Barking up the right tree

By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

“Do you want to go out to Marmion Abbey and cut down your Christmas tree?” my editor asked me. “It will be fun. It’ll make a great story.”

Seeing visions of snowy fields, perfect, cone-shaped evergreen trees, steaming mugs of cocoa and my family joyfully singing “O Tannenbaum” as we found and cut down our own tree, I agreed. Maybe a little too quickly.

My husband, Tony, wasn’t so sure. “Look at my hands,” he said. “How do you think I keep them this soft? It’s by avoiding physical work.”

Then the temperature dropped for a week, making the outdoors the largest Sub-Zero freezer in the world, and Tony expressed more doubts. But the snow came—making for a picture-postcard winter world—and the temperatures rose almost to the freezing point, so we decided to go for it.

I checked the Marmion Abbey Web site (www.marmion.org) to get the necessary information, and told the kids.

Caroline, 7, was concerned about the trees’ feelings. “Does it hurt them to get cut down?” she asked. “Do they want to be cut down?”


Recalling the story of “The Littlest Christmas Tree,” I said, “Of course they want to be chosen and cut down. That’s the only way they get to be Christmas trees, and that’s what they’re meant to be.”

Frank, 5, didn’t really pay attention until it was time to get ready to go early on a Saturday afternoon and I told him to get his snow pants.

“Why do I need snow pants?” he asked.

“Because we have to go out into the farm field to find our Christmas tree,” I said.

“I didn’t know they had a farm at Home Depot,” he said.

Once I explained again, about going to the Christmas tree farm ourselves to get the tree, he was all for it. Especially when I said they would lend us a saw. Anything with tools is good by him.

So we all piled in the minivan, the one with the extended roof and the TV/VCR in the back. It’s a long drive from the North Side of Chicago to Aurora—especially when it takes a half-hour to get through the neighborhood in Saturday traffic.

But the kids were belted into their booster seats, “The Lion King” was on the VCR, and it was almost 30 degrees. What could be better?

The directions on the Web site said to take I-88 to Farnsworth Road, so with “The Circle of Life” and “Hakuna Matata” echoing in our heads, we drove past hotels and office buildings and subdivisions. Snow started to fall. We discovered we had no windshield washer fluid.

But the BP station at Farnsworth had plenty, and a bathroom and snacks. Minutes after leaving there, we turned into the tree farm.

It was everything the Web site promised—acres upon acres of trees, from little tiny ones 10-foot-plus giants. The clean white snow set off the dark branches, and the nice man by the trailer gave us a saw (for a $10 deposit) and a map. The trees were beautiful, and, of course, perfectly fresh, and the price ($30 each no matter the size) was right.

We soon found parking and a stretch of trees all about the right size. Of course, not before Caroline (who had fallen asleep on the way and woke up grumpy) complained that her toes were cold, her nose was cold, her fingers were cold and why did we have to come?

“Why do we have to walk so far?” she asked.

“This is supposed to be fun,” Tony told her. “So have fun.”

“I can’t get up,” Frank giggled after taking a tumble in his snowsuit.

But within minutes, something got to them. Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was the other kids laughing with their families. Maybe it was just the feeling that Christmas was coming. Whatever it was, they soon were running from tree to tree, liking each more than the last.

Fortunately, we didn’t have to narrow it down to just one; we needed two trees, having promised to bring one back for Tony’s mom and dad.

Soon we chose one, and Tony bent down with a grunt to cut it down. Much to his surprise, a sharp saw and a little effort brought it down in less than 30 seconds. He carried it to the van while kids played tag among the trees, and then came back to get another.

The total time we spent choosing and cutting the trees could have been no more than 25 minutes, and we were ready to head for home, just as the snow started flurrying again.

Or so we thought.

First, we had to hoist the trees to the top of the van, a full 7 feet high, and about two feet over my head, and secure them, if possible, with a tarp to shield them from the wind on the long drive home.

Getting them up wasn’t hard. But what we hadn’t counted on was trying to find a way to tie them down, when the luggage rack only extends for about two feet at the rear of the van, and there aren’t even any doors behind the driver’s door on that side.

So we wrestled with the trees and the twine and the tarp while kids played in the snow.

The flurried intensified and the wind picked up. The kids got bored, and their play snowball fight turned serious. Frank, all 36 pounds of him, chucked a chunk of ice at Caroline and knocked her down. My fingers got numb. Tony lost his temper, scolded the kids, swore at the trees, and said, “You cannot write about any of this! Not any!”

We looped the twine from side to side of the luggage rack in the back, from side to side through the doors in front. The snow accumulated to a depth of about an inch and a half—inside the car. Caroline kept crying, and her nose started bleeding. Tony looked at the trees and said, “We’ll never make it. They’re going to fall off.”

I looked at the trees—also a bit dubiously—and said, “We’re not going to make it any better. Let’s just try.”

So we paid ($50, plus the $10 deposit for the saw) and started toward Butterfield Road. Frank was silent after the scolding he got, Caroline was sniffling and Tony was stewing. Then we hit Butterfield Road, where traffic was moving at a crawl in blizzard-like conditions, and headed back to the friendly gas station to but Caroline some Kleenex. There we learned that all the east-west streets were slow because of the snow.

But with two insecurely tied trees on a tall van, slow was just what we needed. In a way, Tony said, it was almost like a modern-day parting of the Red Sea. We drove from Aurora to Chicago—with a stop for dinner—without ever topping 30 mph. The tarp, which slipped off before we left the tree farm, wasn’t an issue. At the speed we were going, with the snow in the air, drying the trees out wasn’t really a concern.

“We made it,” I said when I tucked the kids in. “It was an adventure.”

“Next year,” Caroline asked, “can we bring more snacks?”

“Sure,” I said, chalking that up to lessons learned.

Other lessons learned:

u Use the saws provided by Marmion. They’re free (the deposit is applied to the cost of the tree) and sharp.

u Follow their advice and a bring a string the cut to the length of the tree you want. It’s hard to gauge tree sizes outdoors.

u If you have a choice, bring a vehicle you can see over. And have a plan on how to tie the tree down.

That’s what we’ll do next year.



ON THE COVER: Caroline and Frank hug their favorite tree. (Catholic New World/ Michelle Martin)