The Items we can watch Burn - Originally Written January 12, 2019

Looking for something to post and thinking about the fires here in the Pacific Northwest I decided on this essay. The folks in my writing group suggested the title. The writing prompt was a sensory experience - something was dropped in our hands...and then you write.

Fire - feeling the smooth cardboard container touch my cupped palms - as soon as it hits my hands and my fingers curl around it I know what it is - I can almost smell the ingition of a match in my imagination and it takes everything that i have not to immediately pull the first match from the book and light it - but I am in a house that is not my own, and though I am sure I will not start a house fire - my logical mind takes hold that this really isn’t the time or place.  I have always had a fascination with fire - the way the flames lick and leap up from the tip of the match with that white/blue base into yellow, orange and sometimes a brief red tip. I just spent Winter Solstice trying to burn a piece of paper with what I wanted to release in 2018 - and the frustration of using a bic lighter - I have NEVER been good with those - and it is definitely not as satisfying as the very finite strike of a match head. As a child my father warned us of the ability of our house to go up like a matchbox - and as I slept in the attic with only one way out - down the stairs - or a more difficult way - climbing out a small window to drop three stories to the ground - well you would think that the fear would keep me from burning anything in my room.  It did not.  I always felt like I could control it.  I had a large piece of sandstone that I would use and create a small fire - usually one piece of small paper at a time until I had a pile of ash - the smell of burnt paper - I always opened the windows so no one could tell I was burning anything. I sat with a small cup of water - that would be how I would put it out.  Building a fire - one of my favorite past times - outside - in a fire pit - competing with my siblings - can we do it with ONE match and without the assistance of that smelly stuff used in charcoal to boost up the flames.  Testing each type of thing that we can burn - pine cones, pine needles, dried branches, damp leaves, paper plates, styrofoam things (yuck), plastic army men, marshmellows, hot dogs, crackers, apples, carrot sticks, plastic utensils - corn cobs, corn husks, corn kernels, the list is endless, the items that one can watch burn.  Making a fire that is larger than the people around it - also super fun and a little exciting, maybe dangerous - for midwestern high school kids who live in the country, you tend to go find a field and make a large fire, then someone brings music, and cheap beer, and plastic cups - and that is a party - when you get older, you dig a pit, add a hog and now you have a bbq - the match tips are sparkly - pink, such a fun color...they can be red, yellow, orange, and sometimes a two toned blue - the satisfaction of a match strike is unsurpassed.  I remember the smell of the match in my grandparents bathroom - my grandfather striking the match and burning it to save everyone the scent of his afternoon bowel movement - as children we were enthralled with the idea that we could poop and then strike a match - but of course we were told that was only for adults.