at me in the first place.

We both laughed together as he put his arms around me and agreed that we should try and make this Christmas the best, although he doubted anything would be better than it already was.

How could I be angry with him when he said that being married to me made every day perfect to begin with?

Yet, he gave in, and after dinner and a dog walk, we began once again to hunt to find the perfect tree,

It had begun to snow the morning before and continued throughout the night. As we walked down our apartment’s front steps, we noticed the snow was finally beginning to slow. We looked at the car and I decided since there were Christmas tree tent kiosks on almost every corner, digging out the car from under the cold, white, wet, blanket wasn't worth the time and trouble.

We'd walk. Again!

Since the corner stand closest to our apartment seemed to have replenished their supply of trees, we stopped there first. I smiled as I thought we'd found the perfect tree. It leaned up against the temporary wall at the back of the tent.

At my urging, Luke pulled the tree away from the wall, and as I walked around it for inspection, I guessed in horror!

The back of the tree, the part that leaned against the wall was almost bare; it was almost flat.

That would never do!

Luke leaned the tree back against the wall and we continued to look. Half hour later, we left the kiosk empty handed and somewhat disappointed. We walked to the next corner we continued our hunt.

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