The Dumpster Tree

Cherese reminisces as her family approaches the anniversary of their Christmas move to Tennessee years ago.

Hey, friends, this is Cherese Lee and you're listening to the Just Waiting for You Podcast. Whether the sun is shining where you are in life today or you're walking through a crappy storm and you really wish you got some rain boots. The power of a story is sometimes all you need for that perspective shift. Hang out with us for a few minutes and find out what happens when you realize that someone is just waiting for you.

It's a story. It's just a story. Next week marks 11 years that we've lived here in Tennessee. If you're listening to this podcast in real-time, you know that next week is Christmas. So yes, that's correct; we were the crazy people that loaded up a family of seven and moved out of state the week of Christmas. It seemed like a great idea at the time because, you know, as planning parents trying to make sure that something as big and life-changing as a move causes the least disruptions as possible. We thought, well, Christmas break from school is the time to do this.

And it worked out with when my husband Brandon, would be starting his new job. So we made these preparations to have the movers come earlier in December. And then the babies and I drove over, followed them to Tennessee. We're here to receive the movers, unload everything.

And then we went back to West Virginia where we were living, so that our boys, who were school-aged at the time, could finish out school. So we stayed in West Virginia until the last possible minute (basically) so the kids could finish up. This was heartbreaking in a lot of ways. First off, although it was a move that we chose and we felt for a multitude of reasons it was absolutely the right move for our family. And to this day, we're so glad we did it. At the time, it was really, really hard.

We were leaving a place where Brandon and I had grown up. We grew up just a few miles from each other. We went to high school together. Our families were from there. I had started the school. I was very tied to the state.

It was home. And so it was already hard to leave. Then you add in that it's Christmas and we have little kids. And (I love you kids for listening) but like, what about me? I love Christmas. I'm a crazy Christmas person. I mean, today at the pizza office, I wore scrub pants, a Christmas T-shirt, and a Christmas tree on my head.

When my coworkers actually asked if my children are often embarrassed of me. (Um no, it's Christmas!!! They're probably super proud of the excitement I bring to such a joyous occasion. I digress.) They probably are embarrassed. It's fine. The point is, it was really, really hard to not be able to get ready for Christmas, pull out all the twinkle lights. Get our tree.

We are real tree people, which means we couldn't get a tree, decorate it, and then take it down and bring it to Tennessee. So we basically just had no Christmas preparation because we were packing up our entire lives and also trying to seem really calm and confident about this huge decision we've made for our family so that our kids would think that all was well. There's a lot going on there, guys.

Once the boys finish school, we pack up what's left at our home and our friends Greg and Angel agree to follow us down. They had a pickup truck so that we could bring even more things that we weren't able to send at the movers (because, you know, we were still living there.)

So we get down here and proceed to start trying to find some semblance of our things in our new home. And the setup here was already really different. So in West Virginia, we lived in a ranch style home for the most part. When we moved to Tennessee, we had a really different styled house from what we'd been in.

Our oldest son, David, said at the time our house was very vertical. It had a lot of stairs. Our kids were not used to having a lot of stairs. So here's us going up and down and carrying boxes and trying to find all the things. And meanwhile, I just want this cozy, picturesque, everything's normal, everything's fine Christmas. And I'm starting to break out in a sweat that we're really just a couple of days and we've got nothing, guys.

If I'm being honest, I had hardly any gifts. I don't even know if we had any gifts. There was no decorations, no tree, nothing. So my friend Angel has this great idea. She says you and I will work on unloading decorations. Let's send the guys out for a tree because they're getting back on the road to go to West Virginia soon to be with their families for the holiday. And they want to just leave us and a little bit more magical place then when they got there with us.

So Brandon and Greg leave to go find a tree. Meanwhile, we're pulling out trying to find twinkle lights. I mean, God bless my poor children. We didn't even know where our underwear is. But by golly, Christmas is going to happen, you know?

About an hour later, the guys come back, and Brandon walks in with no tree. And I'm like, “What? What's going on? Where have you been?” He said, “well, I've got some good news and some bad news”, (which I should have known when it took an hour for them to go get a Christmas tree.) “Okay. Well, the good news is I got a really great deal.”

“Okay?” “The bad news is”. (Like, would you just tell me what is going on with the Christmas tree?) He said, “well, it turns out there's no Christmas tree lot still open a couple of days before Christmas, at least none I could find in a town that I don't know. So we went to Lowe's because they have trees, right?”

“Well, they did have trees.” Brandon flagged down a gentleman who's working in the garden center and says, “don’t you have Christmas trees?” He’s like “well we did this morning. We cleaned up that area. He said there was a couple scrawny ones that were pretty much dead. I threw them out back in the dumpster. You're welcome to them.”

I looked at Brandon. I said, “no, you didn't.” He's like, “I did. But he said we could just have it. I mean, we didn't have to pay him because they were back by the dumpster.” So Brandon and Greg proceed to bring in the most Charlie Brown-looking Christmas tree you ever did see. It was short. There weren't many branches. I don't know if it started out with a bunch of branches when they put it in stock in November, but there certainly was not a ton left.

We made the most of that tree and decided that when we just put it in the stand and set it on the ground, some of our children towered over it and it was just even sadder than it began. So we stacked up some moving boxes (had plenty of those) into like a pyramid and then put the tree on top of that.

We decked it out with twinkle lights, put as many ornaments on there as we could. We found our stockings and hung them by the chimney with care and started a fire in the fireplace. Greg and Angel and the seven of us said our teary goodbyes and we sent them on their way.

And that evening I took a picture, and it was beautiful. It was very Instagram-worthy. I could see where the twinkle lights and the stockings and the roaring fire. And I believe I captioned “It is beginning to feel like home”. I was really proud of how we had come together with this Charlie Brown tree and what decorations we could find.

We pulled it all together and I remember thinking on Christmas morning that this would always be one of the sweetest Christmases in my mind. Our family on this new adventure. All the unknowns around us. These beautiful Christmas lights on this really sad tree, and all of us just laughing about it and being our wonderfully goofy selves. We spent the remainder of Christmas break unpacking and living up to the caption making that house that was so vertical with all the stairs to actually feel like home.

And then my brave kids started their new school. Our oldest was in fifth grade. The twin boys were in second. And the first assignment that they had, which is a pretty common one I've found over the years, was to write about what you did over winter break. Great introduction for the new kids, right? The papers, come home a little while later, and they had each drawn in this cute little second-grade esc artwork.

And then they had the lined paper at the bottom talking about their winter break. And I looked everywhere for these papers today because I wanted to read them verbatim. But instead, you're just going to have to go with my memory of them.

One of them talked about how it was such an exciting winter break. Our family moved to a neighborhood into a really big house with lots of stairs. It was very fancy. Our Christmas tree was so tall. He got a bike for Christmas, and his aunt and uncle came to visit. It was beautiful.

His twin brother, twin, who lives in the same house, shared the same bedroom, was part of the same Christmas, supposedly wrote.

“It was a really rough winter break. We had to move on Christmas. We didn't get many gifts because my dad wasn't working, and we even got our tree out of a dumpster. Oh, and we weren't with our family or friends. It was very sad.”

Oh, my goodness. Those two pieces of artwork hung in our kitchen for probably two years, mostly because they were hilarious. They also were very good examples of those twins. But in addition to that, they were a great reminder, you can make Christmas look like a postcard. You can fancy up a tree (get out of the dumpster). You can make it all seem perfect in a photo.

Or maybe you actually have a Christmas that is perfect and lives up to the caption and the photo. It doesn't matter. We're all going to remember it the way we individually remember it. Each of us will make that memory through our own lens and our own perception. And guess who gets to choose that? We do. We often say life is what you make it.

And that's true, but equally so, it's how you see it. As you go into this Christmas season and even more so as you walk away from it, I hope that you choose to see the beauty in it. I hope that you do put twinkle lights on your dumpster tree. I hope that you see all those stairs, not as a backache from carrying the boxes, but as something big and beautiful.

I hope you remember all the things that don't go exactly right as quirky, goofy things that you can laugh about. I hope you decide to make this holiday your beautiful version, and I hope you let yourself remember it just like that.

Thanks for joining us. I hope you allow yourself to feel the things today and then have the courage to ask. But what if you look like this? Go forth and show up for life, my friends. Someone is just waiting for you.