A Fire

My husband and my mother accuse me of being a fire bug. I will get a fire started in the fireplace and keep it going. I have to make myself leave it alone sometimes because of how much I enjoy it. I absolutely love a wood fire in a fireplace. I have loved wood fire for a very long time.

My first experience with a wood fire was as a very young girl. I was probably three or four years old. My grandparents had a wood heater. I loved watching my Papaw build a fire in his wood heater. I just thought it was amazing to watch the wood catch and burn. After that, Daddy went back into the military and we started moving around again. I missed that fire.

Jump ahead about 12 years. My parents decided they didn't like paying high gas bills and so they bought a wood heater for our house in Georgia. I was an older teenager and still loved a fire. I would play with candles and make wax figures. I would light three or four of them and mess with them while they burned, so a wood heater was just another excuse for me to play with fire some more.

I would chop wood, stack wood, and build fires. I learned how to start a fire with a little kindling and stack the wood just right. I learned how to make it so that the fire would burn all night and give off heat for the whole house. I learned how to stack the dryer wood on bottom so the green wood could burn longer.

I now have a wood burning fireplace. This is the second house we have lived in with a fireplace. A fireplace makes me happy. I don't know why. It just does. There is something homey and cozy and earthy about having a fire in the fireplace. I think the real thing going on with me and fire is that I was born in the wrong era. I may have to write a blog on that...