Saturday we bought our tree at a new tent that had been pitched in the empty lot just south of Bob's News.
"Where are you from?" I asked the woman who came to greet us.
"The trees are from North Carolina," she said. "But I'm from Alabama."
"Where in Alabama?"
"Birmingham."
"I've been to Mobile, but not Birmingham," I said.
"You ain't missing nothing," she told me.
For the second straight year, we picked one of the smallest trees. (It comes up to my chest.) It fit in the car easily and, at home, it accommodated all my favorite decorations: the cardboard star covered in tin foil that Hania made one year; the wooden figures of the Orthodox priest and the blond peasant girl (which I bought about 10 years ago at an exhibition of Russian art in Las Vegas); the menagerie that we collected over the years from the long-gone Nature Store at the Galleria (fish, wolf, elephant, rhino, seal); a couple cats; the dog dressed in blue waist coat and golden sash; the pink flamingo; two ancient candy canes (still in their wrappers); the balls from K & W Glass Works in North Bergen, N.J. (which have been in my family for generations); and the caricature I drew in 1977 of Robert Benchley dressed in black tie and pink bathrobe.
At night, with its one string of lights, it looks as beautiful as any tree, and in my eyes more precious.
