"Tell me about it," she said.

I looked at her blankly.

"Tree's journey," she said. "I want to know exactly what lies in store for him. And no cutting corners. I want to know everything, good and bad."

"Where do you want me to start?" I asked.

She thought for a minute.

"How will you get him there, to New York City?" she asked. "He's very tall."

I began to explain. I told her how the tree travels in a special trailer that's like an accordion. It can stretch out up to 100 feet. They say it can hold a tree 125 feet tall, though I've never seen it. The tallest tree that ever stood at Rockefeller Center was ninety feet, and that was back in 1948. "What kind of tree was that?" Sister Anthony asked.

"I believe it was a Norway Spruce," I said.

"Hmmm," she said, then added. "How tall do you think Tree is?"

"Why, Sister Anthony," I said, laughing, "I think you're being a little competitive!"

She looked sheepish and smiled. My heart lightened, even though I knew this must be hard for her.

She wanted to know more. I think she wanted to make sure we knew what we were doing. Tree was her main concern and she needed to feel she was putting him in good hands.

But there was more to it than that. She had a natural curiosity about how things worked. She was interested in the mechanics of it, just exactly how you move a giant tree from here to there and keep it in one piece.

Once again, I found Sister Anthony shedding new light on something that had become old hat to me long ago. As I told her about the process, it struck me how amazing it really was.

"It takes weeks to get the tree ready," I said. "Then we get about twenty people and a giant hydraulic crane to help move the tree onto the trailer and then to put it up again at Rockefeller Center."

I was gathering momentum. "It gets really exciting on the trip into the city," I said. "The tree travels with a police escort at night, when traffic is light, like a president or a movie star, being whisked along in the biggest limousine in the world.

Sister Anthony was laughing out loud. "My goodness," she said. "You certainly make it sound thrilling."