"Come By the Fire"

by Diane Petryk-Bloom

Winter comes early to Michigan’s upper peninsula, especially the windy Straits of Mackinac linking Lake Huron and Lake Michigan above the mitten part of the state.

It was only early November, but we had our first serious snow storm already.

They say it’s a sign of good insulation if snow doesn’t quickly melt off your roof, but I had no cause to be pleased with my new 2-bedroom A-Frame on that account .

I was about to have a hole cut in the roof and for some reason the man set to come up from Cheboygan to do the job on my St. Ignace dwelling was on the phone asking me if there was ice up there.

On examination, one side of the steeply pitched roof was fairly dry. The other side looked like a giant splattered snow cone.

“Not much,” I said. The sun will probably burn it all off by the time you get here. Was there ever sunshine in northern Michigan in November? Why was I willing to risk this man slipping into oblivion?

In a word: Imprinting

We are all indelibly imprinted with certain image and experiences from our childhood -- those that stick and dictate our lifelong preferences.

Back in 1950-something, I’m in second grade at Jefferson Elementary School in Livonia, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The school was six or seven blocks from my home – too close for school bus service.

On a morning that didn’t even hint at a need for leggings, I set off for school. But by 3:15 it had started to snow and turned much colder.

Two things about this era: Many moms didn’t drive, mine among them, and girls weren’t allowed to wear slacks or jeans to school—even little ones. That wouldn’t change in my district until 1968.

So on that afternoon – no bus, no car, no long pants, I turned my newly 7-year-old self into the wind and pushed for home. The sharp, icy gusts bit into my bare legs. I was only halfway home when they started to numb.

My mom had no means to rescue me. She did the next best thing. She started a fire in the fireplace.

When she saw me tumble in red-cheeked and red-kneed, she looked relieved and said, “Hurry, come by the fire.”

I still see her kneeling there before the fireplace rolling newspapers into paper logs to put under the grate to help ignite the wood above.

In choosing a floor plan in this post World War II suburb, I knew my parents had sacrificed the third bedroom for the larger living room with fireplace. Considering they had a boy and a girl who would soon outgrow sharing the same bedroom, you can see the importance they placed on that.

It might have been the wisest choice. Through the fifties and sixties and into the seventies that fireplace warmed us while we read or watched TV, its amber aliveness welcomed relatives and guests and it pitched in for the furnace in a crunch.

I learned the importance of opening the flue before building a fire by smoking up the entire house a few times.

Every Christmas my mom would tuck the red ribbon bow of her pine cone cluster in the same gap in the fireplace fieldstone. I knew the fold-out Hallmark Christmas card train would be on the long mantle to display the greetings that would come in the mail. And the little candle carolers and a gum-drop tree from the dime store would be up there as well.

At college in East Lansing I had a house with a fireplace which became a social gathering spot for students in the neighborhood.

When I got my first job, I rented for awhile and always missed the hearth part of making a home. So when I was offered a deal on my first house my first question was “Does it have a fireplace?”

Nevermind that it was Florida. (The air conditioning system could be added later) Yes! It had a fireplace. Sold. The only thing to do before moving in was have the white paint sandblasted off the fireplace bricks.

My memories of that fireplace include two glasses of wine and conversation that lasted well into the morning.

Apartment hunting in Savannah, Georgia, was a dreary until I was shown the garden-level two-bedroom on Monterrey Square. The landlady talked up the picturesque view and the history of the square, which included the mansion you could see to the left, already scene of the murder that would be depicted in the bestseller “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” But all I needed to see was the fireplace. It was small with no mantle, just a curved black marble framed opening.

Does it work?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said. “But you have to sweep the ashes out – there’s no chute.”

In Livonia, the ashes dropped to the incinerator in the basement, but this was a 100-year-old townhouse. I didn’t mind. Eye level out the front windows were the feet of passersby and the wheels of tour buses. I preferred to watch the logs flame-dance in purple, orange, yellow and blue. That fireplace assuaged the lonely hours between work and sleep.

A baby son and a new life took me to North Carolina and the fireplace that came with the house in the Blue Ridge foothills was necessary for Santa to make his stop. It also roasted marshmallows at Halloween parties and – history repeats – helped us survive a year of pesky furnace woes.

When we decided to return to our home state of Michigan in 1995, we first rented an old Victorian home with bay windows and – of course – a fireplace. It served us well, but when the time came to buy a home there was nothing available with a fireplace in my price range in the small town of St. Ignace.

There was a cute 2-bedroom that had everything but.

Then someone leaned into my ear, and, in the manner of the man who whispered “plastic” to Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, said "Vermont Castings."

I bought the fireplaceless house with the pitched roof. From the loft bedroom you could see Lake Huron. Undulating water has somewhat the same effect – waves and fire both roar in strength and then ebb – like life.

After the closing, I headed south across the Mackinac Bridge to the fireplace shop in Cheboygan. I picked out a beige, enameled Vermont Castings wood stove with a glass door front, top lid for loading while burning, and mitten-warmer sides. I chose a gray stone base and black chimney pipe. The pipe would extend the full height of the 2-story living room, take a dramatic jog to avoid the central beam and go out above the roof. All this for $4,200. I didn’t hesitate.

Which brings us back to the man on the icy roof. He survived. We had a fireplace in time for Santa.

The night my 7 year-old and I strung some holiday lights around the porch railing we made a snowman, frolicked in the snow, and studied the brilliant constellations visible on a northern Michigan night.

Then, after midnight, we stomped off the snow, chucked the boots, and started a log. When the fire flared we settled on a sheepskin rug to real The Railway Children.

Night after night that winter we read in front of that glowing, glossy robot with the very tall, crimped stove pipe hat.

Will my son remember me chopping the icy logs free on the porch or lighting the kindling as I remember my mother rolling newspaper logs and wielding the poker under the grate? And know that “come by the fire” means “I love you.”