The drunk beneath the tree

Driving past what was once was my grandparents’ farm, it’s easy to miss a thatch of trees that stands just too together, just too neat, all at the same height, not far from the edge of the shoulder of the road.

My mother planted those trees. With her sister, with their parents.
They were to be Christmas trees for sale, for money that they needed. Badly.

They’re gone now. Not the trees, but those who planted them.
My mother moved west.
My aunt moved north.
My grandmother moved south.
And my grandfather, my grandfather, was moved underground.

What gives the thatch away is its perfection. No forest is that perfect, that neat. There’s always a rotten tree, a misshapen tree. And there is always, always a fallen tree.

One of the greatest gifts of my childhood was that my parents allowed me to see the imperfection of my family.

They let me see the drunk beneath the Christmas tree (if the tree was even still standing). They let me see that under that tree, lay an absolute humanity, lay something I could not yet possibly, nor perhaps ever, understand. They let me see someone worth loving. No matter what.

What if real beauty lies not in the lie of perfection, but in the truth of imperfection?

What if the way out of bingeing isn’t much different? What if perfection binds you, and imperfection might free you?