I spent a portion of last weekend high off of a few sunny, warm days. I directed this new energy towards organizing a little around the house and setting goals for exercising and writing on my computer in my office closet on Monday. A classic case of early spring energy. But when Monday rolled around, the forecast indicated that it wasn’t going to get out of the forties. Fifty and above is our top end cut off for fires in our wood stove. So, change of plans. Or should I? Could I enjoy a fire and also make good on all my ambitions? Could I just write on my ipad in front of the computer? Could I do a work-out in front of the stove? I could… but I didn’t want to. The glow of the screen is the very antithesis of the one emitted from a fire. I knew I couldn’t truly cultivate hygge with an iPad and exercise sweat.
I threw aside my plans for a “productive” day, ignored the obnoxious voice in my head saying that I was being lazy, built a tower of logs and kindling and ignited one of our homemade starters. I tucked myself into the couch for a day of alternately reading and staring into the flames. It was a lovely, luxurious, morning.
It was an unusually cold winter here in Maryland. One furnace went out during a cold snap so we’ve been using and relying on the wood stove a lot. We have two furnaces, so it wasn’t as dire it might seem at first glance. Using a wood stove for a heat source is this lovely balance of yin and yang energy. Cleaning the stove, chopping kindling, carrying the wood inside, and building the fire are all yang. The sitting back, admiring the fire, and resting in its warmth? That’s yin.
One of the cold stretches was right when I was recovering from my mastectomy. The snow fall meant the kids were home from school. Having them around helped me heal faster. (My surgeon said I didn’t look like someone who had just had surgery at my follow up.) And I’m confident that the snow alleviated some of the guilt I might have felt over taking time to rest and recover.
And so I’m grateful that mother nature sent us one last coldish day to enjoy a fire. But as the morning turned into afternoon, it grew warmer than I’d expected and I let the fire die out. My husband mentioned that it’s always nice to have a fire once it’s dark outside. (We’d lost electricity for about an hour on Saturday evening in the middle of dinner and we were all surprised at how much light the wood stove provided once we’d lit it in the complete darkness.) So I attempted to get it started again once the sun had set. The fire was finicky by which I mean that it smoked to the point that I had to open the sliding glass door. Eventually, though, we got to enjoy another nice flame. But it somehow seemed perfect that our last fire would be so imperfect, so troublesome in a way. It was as if mother nature was reminding me that there’s a time and season for everything, lest in my longing for beautiful fires in our woodstove, I miss her other gifts and blessings.
My six-year-old son was home sick a few days this week. He asked to go for a walk. We searched for signs of spring and found snow drops, crocuses, robins, and onion grass. The next day he observed that the snow drops looked different. They’d opened overnight. He held up his hand, letting three fingers droop to illustrate how they’d changed. As much as I love the fires, I also love to see what’s there when the smoke clears.
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Rhena Writes 