On a perfectly average night on a perfectly normal brisk fall eve: the fading oranges of wizened leaves clumping around gnarled, surly oaks, the squirrels dancing about, this way and that, the grandma across the street taking out the all-too-big trash bag at 8pm as usual, normal for it being Thanksgiving—four college students, without a home or family to return to, sat upon a stained couch of the sort you could really sink into, lazing away the day until a brilliant idea emerged from the murky depths. It was a token from God’s divine hand, like those old flattened pictures of St. Francis opening his body to sharp, golden lines. It was an idea to wash away all vestiges of contented boredom with a frivolous, focused energy like that of a mad scientist. It was an idea to create a Christmas tree adorned with the delicious, sun-stained swirls of ice cold beers.
Preparations needed to be made, roles assigned, maps drawn and colored. This was serious business, and the four students meant to treat it as such. The first order of business to account for was the tree. Piling into the mahogany ash-stained car, its colors bleeding into rust, cigarettes strewn about the center console, a hand me down CD of Steely Dan’s “Can’t Buy a Thrill” crackling through the speaker, they sped off to the local Home Depot. High as kites, they wandered in a still, deep haze—the type where the fog just sits above the water—right past the very trees they were seeking and into the grand, light filled halls wooden planks and light fixtures, color swatches and whizzing tools, the welcoming drift of pine and cedar leading them about like a mischievous woodland elf, doomed to be lost until a two foot, LED candy cane conjured images of Christmas once again: “Excuse me sir, where do you keep the Christmas trees?”
“Oh, that would be outside.” Giggling away in delicious folds of ribboned candies, the students pranced off to the trees, enamored with one another, their foolish quest, this evening in fall.
They studied the trees with the utmost care, scholars pouring over dusty bound texts unearthed from deep recesses, until deciding upon one—a full leafed, sturdy looking thing that could bear tempestuous storms, and certainly hold the beers that could only be found in the luminous BevMo across the way. A Thanksgiving feast for those with the eyes to see it, for those four wistful boys with nowhere else to turn except to one another’s roguish grins, their glinting eyes full of mischief and more importantly, comfort, as they perused the aisles for the night ahead. Santa Claus Samuel Adams, Rudolph Chouffe’s, ELF Buzz Balls were all tossed into the whirring cart as they stumbled through the beer-laden corridors. The beers were lobbed into bags, raced home, and assembled onto an already too-cluttered table. Huddling around, eager to get in frame, the boys took a picture with their trophy haul as if they had just caught a 20 foot Great White shark.
The soft voice of Frank Sinatra hummed from a hand-me-down record as the boys changed into the snuggest pajamas they could find: a group of chittering squirrels in the warm chestnut glow of a nestled alcove, gently arguing over the placement of those two-foot candy canes, the crookedness of the tree, which beers they should drink first. All faded away as laughter graced the room, pure in its undulating flows of molasses, white horses with the wind behind them on an open prairie, free and pure and graceful, and for a second they were all ten again, curled up against their moms on a thick, fur rug, the Christmas lights casting a twinkling glow against their drowsy faces.
One by one by one, as beer after beer was put upon the sturdy branches, they fell asleep on the soft rug against each other, nurtured by the distant scents of a forest in a far off place, by the fresh scent of a crackling loaf, imperfect and golden, wafting through an auburn chimney on a morning where a cold mist envelopes the vale. Oh, what a relief, what luck, to be able to cherish moments in the present, passing moments you know you’ll long for on harsher days, moments that occur on a perfectly average night on a perfectly brisk fall eve.▲
