perfectly imperfect

I kind of did not want to post since I didn't want to bump Susan's photos out of the way. So I will include one here to make myself feel better.

Seriously? How incredibly lucky we are.

Ok, about the tree.  

Every year that we've had a tree (not too many now) there's been a bit of drama.

One year it was a Christmas eve sort of thing when my sister's family had to flee their home after an oil spill. 

One year it was me falling in love with a fat little live tree that we planted at  the edge of the woods at the house, and, as far as I know, it is still there. The face toward the house thriving, the face toward the forest, nearly entirely denuded of needles.

I don't remember the next year, or maybe those two were reversed.

Then we were here.

And I fell for a charlie brown tree up in maine, brought it home stuffed inside the car. 10 bucks or something.

And this year, we went out in the foggy rain yesterday, to The House By The Side of the Road in Wilton, and there were rows and rows of perfect trees.

But I already knew I was not looking for perfect. I was looking for the one that maybe no one else will want. 

And after walking up and down aisle after aisle of perfect trees, I saw it a few rows away. When it is clear like that, like so few things are, it is *totally delicious*. We pushed through as if maybe someone else might beat us to it. 

12 bucks I think. MINE.

At home last night we stuffed it into a large flower pot filled with compacted soil.  We strung lights, and decorated, and it is looking rather magnificent. 

A friend once gave me a bowl she had made in a pottery class. She had stamped cool symbols around the rim, and glazed it.  I Loved it.  The reason it was so lovely was that it was perfectly imperfect. I would have been anal about stamping at regular intervals, at making sure things lined up. And the bowl I would have tried to make would have not had nearly the life and love of the bowl that arrived into my grateful hands.  That bowl taught me something so very TRUE about beauty, that it is the irregularity, the imperfection, the rhythm of some kinds of uncertainty or surprise that catch my eye and my breath.

So, little tree.  Your needles are already stuck in my socks. Welcome.