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MAZZA’S MISSIVE by Matt Mazza
On Defective Christmas Trees, High School Baseball Bats and Wild(Cat) Parties
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y *$%#@ Christmas tree fell down the other night. We’d literally spent all day working on it too, starting early at the Lane Farms lot up in Goleta with two full hours of tree selection, purchase and transportation. My daughters and I spent a horrifying fifty minutes lost in the corn maze before emerging, quasi-victorious, from the entrance (not the exit), smiling bright, thrilled that we made it out at all. (If I go astray in that damned corn maze again, I swear I will burn it down. Two Halloweens ago, the kids and I were lost in what I now know to be a twisted labyrinth from hell for over an hour. Kate was crying, Lily bored into a vegetative state; my wife was waiting impatiently in the cold, furious at me for my directional incompetence. And when we finally broke free from the belly of the beast, disoriented, jeans torn and soiled, haired mussed with cornhusk, eyes wide with insanity and the toothy grins of lunatics on our tear-streaked faces, I swear there was a group of seventh graders laughing at us. Judging us. I almost rammed my family’s pumpkin up…ah, forget it. I’m past it. Mostly.) Where was I? Oh yeah, the Christmas tree. We got it home, cranked up the holiday tunes, wrestled the tree from the top of the
Volvo and set it up on the “super-base for trees of all sizes” (or something like that) we bought last a couple years ago. It was a perfect tree, conical and green and lush. A symbol of all things good. We admired it for some time, then spun it around to direct the ubiquitous “hole” toward the wall and went to work on decoration. Strings of lights, beautiful ornaments – reminders, really, of the kids through the years, or places visited or friends near and far. It was fun putting up the tree and, frankly, for me, it was the first time I really felt the Christmas spirit this year. I felt happy. Satisfied with everything. My kids smiled and hugged me, and I hugged and kissed my wife. And for a moment, everything else went away. It was just us. And it was good.
Timber! Late that night, after a romantic glass of wine and game of Scrabble with my wife, I was suddenly awakened from a deep and untroubled sleep. “Matt, wake up. Wake up,” Wendi whispered urgently. “Get the bat.” My wife is lovely, a truly peaceful person – she absolutely refuses to keep a gun or any other dangerous weapon in the house for any reason. With that said, she has