Kindling

The back door was open to the morning sun and the warm salt air was sweet. Nana had given me a quarter to fill the woodbox and I was carrying armfuls of wood and carefully stacking them while she hung the morning's wash and the dogs ran about the yard. My mother stood in the kitchen smoking and drinking coffee at the sink - my brothers were fishing off the breakwater, I could hear them yelling back and forth to the incoming and outgoing boats - and the day was filled with promise and sunshine. Nana had taught me to wear work gloves to avoid splinters and how to carry the thicker, heavier pieces first, then the kindling so that the smaller, lighter pieces could be brought to the stove first. She would lay the kindling atop the old newspapers then carefully strike a wooden kitchen match and the fire would catch instantly. Once it was burning steady and bright, she would add several pieces of the heavier pieces and in no time the entire kitchen was filled with a welcoming wamth. Fire, she reminded me each morning, is to be handled with care, respected, and never to be trifled with. It's dangerous to be careless, even with just the kindling.

The woodshed itself was the size of a garage and filled to nearly overflowing with neat stacks of wood. The scent of it was magic to me, a clean, sharp smell like a forest or a cedar chest. Inside we played jacks or dominoes and even a few forbidden games of Spin the Bottle. The cat from next door had her kittens there, owls nested in the eaves, and sometimes we would see a wild fox dart through on a hunt for mice. I kept treasures there - a diary,
stolen cigarettes, shells from the beach and dried flowers, letters from home, Jersey Milk chocolate bars and thick rectangles of sticky, sweet McIntosh toffee wrapped in red plaid paper with bright gold trimming, so rich and sugary that it was all but forbidden. It was kindling of another kind - the small secret things of growing up and experimenting with defiance and disobedience. Adults never came to the woodshed and it became a private place, a children's place, a hideway, a fort, and a refuge. I spent rainy afternoons just inside the door, making circles in the sawdust and reading while I watched for the fog to come in. The lighthouse on Peter's Island would gradually disappear into the mist, one small piece at a time, and the steady sound of the foghorn would blow all afternoon and into the evening. Westport vanished and sometimes I couldn't even see the house or the flagpole. Sound changed and became muted and non-directional as if it were coming through layers, walking its way through the weather with a slow, measured pace. Nana would open the back door and call me in and the kitchen would be ripe with the smell of homemade pies and fresh coffee.

The next morning would dawn clear and bright with no trace of the fog except for the dampness on the kindling I carried. Would that people could self correct with so little effort.