My 13-Foot Lesson

It was our first year in our new house together, not just any house, but our dream home. Vaulted ceilings stretched nearly twenty feet high, and large bay windows overlooked the city skyline, softening into twinkle lights when evening came. Christmas had never been an easy season for me, but that year something let loose. I leaned into the holiday not through excess or obligation, but through its more true meaning: a home with love gathered in one place.

When we talked about getting a Christmas tree, I learned something new about my husband. Growing up, his best friend’s family had a massive tree—taller than all the others, standing boldly in the center of their home. Even as a child, he remembered being in awe of it, he recalls saying out loud to his friend, I want a tree like that, without understanding that a dream like that also requires the kind of home that can hold it. I agreed enthusiastically—partly for the symbolism, partly for the novelty—until we realized that anything over nine feet came with an unreasonable price tag. We agreed to wait. No tree that year, we would sacrifice the dream and vision this year to have it next year.

I love antiquing and hunting for inspiration through buy-and-sell listings. I’m drawn to sustainability, creativity, and letting objects live more than one life. I rarely search for something specific—I search for the possibility of seeing my home differently. There’s something about reuse centres and buying things that are new-to-me that forces you to consider items you’d otherwise overlook. The environment itself invites curiosity. It disrupts your defaults.

If you only ever shop in one store, you start thinking in that store’s language. Your vision narrows to what fits on those shelves. It’s like only ever assembling IKEA furniture—you stop imagining what could exist and start believing the instructions are the limit. Thrifting removes the instructions. It asks you to see potential instead of products, to imagine function instead of labels. That openness keeps me creative, present and from mistaking convenience for vision.

And then I saw it: a 13-foot Christmas tree.

It was beautiful, within reach, and exactly what we said we wanted. The woman selling it was in her seventies and had owned it for twelve years. She spoke warmly about its history and the traditions attached to it, how carefully it had been maintained, and how, over time, it had become too much to put up each year. I remember thinking, What’s hard about putting up a tree? But I didn’t ask. I had that old IKEA commercial running through my head—start the car. A good deal. No questions. Move fast. That should have been my first clue. What would need to be true about a tree for it to feel increasingly overwhelming year after year? Again—start the car.

When the box arrived and nearly filled our front entryway, the excitement dulled into something heavier. This wasn’t just a tree. It was a commitment. The box sat unopened for a week. When I had a day off, I started with one small step. I wanted my husband to come home to the beginning of the experience he’d described from childhood. I pulled the tree from the box, set up the stand, and climbed a ladder—the wrong ladder, as my husband later pointed out. I managed most of it before becoming acutely aware of how unsafe it was. Standing on tiptoes at the top of a ladder, leaning twelve feet of tree toward myself to compensate for the height I didn’t have, I had a very clear thought as a nurse: I do not want to explain this in triage. So I stopped.

When my husband came home, he was upset because he understood the risk. He finished the top himself and immediately felt how dangerous it would have been for me. He also knew that I was naïve to it. Up to that point in my life, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’d used a real ladder. To me, the closest comparison was a step stool and what could possibly be dangerous about that? I filtered the situation through the frame of my own experience and thought, What could go wrong? As my husband later explained, quite a lot, and he was right to be upset. I told him I didn’t know any better; he reminded me of common sense. The untouched top piece of the tree became its own kind of evidence that, eventually, common sense did kick in. As stubborn as I can be, it made him appreciate how hard it must have been for me to stop—when survival instinct finally caught up to my reality.

It became obvious early in the assembly that big trees come with things you never have to think about when you’re dealing with a normal-sized one. Things like threading fishing wire and anchoring it to the wall or ceiling, because when a five-foot tree tips over, it’s an inconvenience, but when a thirteen-foot tree falls, it’s a safety hazard. Suddenly, I was learning lessons in gravity. Even fluffing the branches took hours: more tree means more branches, because if a thirteen-foot tree had the same number as a five-foot one, it would look more like a Charlie Brown Christmas special than a centerpiece. This wasn’t festive anymore. It was labor.

At some point, I understood the reality the woman in her seventies had chosen to avoid by selling the tree, and I couldn’t blame her. It was a lot. More decisions, planning and energy than I had anticipated. Ready or not, here I was, armed with an unworthy ladder and a growing awareness that eight feet changes the experience.

And there it stood: thirteen feet of artificial luxury, magnificent and exhausting. We exchanged a few tired “yep” responses and agreed we’d decorate it another day. That day never really came. What did come was the realization. A bigger tree meant more decorations, a taller ladder, more money, more effort. That $500 tree quietly grew far more expensive than we anticipated. Eventually, we agreed: this would be the year of the undecorated tree. And that was the lesson.

We talked about how easily we say we want things without considering the arrangements, sacrifices, and realities attached to them. Whether it’s six-pack abs, a luxury vehicle, or even end-of-life decisions I see in the hospital, wanting the thing is only part of the choice. Everything that comes after, is the commitment.

That tree stood as a reminder. Dream big, yes—but think fully. Consider not just what you want, but what it will ask of you. Like the woman in her seventies I bought the tree from, I too had dreamed big; she was simply one step ahead of me. In the end, that thirteen-foot tree delivered a lesson far more grounding than the lavender, chic, burlap vision I had imagined. It gave me perspective. And honestly, that lesson was worth more than any decorations ever could have offered.