Balsam Hill was a start-up when one of my daughter’s close friends went to work for them after college, and that’s how we heard of them. It was some time before we finally splurged and bought one of their fake trees, but getting an allergy-free Christmas finally won me over. No handsaws, no ropes, no ridiculously small Prius sporting an unstable mullet driving down the side of the mountain from the tree farm. No explosion of bugs coming out of popping pine cones in the nice warm house. (That one year…!!)

Long needles, I said. No stingy branches. No stabbiness when you reach for a present. I wanted it lush. I wanted me a Scotch pine. I loved that they worked so hard to make their trees look real; it was their whole reason for being.

Richard’s only take was that it had to be taller than him.

The seven and a half footer we got is almost not taller than him in his fedora.

We’ve had it a goodly while now, and I remember thinking last year that it was finally starting to show its age–I couldn’t get this one branch to move into this one space and I kind of filled it up with ornaments and tried not to let it bug me.

Maybe, I thought, (not that we were going to justify the expense) we should get one of those models that you roll out from the closet, pull the bag off the top, flip it over, put the tippy-top on: pfft, done. Ours is five pieces you drag out there with lights needing connecting vertically. Lifting and putting the big bottom parts together is hard for both our backs these days.

And when I say big. The first January that we tried to wrestle the entire tree back into the bag it had come in, I called the company and said, It is not physically possible. I don’t know how you guys got that Scotch Pine in there but we cannot.

They said, That’s our fullest widest tree, we understand. (The high school friend later said, The people in the warehouse found that we can’t get them back in, either.) Then they sent me a whole new size large storage bag, free, to help us with that. Fixed. Great customer service.

So. Yesterday was rough news, tomorrow’s a celebration, why not get ready for that celebration: You want to put the tree up tonight? he asked me. Let’s.

Still working on those upper lights when I snapped the photo; he was programming his timer.

I found myself murmuring again and again, It’s so beautiful. Look at this. Such a nice tree. After all these years it still looks so good.

I can see that my sense of appreciation has sharpened, clearly. Always a good thing.