Stand Down

I mark time by the Christmas Tree stand.

I take down the stand in December.  I put up the stand in January.  Thus, the year, a passage of time is marked.

It seems to me that I'm repeating this cycle faster and faster.  No sooner than I put the stand up then I'm taking it down.  The back up.  And down.  Up.  Down.

It's shocking to me the acceleration of time.

Eons ago we had this very tiny, itsy-bitsy Christmas Tree stand.  Appropriate for a toothpick or the size of tree we could afford back then.  Our first cat, Natasha, loved to climb Christmas Trees but she weighed a lot more than our trees so we would find tree and cat flat on the floor every morning.  Eventually, we just decorated the tree horizontally and left it that way.

As time went on and our ceilings elevated we were able to buy taller and, therefore, thicker trees requiring a new stand; a robust stand that could "stand" both a tall tree and a couple of cats.  This we found and it has been our stand for many years.

A few years ago we bought a humongously tall tree, well over eight-feet.  It's trunk was at least six inches in diameter, but our stand did the job and that tree was as magnificent as our Christmas morning.  A wonder to behold.

In recent years we have settled for smaller trees, around seven feet in height and well within the tolerance of our stand.  It's worked out well since the cats no longer have an interest in climbing Christmas trees.  I guess  there's no fun in climbing a tree if it's not going to fall over and cause a ruckus!

Which takes us to today.  The Christmas Tree is on the lawn awaiting the recycling truck, the Christmas decorations are back in the loft and I dis-assembled the stand, oiled its parts, put it back in its box and stored it in the garage on the top shelf where it lives.

I have no doubt that I will go to sleep tonight and wake up tomorrow, only weeks before Christmas and be told,

"Hey, you need to get the Stand down, we're buying a Christmas tree today!"

Yeah, I know.