Oh, Christmas Tree

Oh, Christmas Tree

It’s all relative. What might constitute remarkable bravery for some could be routine, common, mundane for others. For example, many people would consider it an act of courage to retrieve their kid’s Frisbee from the roof of their house while seasoned construction workers casually lay shingles on steep inclines eight hours a day without a thought of danger. They might even toss a Frisbee around up there if given the chance.

For Henry, the contrast was demonstrated in stark simplicity on the family’s first trip to Great America. He was crestfallen when his search for the Tilt-a-Whirl yielded no results, and he was faced with the gut-wrenching dilemma of either hopping onboard the very scary looking Whizzer (actually the mildest ride in the park) or admitting to his children that he was a coward. Acting more out of fear of a diminished stature in the eyes of his children than any semblance of bravery, he was soon experiencing serious pangs of terror and regret, and this was while the roller-coaster car was slowly clanking its way up to the top. When his shaking foot was finally reunited with solid ground, Henry thought he should get some sort of medal for surviving the harrowing adventure while his eight-year-old daughter was excitedly shouting, “Let’s go again! Let’s go again!” It’s all relative.

Throughout his life, Henry would experience what he considered to be modest moments of heroism or bravery. An unbiased enumeration of such events might not impress the casual observer as the list included such things as eating broccoli at his wife’s insistence to set a good example for his children, catching a mouse with two plastic cups, and suffering through a two-hour performance of clog dancing to appease his mother-in-law. Nonetheless, Henry knew in his heart that he did have that one glorious moment of selfless courage that he might someday relate to his grandchildren.

 We usually think of bravery as an act that could result in physical harm or even death as was the case of Lieutenant Travis answering the demand for surrender with a cannon shot fired over the wall of the Alamo. Acknowledged to a lesser degree are instances of moral courage, standing up for what you believe in despite the likelihood of incurring the wrath of others, ala Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage. It is rare in the human experience that we find examples of these two types of courage manifested in one spectacular act. Henry’s remarkable feat that cold winter night may not invoke images of Braveheart or Dicken’s Sydney Carton, but it certainly stands as a noteworthy example of physical and moral courage rolled into one. Would that more people knew of it.

As in the case of many significant events in one’s life, coincidence played a key role in Henry’s memorable deed. The genesis was an old black and white photograph, framed in detailed silver, that hung on the wall in his parents’ living room. It was a picture of his Grandmother, with short, cropped hair and in a skirt that went down to her ankles, standing on the grey stone porch of her women-only college residence hall. Henry had studied the countenance of his Grandmother standing in front of that building a thousand times.

Henry eventually packed up and went off to college himself, the same college attended by his parents and Grandma. He lived just two blocks from his Grandma’s old residence hall, and he would fondly remember her and that picture hanging in the living room every time he passed by. The place had special meaning for Henry.

Henry joined a fraternity his sophomore year and moved into the frat house for his junior year. That is where he met Julie at one of their post-football game parties. He walked her home that evening and as fate would have it, she lived in Grandma’s building. As he passed through the doorway, he felt a special bond to his surroundings as he thought of his Grandmother once standing in that exact same place. He could almost feel her presence in that immense lobby.

We have arrived at the intersection of extreme physical danger and a formidable challenge to conscience. There are funny college pranks, and there are not-so-funny college pranks. The fraternity pledges were assigned the task of procuring a Christmas tree for the house. Henry surmised this might involved filching a tree from a local tree sale lot. This was not appropriate in Henry’s mind, but he could live with it. He was downright uncomfortable when they returned with a 10’ tall fully decorated Christmas tree- lights, ornaments, lots of tinsel, and even the stand.

It all got a lot worse for Henry when he met Julie at the student union the next afternoon. She was in a foul mood.

“You won’t believe it! Someone stole our Christmas tree last night. We all chipped in to buy the tree and all the decorations. We spent hours decorating it, and then some jerks stole it!”

Oh, my God. This was the definition of a challenge to conscience for poor Henry. He couldn’t rat out his fraternity brothers. There could be serious consequences. But his true thoughts were on Julie, and Grandma, and that picture hanging in his parent’s living room. Henry was stuck for a response.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, Julie. That’s…just…really awful.”

The History professor was speaking, but the words were floating past Henry’s ears. He felt numb, consumed by thoughts of that Christmas tree, and Grandma walking through that lobby. The carefree, happy days of college life had somehow exploded into a painful struggle of conscience. Maybe he could persuade the “pranksters” to return the tree. Unlikely. There would be the risk of getting caught returning to the scene of the crime. Confess and ask for forgiveness?  Extremely unlikely. Buy them a new tree? He couldn’t afford that. He could only try to think of other things and hope it would all go away.

When Henry returned to the fraternity house, he was surprised to see the tree was no longer occupying a prominent place in the living room. The word around campus was that the police were looking for the stolen tree, and even the intellectually challenged football players residing in the house realized fraternities might immediately be considered suspects. The tree had been stashed in the fourth-floor attic, and a number of the brothers had been out grabbing the pieces of tinsel and bits of broken ornaments that marked a clear trail to the new, illegitimate location of the tree.

Henry had to see it. The attic was dusty, cold and poorly lit. The eerie shadows made it look like a horror movie set where only bad things happen. At one time it served as an open dorm-like setting for a number of residents, but with the decline of Greek-life popularity, it was now only used for the storage of beds, mattresses, desks, chairs and one fully decorated Christmas tree.

The tree was on its side behind stacks of chairs, and despite its unconventional positioning, Henry could tell it was indeed a large, beautifully decorated Christmas tree. Even in the diminished light, the ornaments and tinsel managed to sparkle, and the colored lights stood out among the deep green branches. Henry pictured the lighted tree standing tall in the lobby of Julie’s residence hall, Grandma’s residence hall, and he felt even worse.

Resigned to the current state of affairs, a hapless Henry shuffled his way back to the entrance. Then he noticed something that struck him as unusual for a fourth-floor attic. In the middle of the huge room was a set of glass-paneled doors to the outside. Why would relatively ornate doors be in an attic, and where did these doors lead to? He remembered that the room was once used as living quarters, and he went to investigate.

There were no locks, and the doors opened easily out onto the narrow landing of a fire escape. He stepped out onto the iron grates and quickly grabbed hold of the railing as the platform creaked and seem to sway in the fierce wind coming off the frozen lake. Henry looked over the railing and could see that the narrow metal steps zigzagged their way down to the ground. The brain cells in Henry’s head quickly accelerated from sadly inert to excitedly scurrying about. Could this possibly be the answer to Henry’s dilemma?

Henry reentered the attic and walked back to the tree. He used his open arms to take a rough measurement of the width of the tree, and with his arms still spread out wide, he walked back to the doors like a clumsy Frankenstein. His hands extended past the door frames, but with a little ingenuity, and hopefully with minimal damage to the lights and ornaments, Henry figured he could get that tree through those doors. Henry, noble lone crusader, defying the elements, a rickety old fire escape, his fear of heights, and risking the outright condemnation, wrath, and immeasurable ill will from an entire fraternity, would save Christmas.

Henry went into stealth mode and nonchalantly strolled around the building. The good news was that there were no visible gaps on in the fire escape; the bad news was that the stairs ended about ten feet from the ground with an extension that Henry surmised would swing downward with pressure. In the company of a 10’ fully decorated Christmas tree, this could be a challenge. Henry briefly considered that his good idea might not be such a good idea, but the image of that picture in the living room had a grip on him. He would get that tree back to Julie’s place, or he would die trying…well, maybe not dying, more like a grudging willingness to sustain an injury of sorts…on the low end of the pain scale.

Henry also knew that if he got caught taking that tree out of the fraternity house, he would suffer the eternal scorn and ridicule of the entire fraternity. He’d be a softie, a wimp, a true weenie of immeasurable proportions. He and the reverse heist would go down in infamy.

Later that night, in the basement barroom, Henry’s courage grew in direct proportion to the amount of beer he consumed. As he needed to wait until most of the brothers had gone to bed, his courage had grown to near epic heights by midnight. He strolled through the house and reflected on the possibility of taking the tree down the three fights of stairs and out the front door. He knew there was always somebody stumbling around or returning at all hours, and the chance of discovery was too great. The fire escape was the only way.

Our unlikely hero checked the third-floor hallway and then bolted into the stairwell to the attic. Henry flicked on the single bare light bulb and absent the natural light coming through the door and a lone window, the room was substantially darker than it had been that afternoon. He was halfway to the hidden treasure when he hit his first speed bump…literally. Henry somehow managed to muffle his cry of intense pain when his head banged into one of the rafters. He would proceed more carefully for the remainder of his mission.

Henry struggled to get the tree to a 45° angle. The tree was a lot heavier than he had imagined, and he again reflected on the wisdom of the effort. But that picture and the hurt on Julie’s face drove him to continue his quest.

The ornaments began bouncing around in the stiff wind as Henry stood at the top of the of the fire escape. He was not fond of heights, and he was scared to death just to be standing there on the fourth story of a rusty, old fire escape. The tree nearly appeared to be on fire as the tinsel fluttered wildly in the wind. On his very first step down, he saw a bright red ornament take leave of a branch and float downward toward a predictable crash landing. Henry cringed as he awaited the ornament’s ill-fated arrival at the patio below. It seemed to take forever, but finally the sound of fragile glass smashing into concrete shattered the quiet night. Henry froze as he looked for any sign of a reaction from the residents. Nothing. The oblivious natural mindset of a college student would work to Henry’s advantage.

As difficult as it was to hang on to that tree, Henry took a moment to realize his cup was half full- he was going down the fire escape as opposed to carrying the tree up. This somehow boosted Henry’s confidence and gave him strength to continue. As his grade school basketball coach would tell his team before very game, “Attitude is everything”.

Ping! Crash! Smash! Henry’s noble cause was incurring substantially more collateral damage than he had anticipated. His main concern at the moment was being discovered, but he also lamented the damage. He had no choice; better a diminished tree than no tree.

It was probably a good thing that Henry’s face was mushed into the tree’s branches. It was causing him substantial discomfort, but at least he couldn’t see how far it was to the ground. Henry’s arms were tired, and he was just getting started. The beer continued to fulfill its function as an enabler of the spirit, but at the same time it was proving to be more of an impediment to the body than Henry had bargained for. He thought of those stories of mothers exhibiting extraordinary strength to save their child, and with visions of Jean Valjean wandering around in his head, Henry persevered.

The fire escape remained intact, and Henry just kept on moving to the end. The ten-foot extension at the bottom performed as intended, and in spite of its abrupt stop, he held onto that tree. It was indeed a happy Henry that finally stepped onto solid ground with his precious cargo. He surveyed the area and saw only still shadows. Miraculously, Henry had made it out of the building without being detected. With the colorful carnage crunching beneath his feet, he began the three-block march to the tree’s rightful home.

There is not a lot of traffic at 2:00 AM, even in a college setting. Henry had escaped detection by the sleeping fraternity brothers, but now he had to worry about being discovered by patrolling police cars or ordinary citizens who might still be awake and happen to peer out a window. He wasn’t too concerned about being seen by students retuning home from bars or parties as the site of a guy struggling to carry a ten foot fully decorated Christmas tree in the middle of the night might not strike them as unusual.

Henry made it to Julie’s residence hall. In an act of true artistic mastery, Henry placed the tree in the exact spot Grandma stood in that old black and white photograph and then stood back to admire his accomplishment. He knew he could never speak of the mission, and he would never receive the accolades of the masses for having done a “far, far better thing”. But he strode down the sidewalk bearing the smile of one that had just taken on both a harrowing physical challenge and a serious struggle of conscience, and won.

Whatever shortcomings, disappointments, bumps and stumbles he would encounter throughout the remaining years of his life, Henry could always recapture that smile by simply recalling that time and place when, despite all odds, he had done the right thing.