Taking part in the Ann Dee Ellis 8-Minute Memoir Writing Challenge. This is Day Forty-Six.

The other night as Jon and I walked into a store, I mused aloud if it was too soon to start thinking about our Christmas tree. “You can NOT get another fake tree!” he half shouted from the garden center, pushing his cart along the aisle of new inflatable holiday offerings he admires. He loves those damn blow-ups. If he can get another trashy lawn ballon, I can continue to search for the perfect tree.

I mean, of course it’s too early to think about Christmas trees, and I wouldn’t actually dream of getting out anything Christmasy until after Thanksgiving. My porch is decorated in autumn leaves and pumpkins and I love how Currier & Ives-welcoming it looks. There’s something magical about the short, dying burst of the year. But the orange and brown holidays are all that stand between me and my very favorite thing.

I like a live tree. This will be my 6th Christmas on the east coast, and they simply do not have my kind of life tree here. All the trees are fluffy and full and…wrong. I’m a fan of the Noble Fir, with its at-attention branches and the spaces between its limbs. I love a sparse tree where the ornaments can hang gracefully and not lay limply against the overfull boughs. I have attempted a live tree several times— even going so far as to take the pruning loppers to the tree and cut off every other branch to create space and air amid a tree that wasn’t meant to be that way. It didn’t work. Lesson learned.

So I have resorted to fake trees. There’s something to be said for the convenience and cleanup factor, and after the initial expense, they are free. I even found one that was sort of sparse that I was able to bend and groom into something resembling the spacious trees of my younger years. It’s not the same.

So in order to have a proper Christmas tree, it’s going to be necessary to move back west. I mean, I can’t think of another solution.

There might not be room in the truck for trashy lawn balloons though.