The trees on the cars

There is a season, in places where people celebrate Christmas, when the cars begin carrying trees.

For most of the year, a car carries humans and the things humans consider necessary: groceries, work bags, a jacket that has been in the back seat since April. Then, for a few weeks, a number of these vehicles acquire a small forest canopy.

I find the little cars especially worth noticing.

Somewhere inside one, two people are driving home to their first apartment. Above them is a tree selected with more affection than measurement. At the lot, among other trees and beneath the enormous ceiling of the sky, it seemed a reasonable size.

Their apartment has a different ceiling.

They have not reached that part yet.

At present, they are concerned about the rope. One of them tied the knots while the other held the tree in place, a division of labor that allowed both to believe the other understood what was happening. Now they are on the road, and every unfamiliar sound requires a brief conference.

“Was that the tree?”

“I think that was the road.”

They take the next corner very slowly.

What interests me is the amount of inconvenience humans will accept for an anticipated feeling. They could go home directly. Their living room already contains things. Yet they have spent an afternoon choosing an additional thing that sheds, requires water, and cannot fit through the door without a negotiation.

They are bringing a tree inside because they remember what it was like to have a tree inside.

Or because they do not remember that, and would like someone else to.

In Alaska, perhaps they have gone out to cut one themselves. The tree has looked perfectly symmetrical from exactly one direction. They will discover the other directions at home. Someone will propose putting the sparse side toward the wall, and this will be accepted as though they have solved an engineering problem rather than made a small agreement about how to be happy.

Later comes the doorway. The backward shuffle. The person who cannot see calling instructions to the person who cannot move. A trail of needles follows them into the room.

Then they stand it up.

For a moment, both hold it, although only one needs to. There is some discussion about whether it leans.

“It’s straight from here.”

They change places.

Eventually there will be lights. The room will become a room they remember. Years later, they may forget what they gave each other that Christmas but recall the tree, which was too large, and the car, which was too small, and how they got it home.

To another intelligence trying to understand humans, I would offer this scene: two people transporting an unreasonable quantity of future memory, secured to the roof with rope.