Answer to a burning question



Know what I’ve been doing a lot of so far this winter? Sitting by the fire, just staring at it and thinking. Know what I’ve been thinking about? I’ve been wondering why I like to sit and stare at a fire and think so much. I don’t know why, but a fire just mesmerizes me for some reason.

And we don’t even need a fire, really. My wife and mother-in-law keep the temperature gauge in my house set on Hell most of the time, so it’s not like the fire is keeping us warm on a cold night. And if we were using it for heat, nothing but the front living room would get any use out of it.

I went to a few Christmas parties this year, and had a good time at all of them. But by far my best time was standing outside with a buddy at one of the parties, drinking a couple of beers and cooking sausage on an open flame in a fire pit that he made on the ground. There’s just nothing like a fire.

But I can’t figure out what, exactly, it is. Maybe it goes back to the caveman days, and building a fire symbolizes that you are a man. Hell I don’t know.

Growing up I read a lot of Louis L’Amour westerns. He used to say that traveling cowboys would build a fire whether they used it to cook with or not, or whether it was cold outside or not. They used a fire to keep them company. To fight off the loneliness, like a friend.

I promise you, that isn’t the case with me. I live with a wife, three kids, and a mother-in-law. I’ve got my family, my wife’s family, and my wife’s friends stopping by my house every three minutes whether I want them to or not. So trust me, I ain’t lonely.

Speaking of my wife, she hates my fires. Oh she says she doesn’t, but whenever she walks in the house I can see the look of hatred on her face when she looks at the fireplace. “I don’t exactly hate the fires,” she says. “It just gets kind of smoky in here sometimes. And the whole house smells like burning wood.”

Please. I’ve been married to the woman for 12 years- I know the look of hatred when I see it. And anyway, why wouldn’t you want your house to smell like burning wood. After some of the smells that those three kids have created over the past 11 years, you’d think burning wood would be a treat to her.

And whatever it is about loving fires, it must be hereditary because my son loves them too. He can’t get enough of that fireplace, just like me. One of my favorite things is when I let him build the fire, and see the pride he has in his eyes when the flames are a foot tall.

We kneel down, right in front of the fireplace, and watch log after log burn. Sometimes he even puts his head on my shoulder, but I don’t think he realizes he’s doing it.

It’s one of the few things that both of us really enjoy together. He’s too young to love poker and watch a whole football game all the way through, and I’m too old to sit through one of these t.v. shows he watches or play games with him on the computer. But we can sit and watch a fire all day long, just me and him.

Come to think of it, maybe I just realized why I like fires so much.