And Yet We Came Out Smelling Like Roses
When I was nine years old, my uncle married his second wife - a hard woman who didn’t seem to like kids.
To be perfectly honest, we weren’t all that fond of her either.
One day my uncle and his new wife were visiting when she began to share details of the glory of having a fireplace - the elegance, the ambiance. How truly blessed she was to have this marvelous centerpiece to fill her family with the holiday spirit.
But did we know what would make sitting beside her exquisite fireplace a total sensory experience? She only wished that she had some fresh pine cones to burn with the logs. The aroma of the pine cones would certainly ensure a Hallmark Christmas. Such a shame that there were no pine trees in her yard.
Of course, our yard was full of pine trees. Pine trees wherever you looked. My mother invited our aunt to take as many pine cones as she pleased. Which would have been well and good if said aunt trekked around the yard collecting those pine cones in an old K-mart bag herself, but that’s not what happened. My sister and I were appointed to the job.
I’m sure there were protests. “It’s too cold!” “I’m busy making Lite Brite art!” “Are we even getting paid for this?” “I want to talk to my Union rep!” As you might expect, we still wound up outside in the frigid winter air with plastic bags in hand.
There comes a time when complaining won’t get you anywhere. You’ve just got to suck it up and accept the hand you’ve been dealt. Well, we didn’t stop complaining, but we did trudge up the hill to where the pine cones lay.
The most abhorrent aspect of the task was not that we were freezing our sweet little asses off, nor that we had become slave labor for a relative we didn’t even like. The worst part was that our dog, perhaps also enamored of the aroma of spruces and firs, did his business under those trees. While it was thoughtful of him to shit in the one part of the yard that was the universal symbol of an air freshener, it meant that my sister and I had to be mindful of where we stepped. My parents called this stretch of lawn the “mine field,” and with good reason.
As I hopscotched around questionable mounds of dirt in search of those precious pine cones, I suddenly had a deliciously evil idea.
“Hey,” I called to my sister, who was busy trying to distinguish the cones from the frozen turds.
“What?”
“Remember what she said she wanted the pine cones for?”
“To make the fireplace smell nice.”
“Riiiiiight . . .”
We reentered the house that evening with cold, flushed cheeks and full shopping bags. We presented the fruit of our labor to our uncle’s wife, and even managed to be pleasant and well-mannered. Clearly the fresh air had done us some good.
As we ran off to play, we finally let the satisfied smiles sprawl across our faces. Even as I write this, reflecting back on the vengeful brat I was, I can’t suppress a grin. It still amuses me to know that on that long ago winter night we sent home our aunt with two hefty bags of fragrant, hand-picked, shit-covered pine cones.