In my California mornings, I reinvigorate the fire.
In early light, the sun not yet crested above the surrounding hills, I bundle in layers and follow my breath to the fire pit. The coals from last night’s big Oak round have burned down to a few pulsing cinders.
With cold hands, I gather the small sticks, a toss of Oak leaves, and begin to fan the flames. Sometimes Jeb is with me and we can huddle around the smokey pile, feeding and blowing in delicate attention. Other times he’ll wander off to stand among the dogs that wrestle on the frosted grass, leaving me to stoke alone.
I can pull my hair back with one hand and bend in close to breathe long and full into the orangey-red embers. I’ve been building fires most of my life and there is always a satisfaction felt when my own exhalation makes flame. My breath to fire, wood crackling to catch, a small blaze building.
This warmth gathers us. Family members from three to sixty-three, wander out in the morning with steaming mugs in their hands, big coats and sleepy eyes. The fire wakes us. Even once the sun has cast slants upon the melting lawn, the fire will still hold a steady flame. Spirals of smoke will dance in light throughout the day.
We realized last night that the fire has been burning without pause for three days. A heartbeat pumping, our family’s outdoor hearth is only an ‘h’ away from the love-life source that keeps us living.
We laugh at how I’ve taken to keep it burning in the morning. I love the unending cycle of stoking coals to flame.
“Well, whaddya think? Let’s keep it burning til 2012!” we say as we sit and warm our hands.
We smile in the cold as the knees on our jeans get toasted. My father’s quiet tone
drifts in the swirling smoke, our eyes fixated on the flames.
The house is unusually quiet at 5:52am. I have the warmth of my father’s writing room all to myself while the family sleeps.
By now I’ve learned the workings of this big coffee maker and have two pots ready for when the aunts, uncles and grandparents wake. Last night was the convergence of relatives while children danced in stocking feet.
After the Christmas cookies had worn off and the kids were soundly sleeping, the grown-ups gathered around the fire under the clearest sky of stars. Owls screeched and coyotes yipped to each other in distant canyons.
courtesy of seaside rose garden
In the midst of the wildlife, Santa was still in our midst. The holidays pull stories of our youth and we shared our memories of his bounty and the day we learned there really wasn’t a red suit and sleigh.
Never having wanted to tell my son a lie, I have not perpetuated the Santa myth. Jeb’s known the story, but I’ve never told him, absolutely, that Santa was real.
So when he asked me about 3 years ago to know the truth, I did the double-check “do you really want to know?”
“Yes!”
“Do you think Santa is real?”
“No.”
“Who do you think brings presents to the kids?”
“Their parents…?”
I couldn’t bring myself to speak the word “yes”, somehow not wanting to completely squelch all sense of the mysterious. But I nodded and smiled.
I talk to a few adults about the time they learned the truth about Santa, and on more than one occasion someone has said it all happened at once.
“I learned about Santa Claus, the Easter bunny and sex all about the same time.”
Maybe it’s a rite of passage around Jeb’s age of eight. Learning that some of the stories you’ve been told are fables, coupled with the revelation that there are sacred secrets of life you never knew.
He wants to know the whole truth but he longs for magic.
And isn’t this true for most of us?
On this quiet morning I reach to my father’s bookshelf for a little poetic direction. Find T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets and flip to a page like a divination. I find a passage from “East Coker” that speaks of the unfolding.
I sit here and seek a sentence of my own to elaborate on these words, but how can I? But I’ve got to end this post somehow. So here’s how I try…
There’s a place where words end and experience speaks volumes.
Life awaits our presence here.
In a place of magic. Where we can feel what’s real.
“Home is where one starts from. As we grow older The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated Of dead and living. Not the intense moment Isolated, with no before and after, But a lifetime burning in every moment And not the lifetime of one man only But of old stones that cannot be deciphered. There is a time for the evening under starlight, A time for the evening under lamplight (The evening with the photograph album). Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter. Old men ought to be explorers Here and there does not matter We must be still and still moving Into another intensity For a further union, a deeper communion Through the dark cold and empty desolation, The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.”
I’m a time traveler in a new body that’s older, moving in the same spaces that are different. Some call this “going home.”
And I am in my hometown driving on highways that didn’t used to be here before, getting lost on my way to shopping centers that have sprouted in what were once empty fields.
They say the only constant in life is change. So no use in getting too comfortable with any one thing.
And then there’s Roller Towne (yes, that’s towne with an ‘e’), where yesterday, Jeb and I rolled along the edge of the predictable, on the very same (but different) rink where I learned how to skate, inching along and hugging that carpeted wall.
Often slow to warm to new ideas, Jeb needed some coaxing to get out on the rink with me. But bless him, he wasn’t too cool with all the pre-teens there to still hold my hand and let me pull him around the loop. After a few laps, he’d take a break and I would let loose at my own speed to move among the boys and girls, all twelve and under.
Darkness alight with strobes and flashing colors. Some turtles on the outside track with arms balancing on rolling scarecrow legs. Some jack rabbits zipping on inline skates, blowing past me on the inside. It didn’t take long to get my rhythm, even if it was to the over modulated stereo sounds of Justin Beiber. I’ll admit it, I took my hair down. Let the Roller Towne wind blow through me. Exchanged another wave with Jeb and lapped the track again, the exhilaration surprising me.
Jessica Dofflemyer ~ all rights reserved
In a rush of some strange ecstasy of freedom and speed (taking care not to collide into the 11-year-old girl sending text messages while she skated) I thought of how this was the first year I took no personal vacation time. For the last three years I’ve saved my money to make a solo escape, sit in hot springs for a few days, mingle among fringe-dwelling soul-seekers, and take some time to feel like myself (sans motherhood) again.
This year did not allot for this luxury. And so I take the fill-ups where I can. The rush of the smooth wheels beneath me, the pumping electronic beats on the Roller Towne speakers…for a moment I thought, “Forget hot springs, organic food, and beautiful self-realized men. This year I’ve got Roller Towne with the pre-teens. And right now, all is right in the world.”
Jeb and I, we did a few more laps together, too. We even had one good wipe out that landed us both on our behinds. Neither one of us was in our normal stride. And that’s a good thing once in a while.
Somewhere after Roller Towne and during Jeb’s first piece of Hubba Bubba chewing gum, I find myself fielding texts and emails from two old flames. They are both Californians. And in the last 5 years, each one of these men has had their time resting deep inside my heart. It’s been ages since I’ve connected with either one of them, and as if they sense my presence on their golden shore, they both reach out to me within 24 hours.
Past, present and future collide in the confines of my mother’s borrowed station wagon. I’ve got Czech Unit 1 on pause in my ear buds. I’m certainly missing the Bohemian. Jeb and I are driving past the exit for Lover’s Lane (this hometown landmark hasn’t changed).
Jeb’s made his first real bubble with his gum. “I think I’m getting the hang of this!”
(Note to self: give Jeb the proper tools for the job. No more organic xylitol gum squares when he’s trying to learn to blow bubbles.)
We drive away from town, back to the country where there will be no cell reception. It’s ok that I’ll be out of range. I’ve accomplished much. I got my Roller Towne fix. I blew 47 pink bubbles. I sent good wishes to past loves. I learned how to ask for directions in Czech.
Jeb and I, we’re learning. Trying new things in familiar surroundings. Each moment like a hometown. The essence the same, but always changing.
And it’s decided. I’m getting skates for Christmas and I’m gonna roll through 2012.
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