Tending the fire
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| Women the world over start the morning by making a fire for their family. |
When I arrive home, the old
gas furnace makes a terrible, growling noise and then stops working altogether. There is no more heat. It is not warm in Oregon. Spring will linger for many weeks with a
deep, damp mist that colors our world many shades of green. Thinking of the women who tended the fires in
the many places I lived this year, I do not call to get the furnace fixed. I walk out into the yard and forest and
collect pieces of kindling to dry and stack logs by my door. I get up early and make fires but not
without the help of fire starters and lots of paper advertisements I collect at
the grocery store.
By the time the children wake
up the fire is going and the house is growing warm. I think about the women who made fires. I think of the small cookhouses where the
morning fire is started in Vietnam, Cambodia and Haiti. I find the women in warm, little houses where
animals and early risers gather to keep warm or make a cup of morning
coffee. It is, of course, not so cold
there but the cookhouses are cozy places with small stools to sit on and quiet
conversations that bind night to day. I
too liked to find a stool and sit; begging water for tea.
I was never asked to make a
fire there. I don’t think they thought me
capable of the task and most likely I was more in the way than ever a
help. In Haiti, large bags of charcoal
were leaned against the mud walls and in Vietnam the aunt collected piles of
wood that floated into the rice paddies from the rivers. Pots and pans and homemade brooms lined the
walls. I never saw a man start a fire
though in my childhood home, my father always started the fire so we would be
warm on rising.
The fires in Haiti come from
the charcoal makers who cut down the last of the great mango trees and spend
many days in the work of charcoal making.
It is different than the aunt in Vietnam who goes out in her homemade
boat and collects sticks that are floating by.
I can see she is very proud of the growing pile of wood that comes to her
in the rainy season.
The gas that once heated my
house and which I admit I miss comes in a great pipe from far away. There are large tanks on the river to hold it
before it makes its way underground to each home where it warms us without
effort. It is no doubt, as destructive an ecological process as the charcoal but
it is underground and we cannot see it. We get a bill each month in the mail;
exclaiming at the rising costs.
The clinic in Haiti has solar
panels and there is no doubt that with a little effort the morning cook fire
could come from solar power and not from the last large mango tree. In the day, there is more than enough power
but no one fixes the solar panels and there is no electric stove. I bring an electric teapot which I plug in
to the solar system when the sun is out.
This seems miraculous and when I leave there is much talk about who will
get the teapot. I suggest sharing is the best idea but they seem to think it
needs to belong to someone and not everyone.
I’ll bring another when I return.
It is hot in Haiti and everyone could have free power and mangoes but
they do not.
I also know that turning on
the gas heater and plugging the teapot into solar power is not the same as the
cook house of Vietnam and Haiti. There were
cookhouses in colonial America, as well.
Places for baking and boiling and preserving food for those who could
afford to make one.
Did my ancestors wander there
on the way to the fields or barn to talk and get a warm drink?
In my village, many people
stop at coffee shops. They have become
my villages replacement for the warm fires of the cook house at dawn. Perhaps they live alone or are in a hurry or
simply like the companionship of a warm, coffee house with many other people on
their way to work. When people get to
work there are places to make coffee or tea and microwaves to heat up
food. I can walk into countless small
shops and get food and a drink. I do not
need to collect wood or make charcoal or do much of anything but pay and greet
my neighborhood coffee maker when it is my turn. I take it into my car and drive away. They do not take their coffee and put it on
the donkey on the way to the market or juggle a cup of hot water with the reins
of a water buffalo. If you go to the cook
house and pester the woman making the fire for hot water, you linger and drink
it there beside the chickens and small puppies who have joined you.
I begin my days with fire
making. I am not very good at it but I am getting better. In the late afternoon,
I gather wood and bring it in so it will be dry. I look carefully for what will burn more
easily and what will fit in the stove.
I can see it is more difficult that the charcoal and far more difficult
than turning on the gas furnace. If I am
not home, in the afternoon, there will be not be an easy time making the
fire. The wood will be damp and not
start easily. I am not strong with the
ax or hatchet.
The potatoes are cut and
waiting for a bit of dry sky for planting.
The little girls are making fairy hotels from things they find around
the house. They busy themselves with
notes to the fairies and wonder if you can believe in things you cannot
see. I say that I have always believed
in things I could not see. I believe
that if I put a piece of potato in the ground that it will grow many more
potatoes, even though they are under the ground and I can not see them. They sit close to the fire and work with
paper and cloth unsure what potatoes have to do with fairies.
I miss the cookhouses of Vietnam
and Haiti; those places of early morning fires made by women who had been
making fires for most of their lives.
This morning and every morning, millions of women begin the day with a
fire.
I listen to people in my
country wonder about careers and making enough money and have meaning in their
lives. I say that perhaps in every home
someone has to tend the fire and make the hearth a place to gather and grow
warm. We can turn on the furnace or the
stove but that may not be enough to make us warm. Perhaps this work is the most important work.
In Haiti, a child runs to a
neighbor with a metal cup to borrow an ember to start their fire. The child carries it carefully home where
their morning fire too is started. The smoke lifts up from each small house and
yard; mixing with the fog lifting from the sea.
In my home the sky parts and divides the morning from night as the smoke
climbs up out of my chimney and joins the clouds drifting out to sea.
I see the work of the day set
out before me but none more important than the work of the women who tend the
fire that starts the day.
