Her Majesty’s a very nice girl, but she changes from day to day…

Oh. Christmas Tree.

I’m sitting in a coffee shop that feels like the reception area of my local dentist’s office. This is a correlation that I can’t actually prove, as my lack of dental insurance these past eight years has forbade me the luxury of waiting, ho-hum, for someone to drill holes in my teeth, or for someone to force me to feel like I’m about to drool on a stranger’s hand (it is also probably the reason that I’m way behind on my Better Homes and Gardens reading). By the way, I’m one of 100 million Americans without dental insurance, and according to the esteemed New York Times, this frightening fact is not hurting dentists one little bit. For all I know, dentists’ reception areas are now chock full of fancy accoutrements, free Wii, cappuccino machines, a bouncy castle. But if they remain as I remember, they’ve cornered the market on Muzak, and at this time of the year, that translates into weary Christmas carols.

Which brings us from my dental fantasies back to my local coffee shop. I’m surrounded by plants jollily perched in bright red bowls, accessorized by faux holly sprigs. The tasteful earth tones of walls and ceiling are jolted into holiday fever by an array of Styrofoam snowflakes hanging hither and yon, and yon, and yon. I remain unenticed by the Holiday Latte. Egg nog should be mixed with liquor, not espresso. I remain unmoved by every holiday suggestion I’ve encountered since Halloween exited stage left. I’ve steeled myself against the advent of Advent.

So why do my eyes well up when an instrumental version of “Oh Christmas Tree” blares from the speaker above? Because I don’t have a Christmas tree. In the grand scheme of things (if there is a grand scheme) I know this is a negligible fact, paling to invisibility next to war and genocide and famine and a Republican president. But let’s just pretend I’m still a mere child of six, like my own daughter. Children are fortunate enough to believe in Santa Claus and flying reindeer– and fortunate enough not to believe that evil people could carpet bomb families out of their homes, even over the holidays. While adults admonish one another “not to drink the Kool Aid” and stay sane throughout an impending economic/oil/catch-all crisis, children are sipping their hot cocoa and writing a long wishlist for Santa. “If I tell Santa I want a computer, he’ll get it for me, right Mama?” asks my wee one. “Because he can afford everything, right?” I try to recall if I knew what “afford” meant when I was that young.

I am certainly aware of what it means now. I can’t afford a Christmas tree.

Every winter when I was little, my father, brothers, and I traipsed through our local tree farm searching for the perfect evergreen. Dad slung a small ax over his shoulder and we examined each potential tannenbaum for height, needle fluffiness, and load-bearing branches (Santa always weighted our tree with an excessive slew of candy canes). When we found a winner, he chopped it down and we hoisted it back to the Chevy Caprice and somehow affixed it to the roof.

Although in retrospect I know that my parents were always toeing the line between poverty and middle class, we had a wealth of traditions like this one. Dad wove the car down the back roads and up the rutted gravel road to our two-bedroom yellow bungalow, where upon arriving we would unpack boxes of ornaments. Some had belonged to my great-grandparents. Some were handmade by my brothers and I. Some had been gifts from piano teachers, handy men, godparents, and others who had touched my family over the years. They had their own stories to tell, stories that evolve from one holiday to the next. Say what you will about the consumerist slant on the Christmas season, but those ornaments were truly touchstones, even as a gauge for which child was tall enough to place the crystal angel out of our cat’s playful reach or which of us would be relegated to placing the heaviest ornaments on the bottom boughs.

Last year, my father, ever the heroic patriarch of a family that has now swelled to include five children, two grandchildren, a son-in-law, and a daughter-in-law-to-be, gave me the ultimate Christmas surprise. I was working late a few nights in a row and had arranged for my daughter to visit her grandparents’ for the weekend. Upon her return, she called me crowing that she and grandpa had a big surprise waiting at our humble apartment. I arrived home from work at 2 in the morning, nearly too exhausted to make it up the stairs, my pockets heavy with not-quite-enough tips and my feet blistered from an almost consecutive 72 hours of schlepping food and spirits.

There in the center of my living room stood a Christmas tree, resplendent with lights and sparkling brand-new ornaments. I had no idea that such a sight would move me to tears, but it did. At the time, I had no furniture in my living room, as I couldn’t scrape the money together to purchase a couch. The apartment felt like an apartment until that night, when it transformed into a home. The Christmas tree said, “People live here. A family lives here. Traditions can be born and carried on here.” The scent of sap and needles was reassuring. It was the first Christmas tree my daughter and I had experienced in our own place together, and suddenly the prospect of carrying on did not seem so bleak. The ghosts of Christmases past seemed fumigated. The next morning I told my father, “Thanks so much!” exuberantly and with a smile, not wanting him to know that his daughter, the resilient and resourceful single mother, had been so desperate and worn out and hopeless that his gift had prompted her to fall to the floor in joyous and reminiscent tears.

I still have the stand, the ornaments, and the lights that were bestowed upon me that night about a year ago. They are in a box in my storage room. What I don’t have is the money to pay for a tree here in the “city” of Madison, nor the resources (namely a vehicle; also, an ax) to venture beyond the city’s borders and rustle up my own. Live Christmas trees range between $25-$65, about 10 percent higher than past years, just another price increase that can be chalked up to rising fuel costs. I could go the plastic route, although I detest fake trees, but my lack of disposable income precludes that as well. If I make a few extra bucks in tips, I’d rather spend it on presents. Or laundry detergent, for that matter.

As I said above, I’ve become rather stoic about the holidays. In years past, I’ve gotten all excited and happy about Christmas. I’ve shopped ahead, baked cookies, mulled cider. This year I can’t believe it’s only a week away; I’ve done nothing. Maybe being unemployed and basically destitute for about 6 months sucked the anticipation out of me. As a single parent, I’ve come to the slow but painful realization that there are few surprises coming my way. I’m buying Santa’s presents, and I’m setting out his cookies, too. I’m sitting down with my daughter to help her write a letter to Santa, and it’s with a heavy heart, as I suggest that she doesn’t ask Santa for a computer this year. I’ll be the one wrapping gifts in the middle of the night and stashing them far away from her prying eyes; I’ll be the one taking the bus from one toy store to the next. Sometimes, in the most pessimistic hours, every day of flying solo as a parent can feel like being stranded roadside in the middle of the night, with a flat tire and no cell phone. You may hope like hell that someone will come along to rescue you, but you know that in the end you’re most likely going to have to rescue yourself.

That’s why last year’s Christmas tree was so wonderful. I didn’t have to do it, and I didn’t expect it, it just appeared. A beacon of hope. A reminder that there are some things that are still worth believing in– family, tradition, nature. The bittersweet truth is that I can’t offer my own daughter the same simple yet blissful surprise.

Not right now, anyway.

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