A few weeks ago, Nick informed me that he’d made reservations for our first anniversary dinner. “You’ll like the restaurant,” he said. “I mean, you’ll really like it. We do have to go the Saturday before, ’cause I’ll be leaving for Boston on the actual day, but trust me: great restaurant. Very you.”
See how he just slipped that middle part in there?
Anyway, Saturday rolled around, and he had this idea: we could stay in instead. Like, cancel the reservation (he was right: he picked a great place), go to our butcher and get something insanely expensive, and open the bottle of 1999 whatever he’s been saving since…well, 1999.
Which is kinda worth it just to not have to worry about accidentally opening it because I’m not paying attention the way I almost have three times so far. And was also exactly, completely, perfectly what I wanted to do. “We could open the champagne Roxanna left,” I suggested, “and trim the tree.”
And that’s Thing Two: we’ll be here for Christmas this year. And it’s weird and a little sad and a little perfect and complicated, and I’m coping by Christmas-ing the hell out of our apartment. The fastest way to accomplish that, of course, is with a tree, and they’ve been out on the streets since last weekend, but we had a tiny snag: no tree stand. And no idea where to get one, or what it’s called in French or anything, and who wants a tree that’ll die well before Christmas actually gets here?
So on Friday I went to my favorite florist, and tried to explain. “Do you have…or know where I can find…a–like, a ‘base’ for the Christmas trees?”
“A vase? For the tree? The smaller–”
“No, no–um…maybe it’s not even a French thing? But, like, a base, and it holds the tree very…much.”
He stared blankly.
“You don’t seem to–maybe it’s different here. Thanks!”
And I went on to my next errand, but now this thing was bugging me. So, five minutes later, I was back at the florist again…where a different clerk was on duty and my guy was nowhere in sight.
So.
“I was just here with a question and the man who was here suggested that the thingy I want might not exist in France; it’s an American thing that’s like a base for the Christmas tree. And if it doesn’t exist here, is my point, that’s fine, but then how do you…give drink to the tree?”
I had reminded myself of the verb for watering plants the whole walk over; it totally failed me in the moment.
“Ah,” she smiled. “You don’t need to water the tree; it stands in the log and will last a month.”
A month?
“In the U.S. they wouldn’t last a week if you didn’t…you know, maybe it makes a difference that we don’t use the log?”
Apparently. French Christmas trees come with their trunks planted into a piece of split log, flat side down. Not only does this hold the tree straight, but it evidently supplies all of the moisture the tree will need for, oh, say, December. Even if one’s dogs should happen to be quite taken by said log and gnaw off a palm-sized chunk of its bark before you even notice…I hope.
Anyway, it’s just as well that this other plan came along, and that we were both so charmed by it, because when Nick went into his email to cancel our dinner reservation, he discovered a request to confirm the reservation, meaning that we didn’t actually, technically, you know…have a reservation. Which just means it was meant to be.
So on our anniversary–or two days before, really–we got a lovely roast from our cheerful butcher, opened the excellent bottle of Veuve in the fridge, and did this:
Merry Anniversary to you.