DECEMBER 11, 2025 – (Cont.) If you read yesterday’s post, you know what happened and the tragedy that didn’t happen—all because of a Christmas tree stand stored in the attic above the garage. Aware of the circumstances plying our household this season, the reader surely understands my reticence—strike that; fear—about venturing up into that forbidding space.
When the ER angels were preparing to release Beth late Tuesday night, they asked if we had a walker at home.
“Yes,” came our reply. “But it’s in the attic,” I said, “and it’s not coming down. In fact, it stays with the house when we move.” Beth agreed.
Unfortunately, that was not the end of the story. For the past six eventful hours in and out of the Xray room at ER and lying in pain in room B5 while waiting for the pictures to be read, Beth had been separated from her phone.
After returning to the house and assisting Beth inside, I looked for the phone, which I assumed could be found near the spot where she’d crashed to the garage floor. But no dice. I called it. No “answer” . . . er, no ring. I called again. This time a faint ringtone sounded from . . . the attic.
When I informed her that I’d located but not retrieved her phone, she insisted that I recover it. I protested. If anything was to be learned from her accident it was that we needed to rethink how now to access that part of our house. My “rethink” took into account three elements: 1. Our age; 2. Ladder choice—no step ladders allowed! and 3. Having a spotter on hand. I phoned our son Cory to see if he could assist the next morning. He said he would. (I didn’t want to lean on our kind neighbors for this for fear of eroding their kindness.)
With plans laid, I was ready to collapse into bed. I’d managed only three hours of sleep in the past 30 hours.[1] As I prepared to remove hat, mittens and jacket (I was prepared to sleep in my clothes), however, I scolded myself. “You’re surrendering to fear,” I said. “Put that aside and deploy reason and caution. Beth has always criticized your (slow and deliberative) approach to accessing the attic, but in the end, it was her patented Boger ‘git ‘er done’ method that led to an untoward result. You need to pull yourself together, go back into the garage and recover her phone. It’s got to be close to the ceiling opening. She’d been using it for illumination and was on the ladder, halfway into the attic space, not all the way in. Thus,” I reasoned, “she had to have dropped her phone very close to the edge of the opening.”
I pulled out the aluminum extension ladder from its place along the side wall of the garage and used the upper ends of the side rails to push the cover of the attic opening up a few inches. I then rested the ladder securely against the joist at the front end of the opening. Next, I double-checked the guide on the side of the ladder to ensure the slope was right. Finally, I turned on my iPhone light and to render the phone easily retrievable, slipped it into a front pocket of my jacket.
Slowly, carefully, I climbed the ladder as I’ve climbed ladders throughout my life—very carefully. Once my eyes were above the floor of the attic, I stopped, held on to a rung with one hand, reached for my phone with the other and shined the light through the opening. Sure enough. Beth’s phone lay six inches from the edge. After carefully returning my phone to my jacket pocket, I reached in, wrapped my hand around Beth’s phone, put it in my jacket pocket, and climbed back down.
Now I could sleep. And I did for nine hours, with a 20-minute intermission to help Beth up in the middle of the night and to activate her heat pad.
So far, so good. But at daybreak, after helping Beth get launched, one small challenge remained: what to do about the tree stand that was still up in the attic, hidden from sight. Three weeks ago when we’d hauled down all the Christmas boxes and bins, the tree stand had escaped notice, pushed, no doubt to some far corner of the storage area.
Was it the return of fear or the weight of reason that now prevailed on me to venture forth and buy a new tree stand? Beth had opposed the idea when I’d first mentioned it before the Great Fall. This time she grumbled but implicitly acquiesced. I searched online for “tree stands near me.” Online they seemed abundant—at Menards, Target, Walmart, and if all else failed, our local family owned hardware store. Surprisingly, I learned, if money were no object a stand could be had for . . . $120. I found that high cost hard to contemplate. The tree stand hiding in our attic had served us well for nearly 40 years, and I couldn’t believe that a suitable replacement should cost more than $30, despite Joe Biden having caused 110% of the annual runaway rate of inflation since 1986.
On my way to pick up Illiana from school, I headed first to Menards, which had the cheapest but also widest selection of tree stands. The roads were still awful from last night’s blizzard, and because I had little time to accomplish my mission, I gave myself strict orders: DO NOT MAKE THINGS WORSE; DRIVE SENSIBLY. To adhere to this imperative, I pretended I was driving a vehicle loaded with hair-trigger bombs. They were needed desperately by my comrades in arms on the front line of combat, so time was of the essence, but on the other hand, the slightest mishap—running into a snowbank to avoid collision with another vehicle, skidding around a corner, or slamming into a car I was tailgating when the traffic light turned from amber to red—would blow my life to Kingdom Come. In the event, however, the gods were my escorts and arranged for green lights and lots of salt at critical corners and intersections—all the way to a slot in the Menards parking.
But the gods abandoned me at the store entrance: inside, the supply of tree stands was down to ZERO. When I expressed desperation, two kind and conscientious salespeople checked their phones for alternatives. “Walmart or Target,” said Hannah. “Walmart,” definitely, said Mia. I thanked them and dashed back to my car, grateful that the effort hadn’t left me breathless.
The gods were back, switching the lights to green and moving vehicles out of my lane to allow me safe, swift passage to . . . Walmart—the one in Roseville where Somalis seem to be in the majority among staff and patrons. As I raced past them, I was reminded of their present fears and tribulations. The contrast with my own put mine in perspective. I wondered what the most recent immigrants among them thought of Christmas freneticism. I asked for help and it was cheerfully extended. When I found no tree stands where I’d been directed, I returned to the staff.
“No stands are there,” I said.
At that moment, an older Hmong man approached. He was their engaging manager, and just as Hannah and Mia had done at Menards, he checked his phone. “No, I’m very sorry,” he said, “but we’re out. I can order one for you though.”
I thanked him and fled. I was out of time and would now have to zoom to school. Yet again the gods were my protectors. I arrived with a minute to spare and used it to phone Ace Hardware located on the way home. Yes! They had two stands left. When Illiana climbed into the back seat I told her my plan.
In the few short minutes it took to reach the store, they were down to one stand—a super-deluxe “Krinner Tree Genie” weighing in at $130. Yes, $130. I’d blame Joe Biden, but this being all about Christmas, in the spirit of the three spirits that haunted but then redeemed good ol’ Ebenezer Scrooge, good ol’ Joe deserves a pardon. Besides, the tree stand was “German-engineered,” as the happy store clerk pointed out in response to my expression of sticker shock.
“Hmm,” I said. “Can I expect a BMW to pop out of the box too?”
“Wouldn’t that be nice,” said the clerk.
“But I guess I can’t complain if all I’m getting is a sehr gut tree stand. When a buyer’s desperate, it’s suddenly a seller’s market.”
When we were back in the car, I told Illiana that I had a perfect response for Grandma if she complained about my buying a new stand—especially if she learned at what cost. “What I’ll do, Illiana,” I said, “is tell Grandma that it’s my Christmas present to her. What can she say to that?”
“I wouldn’t tell her that,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because the truth is you don’t think it’s safe to go back up into the attic looking for the old tree stand.”
“You’re right, Illiana. Let’s stick with the truth. After all, that’s always the best policy.” Nothing like a 10-year-old granddaughter keeping her grandpa on the up-and-up.
An hour later, the new stand was deployed, and O Tannenbaum was standing in sturdy splendor. I was duly impressed by the German engineering—bought and paid for. Maybe now we should shop for a German step ladder.
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
[1]Not counting the 35 minutes I’d spent inside the MRI machine that morning, eyes shut but mind rattled by the sound imitative of amplified jackhammers in an unfair decibel competition with Chopin Nocturnes faintly drifting from the headphones-over-earplugs that had been placed over my ears in protection against the jackhammers.
