Ours, at the time, the early seventies, was not an ecological crime. Go to Christmas in the snowy woods to look for a pine tree, "the" pine, was still governed by an act of nature, an act old, ancient, atavistic.
My father did not speak. He was looking for.
There is an old English Christmas song that celebrates the good king Wenceslau Czechoslovakian: in Santo Stefano looks out and sees a poor man shivering in the snow. He goes out, full of good intent, and no doubt a princely evening meal, and brings gifts. Behind him, a little fatigue pageboy. The tender is the king putting his feet walking in the fingerprint image. I
in the woods of Scots pine trees in the sunset, I have not lost simply because I loved that song. The feet of my father were great, and I was taken in my role as a pageboy in the wake of the king. The feet of my father protected me against all evil, against the elves, spirits, fairies that I would be kidnapped, leaving my father a changeling, a girl fairy. But my father was the strongest of them was huge, powerful and above all had the rubber boots that leave footprints important. Without those footprints
style king Wenceslau I would have lost. Because I owned a single thing. Incredible. I owned a pair of rubber boots, orange (and so far I grant your non-surprise) with molded soles that leave footprints in the snow for six types of bird. No one else had similar boots, and despite my research, I have not ever found.
My father immediately recognized the tree.
Come back, dragged him, this time chatting, telling of how we put in a vase, as we decorated. I pretended to help, pulling on the bit with the utmost care: the tip is crucial for a Christmas tree. My father left me to do, knowing that it was holding but very little. And I knew he knew, and I was done out of kindness, and I burst my heart with love. And he knew that I knew he knew, and my heart would burst for love. This, however, I realized only many years later, in summer, when she was a woman, and from room to room our eyes met.
My mother calls me every year when he finished making the tree, a tree now commercial, ecological, do not go over in the woods. I close my eyes. Walk around the tree. I place my feet imprints large. Breath the clean snow of the forest, feel the sting of the cold twilight. I feel small. I look for my father's hand. And i find it. Always.
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