Simple Pleasures and Small Sorrows

On Sunday, drove on down the Seward Highway to the awe inspiring Turnagain Pass to make our annual foray out into the woods to find and chop down a Christmas tree. We had decided that we needed to get a smaller tree this year. We recently had a new wood stove installed and didn’t feel that we had the space for our usual large tree. We were thinking 8 or 9 feet, compared to our usual 12-14 ft. Pickings seemed particularly slim, but eventually we found a tree that was not perfect, but definitely loveable. We have found in our years of hunting down a tree in the Alaska wilderness, that there is no such thing as a perfect tree, but every year, the lack of symmetry, the drooping of branches, and dropping of needles has never kept us from loving our tree and thinking that it is wonderful.

Everyone took a turn chopping, as usual. My efforts were particularly feeble, I must admit. Who knew that you need to actually aim? While my husband Mark is always the work horse of this family tradition, Tim is now old enough and big enough to take a large share of the actual labor of hauling the tree around, and I shouldered the small end for the last 200 ft. or so. Annie carried the axe back out, so we all contributed. Back at home, by the time Mark chopped the bottom 4 feet off of the tree and brought it in to the house, we found that it was the usual 12 ft or so! So much for getting the little one.

Tim, buried in the branches

We all love the process of putting up the Christmas tree and one of the best parts is getting out the ornaments. I’m sure that you also love opening the box of ornaments, lifting out various ones and reliving the memories and Christmases that goes along with each one. But, we are especially fortunate. Mark has inherited a collection of antique Christmas ornaments that has been passed down from his great uncle. They are kept in a specially designed wooden crate and I don’t exaggerate when I say that there are hundreds of them. Many of the ornaments are unique and beautiful, some are quirky, and some are down right ugly. They are all delightful and irreplaceable.

Our Christmas tree will never make the centerfold of House Beautiful. When we get our lights up and all that conglomeration of ornaments, it is downright gaudy. But, we just keep piling them all on. We love each one too much to leave it in the box for another year. And, we think that our tree is perfectly stunning. You know how some people have the ugliest dog in the world and they just can’t see it because they love him so darn much? Well, that’s how we are with our tree.

See how pretty it can be?

At bedtime, I couldn’t bear to turn the lights off on the tree after we had spent so much time getting it all together. I wanted to gaze at it on and on. So, Annie and I decided to camp out on the floor in front of it and leave the lights on all night. The fire in the wood stove was just dying down and Annie and I, tucked warmly into our sleeping bags, drifted off to sleep.

We were awoken a little past midnight by Mark calling down that the tree had fallen over. The sound had woken him while the two of us slept right through it. The tree had crashed onto the couch and the counter, missing the two of us, but breaking many of our beautiful (and did I mention, irreplaceable?) ornaments.

We immediately set about putting things back into a little bit of order and picking up as much glass as we could and simultaneously, I began letting go. Letting go of my attachment to these ornaments that we have come to love and that I just naturally assumed will be part of my Christmases for the rest of my life. I have spoken about non-attachment in a few of my other posts including the one about my perfect little teapot, but today I realize that I am still in the process of really understanding this concept.

As I picked up those shards of glass, I felt loss and disappointment, sadness and yes, grief. For, they would not be coming back. There was no putting them back together. There was no replacing them. But, instead of feeling all of those feelings, I set them aside. I set them aside in the name of my spirituality and the higher ideal of being unattached to material things. They were just things and I needed to let them go.

But all day today, I have known in my spirit that just letting them go was not all that I needed to do. I needed to be able to release them, yes. I needed to hold them in my open hands and let the universe carry them away, but at the very same time, I needed to feel myself loving them, missing them, grieving them.

The concept of unattachment has to do with feeling all of the beautiful and sacred feelings that we have toward something, those very feelings that make us want to cling and to never let it go, while at the same time saying, “I know that this little piece of the world was never really mine to keep.” It may seem like a subtle difference. But ultimately, it is the difference between denying my emotions and experiencing them. Feeling my grief is not an indication of my clinging, it is a manifestation of my loving.

On this Advent afternoon, as twilight approaches already at 2:30 pm, I am sure that it is part of my spiritual path to let a tear fall and to feel that ache in my chest for these little pieces of delight, these ornaments, that have decorated my Christmastime with happiness for these many years. I will miss them.