'Embering

"It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness" - Eleanor Roosevelt

*

"What's a hart-hhe, Papa?" asked Lacey, pointing to a word in her Beatrix Potter book she did not know.

The word 'hearth' was more puzzling to her millennial mind than tyrannosaurus; it was a bygone term of ages past, when fire was still life or death in a home, when it still needed to be both well tended and well lit.

Jean smiled patiently as his six year old granddaughter stared up at him wide-eyed, waiting in suspense open-mouthed, like a baby bird waiting on a worm, for her beloved grandpa to unlock yet another of literature's great mysteries.

"A hearth," he pronounced slowly, pulling her to his lap, "Is the place in your home where fire's footprints can cause no harm. It is the doorstep of the embers. Some say it is the heart of the home."

He pointed and her gaze followed his arm.

"Physically, it is the flat bit in front of the fireplace that if there were no doors, would help to keep the fire from escaping its home into our home. They used to be much larger and made of all stone."

The little girl squirmed and looked at her living room's hearth. It was shiny and painted and unusable but for decoration in front of the family's electric fireplace that turned on with a light switch. It gave off a limited amount of heat and the moving flames were not made of fire.

Her grandfather elaborated.

"A hearth — a real one — is a useful place to make food, or to get warm. A home isn't home without a fire, or at least it wasn't when I was little.

"It used to be my job to make sure the family's fire was stoked morning and night, and if I didn't choose a large enough overnight log of slow burning hardwood, everyone would wake up chilled to the bone."

Lacey scrunched up her nose in confusion. She had never known a world before central air.

Fires were for camping and marshmallows or festive days when it was a little too cool for comfort but not cold enough for her dad to justify adjusting the thermostat.

"Why don't w-e 'ave those kind n-now?"

Jean scratched his head. It was a good question.

He wasn't sure exactly when fire had become so useless and fragile that it needed to be locked away like antique china or outright replaced with something unnatural.

"Wellll," he stalled, "Some places still do. Do you remember when you visited the cottage last year? And how your grandmother rested the bread in front of the real fire?"

"I 'e-ember," Lacey stuttered, "Why did she d-o-o that?"

Jean paused and tilted his head in thought before continuing. He disagreed with Lacey's doctor: her speech was improving, he was sure of it.

He just had to keep her talking.

"It warmed the yeast and helped the bread rise, so it would be big enough to bake," he replied while reaching for the handknitted blanket behind him.

His weathered but strong hands wrapped them up snugly.

Lacey yawned.

"Oh, yeah."

Satisfied and sleepy, she drifted into sleep.

Jean felt his own eyelids drooping and as they did he thought back on what a different way of life it had been.

He remembered, too, his sister, who Lacey was named after, and how she had caught a cold at this same age. For so many years he had blamed himself for letting the fire go out that night. But he had only been eight himself, hardly old enough to bear the weight of such a responsibility, and her death today would have been easily avoided had there been antibiotics.

Jean held Lacey tighter to him, and they settled in for a nap, fitting against each other like two halves of a broken plate.

Someday he would tell her that story, but not tonight.

*

Lacey adjusted her ponytail. Gone were the chic updos, false lashes and nails of the business world. Caretaking was not a glamourous job, but after her grandfather had had a stroke the past summer, Lacey hadn't hesitated to take on the role.

It was important for him to be in a familiar space, so they had moved him back down south to his cottage by the lake for the winter.

Overall, things were better. He couldn't walk yet, but he was able to sit up. Little by little old muscle memories were stirring. But it wasn't without setbacks, and for someone who had been as independent as Jean, it was like trying to take care of a wounded dragon.

Like now, as he dribbled oatmeal on himself for the second time that morning, becoming more ornery by the minute when the PSW from the respite service tried to tidy him up.

He flung the spoon away and she threw up her hands in defeat.

"It's alright, Annie. I'll take care of it. Thanks for the help."

The overworked older woman nodded and patted Lacey on the shoulder on her way out, happy to go.

"Papa, I know you did that on purpose. What have you got against, Annie?"

Jean choked on a laugh and tried to answer, but his mouth wouldn't speak the joke he held perched on the tip of his tongue about Annie's perfume. Frustrated, he knocked the bowl over.

Lacey stepped over it. She had something better for him to chew on than oatmeal anyway. She wheeled him over to their fireplace and began building a good one. Tented and open, like he had taught her.

His eyes watched her every move, and he pointed to a spot she should have filled with kindling but hadn't. Quickly, she fixed her "mistake" and set it ablaze.

"Aha! See? You're still sharp as a tack! Now, look what I found in the attic. Do you remember this book?"

Lacey passed him her copy of Beatrix Potter's The Fairy Caravan, and the octogenarian's eyes lit up like lightbulbs.

"I thought so," she said, "Well maybe you and I could get a little reading in like we used to. Much better fire though than the electric one, eh?"

He tried to say yes, but his voice felt croaky, and he didn't like sounding that way, so he nodded instead.

"I know you can do better than that. Just like when I was small and you pushed me to keep talking when I didn't like how I sounded either."

She knew just the page she wanted and opened to it precisely. She read aloud for a little while, and then paused slyly on her target word.

"Haar-t, Harrrthh," she sputtered. "Oh, it's no use. I'll never get that word right!"

"He-arth!"

Jean shocked himself with the sound of his own voice. He hadn't even realized he was speaking.

Lacey tried not to spoil the moment by getting too excited.

"Oh, yeah... Hearth... I should have remembered."

Jean sat up straighter and reached for the book.

"I re- emember."

Lacey passed it to him and he thumbed through it to the ending. There nestled in the pages was an old black and white photo of two children playing trains in front of this very fireplace.

He handed the image to Lacey with shaking fingers.

Astonished, she turned it over.

Jean and Lacey - 1949

"Lacey?" she gasped.

Jean's eyes misted, but it didn't stop the torrent of words from flowing out of his mouth, a year's worth of speaking suddenly catching up to him in a blink.

"My baby siss-ter. This was our-r hearth," he began, growing stronger with each syllable,

"She-she was my home.

Just like you."

Lacey held her grandfather, and together they cried tears of joy,

of pain,

of

'embering.

*

The END

*

First published by Call Me Les on Vocal Media November 2024. All rights reserved.

Entered into the "Tales of Hearth" contest.

With thanks to my mom, without whose stories about her childhood I would not be able to appreciate the importance of a hearth to a home.