Is That Your Tree?

We moved to this house over Memorial Day in 2007. He looked at the tree. I looked at the lake. We both looked at the deck, and it was good. And we looked at the rest of the four-bedroom bank foreclosure not updated since 1977, and it was bad, but not awful.

We both imagined how things might be. I imagined where the Christmas tree might go inside, and he envisioned hanging lights on the tree outside, the one taller than the house.

The first time he tried it, he used a pole with PVC pipe and...