My parents still live in the same house I was raised in, which is conveniently located about five miles from where I live today. I had just gotten to my parents house the other day to drop them off for some lunch and shopping. We had come inside and I had a thought as I was standing in their living room with my son. I pointed to their fireplace and told him that when I was little, Mimi and Gramps had had fires in that very fireplace.
The fireplace hasn't been lit in years, but when I was young, on winter nights, my parents would sometimes light a fire. There was a brick hearth, and plush carpet right beyond, which I am certain wasn't inflammable in the way carpets are these days. And yet throughout my childhood, I never saw sparks fly out with any real danger towards the carpet.
My father was mindful of safety and would close the glass fire doors when the fire was building up. Sometimes, I would get to ball up newspaper and throw it in in order to help the fire along. After enough time had passed, I would open the doors and bask in the heat of the blazing logs. There is really nothing quite so nice as a roaring fireplace. My children like the fireplace we have at our house, but it is of the switch on and off variety and doesn't have the same charm.
On occasion, I told my son, there would be a fireplace in that fireplace and we would roast marshmallows and make smores. When I was young, I loved getting the marshmallows cooked just right. Some people like to burn them a bit but I always tried to get mine golden brown and as melted as possible without having the marshmallow fall off the skewer. I never quite mastered this and lost at least one marshmallow into the fire every time.
I don't know if my mother prepared in advance, getting marshmallows at the store when she knew cold weather was incoming, or if they were always there, hiding in the back of the cabinet. But whenever it was time to roast marshmallows, she would always produce them and the skewers to my father and me.
I remember wanting to sleep by the fire but never actually doing so. I remember carefully playing with the fire, poking at the logs, putting little bits of paper in and lighting the long-stemmed matches, I was cautioned not to waste. I wanted the fire to go on all night but my father judiciously determined when the last log should be put on and by bedtime, the fire was down to coals and my desire to sleep in front of it had waned.
I didn't tell my son all this, only that I had roasted marshmallows, "right there when I was young." But in my mind, I recalled many an evening a warm firelit evening from my childhood.
The Big Boy Update: My son was out with my mother getting dinner a while back and she mentioned how the wooden chair was uncomfortable on her, "fanny" (as my mother has always called it.). She said it was more comfortable for her if there was a cushion. Both my mother and I have never enjoyed sitting on wooden chairs. Perhaps we have similarly shaped backsides given that we share that discomfort. When she told my son he said helpfully to her, "why don't you throw a hissy fit?"
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter asked me to warm up some pop-tarts for yesterday morning, saying she wanted them microwaved for twenty-two or twenty-three seconds. That was a very specific time, I told her and then said I thought maybe twenty-three seconds would be good. I pressed the start button on the microwave and saw a look of concentration cross her face. A short while later she called out, "5- 4-3-2-1-0" and at the exact point she called out zero, the microwave dinged. We all have a pretty good idea of how long a second is, but we're off by a slight bit that compounds over time. She was spot on target. The microwave gives no indication of seconds going by and we don't have a ticking clock in the area. I congratulated her for her accuracy as I handed over the now-warm pop-tarts.
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