I walk to the fire pit in our back yard to burn a few errant branches. The grass beneath my feet is straw-colored, the ground parched. We need rain but in the meantime the days and nights have been perfect. Low humidity, soft breezes, one of the most beautiful late summer months I have experienced. The giant oaks yawn above me. Already I crunch fallen leaves beneath my feet. Cold weather and winter feel distant, almost as if they will never intrude on this loveliness.
I rarely walk back to the fire pit these days, these years since Bob died. I have my yard man burn the leaves and branches that fall on windy days and windy nights on an acre of oaks. Before our house was built this land was the quintessential oak forest and still is, except for the home I love and have lived in for 48 years. The house is placed back from the road, brown cedar and brick, seemingly sheltered, hovered among the trees. I place branches on the grate and survey the fire pit itself. I remember how, 20 years ago, before fire pits were “cool” in vogue, fancy pants if you will, how Bob and our neighbor Dennis laid the concrete slabs in place, one after the other, covering a large square. How they placed the grate, the burning area into the ground. How Bob and I found two wooden adirondack chairs at an antique shop and Bob stripped them down, sealed and varnished them, let them dry in the sun. How we found the long log bench, thick and heavy with bark in a woodworking shop along the shore of the lake in South Haven. How we hauled it home in our SUV.
I notice how lichen has grown in celedon patches all over the chairs. How the table between them, made of wood has a gnawed gouge in the middle. No glass of wine nor tumbler of ice tea could safely balance on it now. Grass and weeds and moss grow between the cement squares. Bob cared for the yard itself, I concerned myself with weeding between the squares, sweeping after a storm, watering the gardens. Our yard never tried to be pristine, manicured. It has a rustic feel, like the house itself settled so comfortably within it.
So often the then and the now collide in my mind. The then of the fire pit in better days, in its heyday, so to speak. When we’d have friends or family over. Roast hotdogs, marshmallows, talk into the night. When Bob and I sit of an evening, wine glasses in hand, watching the fire. Bob feeds the fire, pokes at it expertly. He has a dose of “piro” in him I always say. He doesn’t deny it. We lean back in the adirondack chairs, loathe to go inside. The air is light, fragrant. Smoke, curls high up into the trees. Our clothes will retain this smokey fragrance. We talk of everyday things. We talk of important matters. We may need to iron out a misunderstanding. Often we are silent, listening to the crack and sizzle and spitting sounds ’til a chill drives us inside.
The “now” intrudes. The fire pit is a metaphor. A talisman of days gone by. A reminder of the never again-ness of life without my best friend. The ache I feel is there still. It’s been four years. I have no desire to sit in a lichen-marred adirondack chair he so carefully brought back to life with simple elbow grease and patience. I can let the fire pit go to seed. I can let Natalio or his young son do the burning. I don’t need to weed the cracks, nor sweep up debris. I have enough to do. But the “to do” will never, in this life, be filled with as much grace, humor, simple companionship, and deep love as the years I spent with a boy I met as an early teenager, and whom I fell in love with our junior year in high school. And that is just the darn truth.