Moving A Pindo Palm At Christmastime (In Three Acts)

A Substack Christmas Story by Matthew Quick

PROLOGUE:

At the end of October 2023, Alicia and I pack up our entire lives, leave our beloved home on the Outer Banks of North Carolina—where we had previously spent ten life-changing years—and move to Beaufort, South Carolina. My father is in the late mid-stages of what is most likely Alzheimer’s and we want to be close to him and my mother. Suddenly, we can step out of our front door and walk to my parents’ house in minutes.

ACT ONE:

Not too long after Alicia and I begin to settle into our new house, I get a frantic call from my mother.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do!” she says. “I’m sick to my stomach! The pindo palm is leaning!”

“What’s a pindo palm?” I ask.

“The tree I just had put in next to the porch! It’s falling down! I called my new tree guy and he said the old tree guy might have accidentally planted it over a water line and much too close to our house and now we have to move it to your property!”

“Wait. Our property?”

“I should have originally went with the second tree guy.”

“Mom, did you say you want to move the tree to our property?”

“Yes. It’s beautiful. Of course you want it, right? Alicia will love it.”

“But it’s in the ground and it probably weighs a thousand pounds.”

“We have to move it ASAP. To your house. That’s okay, right?”

“I guess so?”

“Your neighbors will be thrilled. I’ll pay for everything.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to move it to a different spot on your property? You love that tree.”

“Matthew, there’s no room. You have to help me out here.”

Later that day, Alicia and I agree that we like palm trees and we especially like free palm trees.

I call my mother and tell her Alicia okayed the plan.

Mom breathes a huge sigh of relief and then says, “I already set it up with the new tree guy. He can do it in three months. I worry that we need to do it sooner, but I guess all good things come to those who wait.”

After the interstate move—and many unforeseen home improvement projects—Alicia and I are definitely ready for a nice long project-free break. But instead of saying all that, I just say, “Okay, Mom. Sounds great.”

Two days later, my mother calls.

“We’re moving the pindo palm in ten days, so we need to decide where it will go. Immediately.”

“It’s going on our property, right?”

“Yes, but where exactly?”

“Alicia and I will have to discuss.”

“Fine,” Mom says, “but the best spot is obviously to the left of your house when looking at it from the street. You’re also eventually going to need a clean-shaven sabal palm on the opposite side of the house to balance things out.”

“Clean-shaven?”

“There’s an official term for it, but I don’t remember what the tree guy called it. The sabal palm Dad and I have in our front yard is clean-shaven. It doesn’t have those prickly things on the trunk. You like that one, right?”

“I do.”

“Okay. I’ll tell the tree guy to look for one.”

“I should probably talk to Alicia.”

“Who doesn’t like palm trees? She likes palm trees, right?”

“She does.”

“Okay. It’s settled.”

ACT TWO:

Later that week, my father joins me on a trip to the dump. We pack the RAV4 full of stuffed trash bags and flattened cardboard boxes. I put on the Eagles greatest hits because it usually makes my dad nostalgic and happy. Halfway there, Dad interrupts our singing Take It Easy to urgently ask, “Do you have the pass?”

“It’s on my phone, Dad.”

“You don’t have a pass in here?” He points to the glovebox.

“Nope, it’s on my phone.”

“Your mother and I have a card that we have to show the man at the dump so he’ll let us in.”

“I know. Mine is on my phone.”

“Can we get in without the pass?”

“I just show them my phone.”

“Do you know where the dump is?”

“Yep.”

“Have you ever been there before?”

“Yep.”

“You have?”

“We go all the time.”

“We do?”

“We have so much fun. We take it easy. Like the Eagles. Right, Dad?”

“They’re my favorite band. The Eagles.”

“And football team, right?”

“Do you have the pass for the dump?”

“Dad, did you know that Mom’s moving your pindo palm to my house?”

“What’s a pindo palm?”

“That big leafy thing next to your porch.”

“It’s going to your house on the Outer Banks?”

“Dad, Alicia and I moved to Beaufort, remember?”

“How can they move a tree?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, your mother knows how to do things like that. She found this place for us. Beaufort. She designed the house and decorated it. Your mother is a great lady. She knows what’s best when it comes to houses and plants and stuff like that. I made all the money working for the bank. Your mother did all the house stuff.”

“You ever tell Mom she’s a great lady?”

“Sure!”

“I’ve never heard you say that before.”

“She brought me to this place. Isn’t it beautiful? Look.”

The tide has come in and we’re passing a marsh lined with a few palm trees. An egret suddenly takes flight, majestically flapping its white wings in what looks like slow motion.

“It is beautiful,” I say.

“You like it here?”

“I do, Dad.”

“You should move to Beaufort”

“I already did.”

“You did?”

“Yep.”

“Good! It’ll be real nice having you around!”

I reach over and squeeze my father’s shoulder.

He says, “Do you have the pass for the dump?”

“It’s on my phone, Dad.”

“I think you need the piece of paper or they won’t let us in.”

“They’ll let us in.”

“Without the paper?’

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re cool guys, Dad.”

“We are?”

“Hell yes, we are.”

“But we need the paper.”

“Only uncool guys need the paper. Cool guys like us take it easy.”

“The Eagles are my favorite band.”

I hit the button that makes Take It Easy play from the beginning and then we’re singing again, telling each other not to let the sound of our own wheels drive us crazy. Don’t even try to understand.

That Saturday, my mother and father arrive at my house with a tarp, a rake, and a shovel. My mother looks determined. My father looks tired.

“We need to move your bottle brush and the magnolia before the tree guys get here on Tuesday,” Mom says. “My new tree guy says that magnolias are like having kids—nothing but problems. They get a fungus if you don’t treat them four times a year. They drop a lot of leaves.”

“So having kids is nothing but problems?” I say.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Mom says. “He didn’t mean it that way. Don’t take everything so literally. Kids don’t drop leaves.”

“Hi Dad.”

“Can I lie down on the porch?”

“Sure.”

Dad goes and lies down on the couch.

“Your neighbor down the street said he’d take the bottle brush if we dig it out,” Mom says.

“I was thinking we might move it to the back of my property?”

“You want to keep it?”

“Do you think it will survive the transplant?”

“Sure!”

Then I’m digging a hole at the back of my property—minding the red spray-painted Dig-Safe lines—shoveling dirt onto the tarp my mother has spread out.

“Do you really think we can move the bottle brush?” I ask as I catch my breath. “It’s at least eight feet tall.”

“Your Grandmom Dink would have said yes. She’d have been out here in her eighties moving it.”

“Really, Mom? In her eighties?”

“Dink? Absolutely. I’m going to go start prepping the bottle brush while you finish digging this hole.”

As my mother returns to the front of our property, I remain in the back and continue to dig what I hope is an adequate home for a small tree. It’s been quite some time since I’ve put a shovel to good use. It’s much harder work than I anticipated and I exhaust myself almost immediately. I don’t know if my hole is deep or wide enough, but—after a half hour or so—I join my mother at the front of my property, where she is pulling up buried plastic lines that once delivered water to the plants we are about to transport.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” I ask.

“It’s just tubes!” Mom says and then hands me several rusty U-shaped pieces of iron. “Don’t lose these.”

“What are they?”

“They keep the watering system in place.”

“Okay,” I say and then stash them away in the garage.

When I return, I begin to dig around the bottle brush, which all of a sudden looms like an angry giant’s hand. My shovel immediately hits iron-hard roots.

“Mom, I don’t know that this is a good idea.”

“You’re so pessimistic! I can’t believe it. Your Grandmom Dink would have had this tree out of here by now, even in her late eighties.”

My father’s mother was maybe all of four feet and ten inches tall and probably weighed seventy-five pounds at the end of her life. I’m almost forty years younger and weigh a solid hundred pounds more than the version of Grandmom Dink we are conjuring, but I’m already feeling daunted. Even though I doubt the accuracy of my mother’s statements, I have to admit that Grandmom Dink was a fierce lady, who would have wanted to see me finish the task at hand, and would certainly have had some emasculating words for quitters.

I have a shoebox full of letters that my grandmother wrote me in her mid-nineties, always encouraging me to keep writing, keep believing, and keep making the family proud. “You have another big Hollywood hit in you,” she insisted. “I know it!” I still have the Kelly green Eagles scarf she knitted me. She smiles at me to this very day from the picture frame hanging on my office wall. You can do it, Grandmom Dink eternally says to me. And on my best days, I believe her.

My mother’s psychological tactics spur me on and so I dig and together we cut roots in between shoving the tall tree-ish plant like a gigantic stick shift, trying to find any gear whatsoever.

Concerned neighbors show up and—in between jokes about sore muscles and jobs that they need done on their properties when we finish—they gently suggest that mechanical gas-powered digging equipment and paid help might be the sane way to go, but my mother and I largely ignore these well-meaning people, as our brows become slick with sweat and our fingers blacken with soil.

After another hour or so, I say, “This job might be beyond us, Mom.”

“I can’t believe how negative you’re being, Matthew! We’re doing this! Finish what you’ve started!”

So we trudge on.

My father wakes up from his nap and wanders out to observe. He looks concerned, but does not get involved until my mother begins giving him little assignments.

“Bring me the clippers, Mike,” she says and he obeys. “Pull the branches this way. Help Matthew lean the whole thing the other way. Now give me the shovel.”

Mom plays forewoman.

Dad and I do as we are told.

Hours later, we finally break the bottle brush free, only to find that it easily weighs a few hundred pounds.

“How are we going to move this to the back of the property?” I ask. “The hole’s probably fifty yards from here.”

“We’re going to drag it, of course!” Mom says.

My mother recently turned seventy-three. My father is almost seventy-six. This does not seem like a good idea. But somehow I’m lifting the massive rootball while my septuagenarian parents tug branches along either side of me.

Alicia yells out from the house, saying, “Um, do you need help?”

My mother and I both yell, “No!”

This project is for blood only.

Then Dad and I are standing up the bottle brush in the hole I dug, while—on her hands and knees—Mom tucks all the roots underground, covering everything with a mixture of the rich top soil Dad and I purchased on our way home from the dump and the earth I shoveled up. She adds some mysterious white powder, insisting it will give the bottle brush a fighting chance.

As for the magnolia tree, it’s covered in fungus and looks dead. We cut it up in less than ten minutes.

My father has had enough, so my mother takes him home before returning with a magical black hose that grows when you turn on the water and shrinks when you turn off the water. With the water on, it’s just barely long enough to reach the now transported bottle brush, which Mom soaks.

When I register her satisfied smirk, I say, “Well, you were right. We did it.”

Which is when Mom says, “You know this bottle brush will probably die, right?”

“What?”

“The chances of it actually living are slim to none.”

“Then why did we do all of this? We could have just cut it down and chopped it up like the magnolia!”

“But maybe it will live,” Mom says, while gently petting a few branches. “And it looks so pretty here. It provides great privacy. We had to take a shot. You should talk to it. Maybe even sing the bottle brush a song every now and then. Make it happy.”

My aching muscles disagree and I can’t hide my annoyance.

Early the next morning, I’m using Mom’s magic black hose to water the transported bottle brush. It looks healthy and—for a few seconds—I feel hopeful enough to hum a tune, but then I start thinking about how healthy the cut-down-and-dying Christmas tree in our living room also looks.

“Grandmom Dink would keep watering,” I counter aloud, and then carry on.

ACT THREE:

The day before the big pindo transport, Alicia and I are in our yard deciding exactly where the palm will go. I pierce the ground with a two-foot stick and then we walk toward the sidewalk, where we turn around and try to imagine my parents’ tree inhabiting the space to the left of our house.

“So?” I ask my wife.

“Is that where your mom said it should go?”

“Yeah, but what do you think?”

“It’ll look good there.”

Then I say, “I want to get one of those solar-powered ground lights, so we can see it at night.”

“Uplight the pindo palm?”

“Yeah. Do you think that would look cool?”

“Very.”

“So we’re agreed on the spot?”

“I just read on the internet that we’re supposed to hug at least eight times a day,” Alicia says.

“We are?”

“Yep.”

“Okay,” I answer and then, as we hug, I count, saying, “One hug. Two hugs. Three—”

“No,” Alicia says. “Eight separate hugs.”

“How much time has to pass between hugs to differentiate one hug from the next?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you better consult the internet then.”

“Just keep hugging me, okay? You need a hug. I need a hug. We all need a hug. And it’s eight just to maintain our love. Twelve to increase it.”

“Twelve hugs a day?”

“Or more. I’d like more.”

Ten hours later, I’m on Bay Street, walking to the ice cream shop with my father.

“Where’s Mother?” Dad asks.

“With Alicia. They’re taking the pizza we didn’t finish to the car.”

“Our mother? She’s here in Beaufort?”

“Who do you think I am?”

“You’re Pete. My brother. Where’s our mother?”

“Grandmom Dink’s in heaven, Dad.”

“Mom died?”

I nod.

“That’s right,” Dad says. “I remember now. But it’s good to have you here, Pete.”

I don’t have the heart to tell him that Pete is also in heaven.

“You like Beaufort?” Dad asks.

“I do.”

“It’s nice here.”

“It is.”

“Really nice. Not honky-tonk.”

I nod and smile.

“You should move here,” he says.

“I already did, Dad.”

“You’re joking.”

“Nope.”

“You live here now?”

“Yep.”

“Thank you for moving here!”

“You’re welcome.”

We enter the ice cream shop and when the teenager behind the counter asks if my father would like one or two scoops of Georgia Peach ice cream, Dad cheerfully yells, “Two!”

Later, after dropping Alicia and me off at our house, my mother hits a curb and gets a flat, but manages to park the car in their garage before realizing that the front passenger-side tire is shot. I’m summoned and when I arrive, it actually looks like a tiny bomb went off, blowing out the rubber side. The event has greatly upset my father who struggles with extra stress at the end of the day. Nights are tough for Dad.

“Why do we always have to drive to dinner?” he yells in a voice I remember well from childhood. “Why don’t Matthew and Alicia ever drive?”

Somehow I feel like the flat tire is my fault, even though I wasn’t even in the car when it happened. There’s no point reminding him that he prefers to take his own car. There’s no point saying I’d be happy to drive and have actually been driving him around in my own vehicles for weeks now. There is only staying calm and not adding to the problem.

Am I the bottle brush tree or the magnolia? I think, as my mother googles tire prices and warranties and repair shops, in between texting neighbors.

My father paces relentlessly, so that he seems to be everywhere all at once.

“Mom,” I say. “I have to go. What time are the tree guys coming in the morning?”

“I don’t know. They never confirmed,” she says without looking up from her phone. “Can you drive Dad to group tomorrow and give me a ride to the tire place?”

“Sure.”

I’m eating breakfast at seven thirty the next morning when my mother texts: Are you up? Tree guys coming over to talk to you. Now.

Before I know it, there are men digging in our yard as a forklift-type machine rolls down our street with the pindo palm in its clutches. My mother is directing the show. I have to shower because I have an early Zoom meeting, so I send Alicia out to referee and then quickly make myself presentable from the bellybutton up.

As I’m on the Zoom call, I can hear Kingsly barking and engines running and that back-up beeping noise construction machinery makes. It’s strange to think that there will be a pindo palm next to my house when the meeting is over. Alicia will have witnessed the entire process, but I’ll be like a kid waking up on Christmas morning, with only a foggy notion of how all the presents might have arrived.

When I finish my call, Kingsly is sleeping in his bed. Alicia is at yoga. I go outside and my mother and the tree guys are gone. The beeping machines have vanished. And there is indeed a pindo palm centering the left side of my property. Its trunk looks prehistoric—like petrified dinosaur skin, but also like a holiday in the sun. It’s beautiful and strange and miraculous. Palms erupt from the top of the trunk like a frozen firework explosion.

An hour later, I’m in my Jeep driving my father to his group session at a local church, where a few times a week he and a dozen other people dealing with dementia-related issues gather. He likes going. The volunteers there greet him with smiles and welcoming words, before serving him tea and sandwiches. Lately, his group has been singing Christmas songs together and coloring tree ornaments, one of which hangs in my parents’ kitchen with ‘MIKE 2023’ neatly handprinted on the back.

We’ve got the Eagles playing again this morning. Take It Easy, forever and ever. It’s become something of a mantra for Dad and me. Or maybe a hymn.

“Your mother is getting the tire fixed?” Dad asks.

“Yep.”

“Who will pick me up?”

“If the car’s ready, Mom, or else me.”

“How will I know who’ll be there when I’m finished?”

“We won’t leave you stranded.”

“Who will it be?”

“It’ll be me, Dad.”

“Okay.”

“They planted the pindo palm today.”

“What?”

“The tree guys moved your pindo palm to my house.”

“Isn’t it beautiful here?” Dad says. “Look. Just look. I love it.”

We’re approaching the bridge that takes us from Lady’s Island into Beaufort. There are sailboats anchored in the glassy water. Larger boats docked in the distance to our left have been decorated for Christmas. Sunlight brightens everything and diamonds wink at us when we look out across the river.

“It really is gorgeous here, Dad.”

“You like Beaufort?”

“I do.”

“Maybe you should move here.”

“I think I will.”

“When will you move here?”

“I actually already did, Dad.”

“You did? Really?”

“Been here a month and a half.”

“That’s right. I like having you here. And I like having your mother here. And I like Alicia. And…”

“Kingsly.”

Photo by Matthew Quick.

“That’s right. Kingsly your dog. My dog’s in heaven, right?”

“Yep. Wally went to heaven a few weeks ago, Dad. He lived a good long life.”

“Fourteen years?”

“That’s right. Fourteen years.”

We cross the bridge into downtown Beaufort, which is decorated for the birth of a savior—reindeer and Santas and snowflakes and wreaths and stars and mangers abound. Miles of Christmas lights wrap the waterfront and will keep it aglow long after the sun goes down.

When I drop Dad off outside of the church, a volunteer gathers him up with the type of kindness that makes you want to weep with relief. Her excitement is genuine. She wants to be here today with my father. She chooses it.

“Hi Mike!” she says to him. “Nice Jeep,” she says to me, which makes me smile, as I bought my Jeep used ten years ago and it’s currently covered with pine needles from a recent storm after spending the majority of last month in the shop. It’s seen better days, to say the least. I need to trade it in, but I just can’t seem to pull the trigger.

“Someone’s coming back to get me, right?” my father says as he climbs out.

“Don’t worry, Dad,” I say. “I got you.”

His smile is childlike.

I watch as he and the volunteer disappear into the church.

On the drive home, I think, I’m not the magnolia tree or the bottle brush, I’m a temporarily semi-frozen explosion of prehistoric matter, and I’m going to hug my wife more often as we spend Christmas with my parents for the first time in many, many years. I’m going to try my hardest to take it easy. Maybe I’ll even sing to the bottle brush.

Photo by Alicia Bessette.

Merry Christmas, Substack readers. I’m a Christmas guy. If you’re something else, I hope the spirit of whatever warm thing you happen to be holds you tight.

Good things ahead. And much love.

Matthew

Photo by Doreen Quick.

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