The Crackle of the Fire

It will be nine years, soon, since I bought this house. One of the selling points for me was the fireplace, nestled in the corner of an entire brick wall. But I have never lit a fire in this fireplace, until tonight. What is it about me that caused this to be so? How is it that something I wanted so very much could just get pushed aside for years and years? Maybe I waited so long because of my dad. As I was creating my life as a new homeowner, my dad was losing his. Although he drove by once, coming home from one of his many hospital stays, he never came inside. He died shortly after I married, and never got to see me in this home I have tried so hard to make. I’ve wished a million times that he could see my place, his grown up daughter as a mother now, and all of the intricacies of my life as a mom.

And tonight, it’s just another way to miss him. The crackle of the fire. That is what I forgot. I remembered the warmth and the smells. My olfactory memory taking me back to my days of girlhood, watching my dad in his lumberjack plaid pound the snow off of the logs before bringing them inside. It was the crackling sound that I forgot. Tonight the sounds take me back along the time/space continuum to the days that I was the little girl and my father the parent, crumpling newspapers and fanning the flames.

No matter how old I get I still cannot believe that it is ME stoking the fire and that the little girl drying her long golden hair by the fire is long-gone. I remember the Blizzard of 1978. One of my first real memories. I was seven, and the power was out as Lake Erie’s snow machine dumped over a foot of snow and killed the electricity for miles around. My dad hung a blanket on the family room door and spread our sleeping bags out in front of the fire. He stayed up all night to keep the fire going and keep us warm. I remember the pounding at the door, when the city’s police came to evacuate us to the shelter at the high school. My dad would not leave, and when the cop insisted, my dad brought him in to the family room where my two younger sisters were already sleeping. The cop finally understood and let us stay. My dad could keep us warm and fed no matter what the weather.

It is just so ingrained in my head, this picture of him in red flannel with raw hands to match. And the kindling and logs he split just outside the door and piled on the hearth. The way he took my sisters and I to the woods behind the elementary school to search for kindling, teaching us to snap the bigger branches in half across our knees. There was a horse-shaped tree we named Henrietta, and we would climb and ride as we gathered twigs. Of course you never realize it at the time, these seemingly little things that will become important and be the memories that you want to make for your own children. And it is impossible to know that in one glance and smell of a fire you can be simultaneously the mother and the little girl.

I’m not sure that I can parent like him, that my children will learn like I did and the memories will stand the test of time. I don’t know if I am selfless enough to stay up all night to stoke a fire while my offspring sleep, or trudge through a foot of snow to the woodpile out back. I am still new at this game and I don’t have all the rules down yet. But I am giving it my all, and I can light the fire at least. I remember to open the damper and tuck the crumpled paper carefully in with the logs. I bring the kindling inside from the rain to dry and use a homemade fan to help the sparks turn into flames. I’m not sure I can be the parent my dad was for me, but a fire is as good a place as any to start.