Dad has an announcement
My dad called last weekend. Immediately I was suspicious.
I haven’t asked him to mail anything, pay anything or fix anything. Why is he calling?
We just chatted for a few minutes about how I was doing.
He sounds so happy. Something is amiss.
So I asked how things were going with him.
“Your mother and I got a tree,” he said, as though announcing that they’d got a puppy.
A Christmas tree? Hmm. Strange! The tree will be dead by Christmas, for sure. Unless they’ve gotten some new-fangled long-lasting preservative-filled tree.
“And it comes in three pieces.”
Ah ha! Artificial! I should have known they would do something so devious when I was far away in Chicago and unable to stop them!
“It was on sale!” he said. “And the lights are already attached!”
I think he was actually calling from the store. I could hear crowd noise.
For years, I have relentlessly blocked all movements towards a Muscato family artificial tree. In fact, I was the original instigator of the live tree movement, back in 1988, when I refused to help put together our scruffy artificial one anymore. But he was right. We’d started just going to Home Depot to pick out a tree, which was actually even more pathetic.
And my dad has been looking forward to this for a long time. So. I am going to be mature and accept this. Hopefully.
