Tree Number Four

One Kid and ADHD vs Christmas

Downed Christmas Tree

The clear glass angel shines and sparkles. It’s in the perfect place, with a blue light right behind it. It’s not hanging straight though. It’s caught up on a lower branch of the Christmas tree. If it was hanging free it would look a lot better, more like an angel is supposed to look. I can’t reach it yet. If I scoot under and get back behind the tree, I can fix it. Just a little farther, I’ve got it, but I need to break that little piece of the lower branch off I think – almost got it, if I get up on my knees. And then it’s moving away from me, the whole tree is moving away, falling, oh no-no-no. With a whoosh and a crash, the family Christmas tree falls to the living room floor. The water from the stand spreads on the carpet and tree skirt, soaking through the wrapping on the presents.

My mom and dad rush in from the kitchen to find me standing over the lovingly decorated family tree and dozens of smashed glass ornaments like a seven-year-old Paul Bunyan. A blubbering, wailing Paul Bunyan terrified that he’s going to be punished horribly. His presents would be thrown into a pile and burned on the front yard, and he’d throw himself on top, a Christmas funeral pyre. This Paul Bunyan has an over-dramatic and morbid imagination.

“What happened? Are you all right?” My parents hug me, and tell me not to worry about it, accidents happen, "but what were you doing behind the tree?"

I try to explain, but being me, I get side-tracked into the soaked wrapping falling off the bottom of the presents and getting a peek at what’s hidden, and besides they’d never understand about the angel. I'm a normal, curious kid, maybe a little strange; but hey, lesson learned right? You would think.

Next year, on Christmas Eve, I’m scooting under the tree to drape tinsel behind the crèche scene, so it’d look like icicles hanging over the barn to make it more dramatic for baby Jesus. But maybe if I pull that one tree light down to be the star… whoosh, crash – Tree Number Two bites the carpet. This time Paul Bunyan doesn’t get much sympathy at all – my dad’s face is flushed with bottled up fury, “For God’s sake stay out from behind the Christmas Tree!” No front-yard funeral pyre of presents, but the look Dad burns into me is scary hot.

Now that should finally sear the connection between action and consequences into my brain for the rest of my life. That assumes that I will sometime before I die ever give a shit about consequences.

The following year, I’m nine. Old enough to understand the value of message repetition in advertising, politics, and family dynamics. Since Halloween I’ve worked the whole family with my mature young gentleman act. There is no need to worry about the coming Yuletide I tell them - all the holiday decorations will remain upright and intact. This is my guarantee. And please, let me help you with whatever you need. After weeks of this - over breakfasts, dinners, and weekends, my parents finally buckle. They assure me that this coming year’s gift-giving, in quantity or quality, will not be affected by the last two years’ tree incidents.

But as soon as my dad lugs the twine-bound tree through the front door, my good-hearted, liberal, understanding parents go Twilight Zone. They turn into cold-eyed, flat voiced aliens.

Delighted to his toes that his bossy, know-it-all big brother is finally being reined in, Rob, my five-year-old little brother, watches from the stairs, as our parents sit me down on a dining room chair. They warn me that no tree tipping will be tolerated at all this year. No excuses, no bullshit, this is serious. Great Aunt Jean will be visiting from New York. She’s bringing a family heirloom crystal angel for the top of the tree. I nod, I get it – Christmas Tree falls, you die. But they’re not done.

Dad says I’m not allowed anywhere near the back, or the side, or within a foot of even the front of the tree after decorating. Mom says I’m only to decorate the front. Eye-level only. Dad says your mother and I are not fooling around here. This year the tree stays standing up until it’s time to toss its tinsel-covered carcass in the gutter after New Year’s Eve.

The day after Christmas, Dad’s upstairs at his desk, Great Aunt Jean is taking a nap, and Mom is in the kitchen with Rob making leftover sandwiches. I’m standing in the living room, alone. With the tree.

For days now I’ve been aching with the knowledge that the red and gold antique Santa ornament should be higher and closer to the window. It’s just one little adjustment, but nobody listens. I tell them it has to be done. Otherwise, the whole display is out of balance. But I’m the only one that sees this. Therefore, I’m the only one who can fix it. So, damn the torpedoes, or forgetting them altogether, I step close to the tree, penetrating the one-foot limit. I reach up with care, lifting Santa with his little red thin glass feet until the wire hook on his head is free of the incorrect branch he was hung on.  Holding my breath, I lift it three inches higher and to the side of the tree near the window. Now he’s hanging on the perfect branch, and steady. I step back and breathe.

Everything looks one hundred percent better. I wonder if Mom and Dad will notice when they come in. But then, Rob and Mom bang through the swinging kitchen doors and Rob yells “Turkey sandwiches!” And disaster strikes. Antique Santa jiggles and slips from his branch. I dash over to try to grab him before he breaks and my foot slips on the tree skirt. And that’s it for Tree Number Three. Over it goes. Like it had something to prove. I don’t remember exactly what my parents did, or said, or what consequences I suffered. After Great Aunt Jean’s crystal angel tree-topper shattered against the living room wall, my mind went blank. I think that year I was lucky to get out alive.

For much of my life, my alarm system for unwise conduct in my relationships, jobs, or being anywhere doing anything, especially in stores shopping, could be overridden by the smallest impulse. But after many years of therapy and medication I’ve learned that this behavior is symptomatic of my ADHD and Bipolar II disorder. So, I’m aware and working on it. Always. Nearly every day. Pretty much.

A week ago, my twenty-eight-year-old daughter, Coco, and I got an eight-foot-tall Noble Fir from a tree lot run by a couple of brothers who also sell pumpkin bread, jams, and cider. We got home with the tree, jam, bread, and a new improved tree stand with a deep water well and locking no-muss trunk bolts. Easy set-up. No tip, no spill.

We get the tree out of the truck and into the living room, put together the stand, and set it up inside our wicker base cover. We step to opposite sides of the netted tree, and lift it in, but no go.

“Dad, you’ve got the bolts screwed in too far,” Coco says.

She’s right. More adjustments and lifts. I call the stand a damned poor designed piece of junk. Coco says to let her do it. I call the tree stupid. Coco says really, let her try, and the tree slides in. Okay, fine. There’s no “I told you so” from Coco and we get to work on opposing sides of the tree stand, tightening the bolts. We pour water in the base and cut the netting. The branches open. It looks good.

“But it’s crooked,” I say.   

“It’s fine, Dad.”

“No, stand over here. See?”

“A little, maybe. Nobody will notice.”

“I’ll fix it.”

As I squeeze in next to the wall on my hands and knees and reach for the far back bolt, I hear the branches scrape the TV screen and water slosh in the no-tilt base and Coco yells, “Dad, stop! Don’t go behind there, the tree’s going to fall!”

It didn’t fall over, and no water spilled. Because Coco grabbed the tree. I crawled backwards, happy that my daughter stopped her seventy-four-year-old Dad from making this Tree Number Four.

Portions of this post are from “A Chicken in The Wind and How He Grew – Stories from an ADHD Dad,” and originally published in ADDitudemag.com.

Christmas 1954

Trouble brews two years before Tree Number One