Setting theFoundation

There are times in your life when your values are apparent—so ingrained in you that you don’t have to think; you just do. Those values come to us through trial and error, practice, and tradition. In this section, you will get clarity on your values to set the foundation of your values-first life.

Growing up, each Christmas our family of six would pile into our silver Toyota minivan with maroon cloth interior and drive a few hours to east Texas to cut down our tree. Yes, that’s totally a thing. Think red barn, hot cider, tractor pulling a trailer with seats made from hay to sit on as the tractor drops you off in the middle of a field of trees. You can bring your own saw or borrow one of theirs (usually rusted and super dull, but those make for better memories). Then the search for the perfect tree would begin.

It had to be tall enough, round enough, and not have too many bare spots in the branches. If it did have bare spots, could it be turned around to hide its imperfections when on display? The trunk had to be mostly straight.

As a kid, my siblings and I coveted the role of the tree finder. You wanted to be the person that found the one; there’s pride in that (I picked this year’s tree!). We would get the final okay from my mom, who was the actual decider of the tree we ultimately picked. When you finally found “the one,” you took the requisite family picture in front of it, while it was still rooted in the ground. Then (and only then) would my dad get the saw and gloves ready (if he remembered them), squat down, and start sawing down the tree.

My mom would stand up, pushing on the tree, helping with a little force to get it to fall. Then, we would take another picture of my dad with the tree, as if he were showing off a huge fish that he just caught, big enough to win the county fair. He’d carry the tree to the path where the tractor would come by and pick us back up and go to the barn, for the tree to get shaken (to take off all of the loose needles) and bailed (put in a plastic netted wrapping to minimize its size so you could easily put it on the top of your car). They’d measure it and give you the ticket to bring to the woman at the front where you could only pay in cash or with a check.

We’d hang out for a while and then, for some reason we’d ALWAYS, and I mean ALWAYS, stop at Sonic on the way home to eat. We’d get tater tots and the peppermint candy. It was amazing. We didn’t eat out a lot, so it was a special treat. Every. Single. Year.

When we got home, we’d take the tree off the car, and my dad would get ready to put it in the tree stand. But before he did that, he’d saw off the bottom of the tree to make it even and also to keep it as a keepsake. My parents kept the sawed-off logs from each tree every year. They displayed them as decorations in a woodpile near the fireplace. It was a memento of that moment. You could look back, and some years it was a thinner trunk, sometimes a thicker one. Over the years, we had more and more tree trunks as our family got older.