THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 12, 1995 TAG: 9502090050
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: HE SAID, SHE SAID
SOURCE: KERRY DOUGHERTY & DAVE ADDIS
LENGTH: Long : 104 lines
KERRY SAYS:
Nothing ignites an argument in my household like a good roaring fire.
You'd think the warm glow, the oaky smell and the dancing flames would raise the romance level.
Think again.
From those first crisp days of October to the last chilly spring nights of March, my husband and I bicker about fires. Sparks fly all the time.
It's not just the mechanics of building the perfect fire, but whether we should have a fire at all.
``It's too cold out for a fire,'' he said when the mercury dipped into the teens and he saw me lugging logs through the back door.
Excuse me? Too cold for a fire? When should we light one, the Fourth of July?
My husband worries about the heat going up the flue - what little heat there is from our weaselly little heat pump, which my husband and his crescent-wrench contractor said was the best on the market.
I'll admit that the most robust, well-tended fire dies out during the night, leaving a chilly hearth. I know that the heat escapes up the chimney. But hey, Virginia Power writes me personal thank-you notes every first of the month.
Those fancy glass doors might work. But if you're going to close the door on a fireplace, if you're going to put a glass barrier between yourself and the woodsy aroma, the sound of the crackling logs, why not just stick a TV in the grate and run a tape of a roaring fire?
To avoid arguments, I try to build a fire while my husband's out of the house. When he comes home, it's too late to do anything but criticize it.
I've taken some of his fire-making advice. I no longer use the entire Sunday New York Times as kindling. Or one of those giant, diesel-soaked prefab logs that they say should never be used that way. I use only premium Georgia fatwood. Our woodpile is stacked with oak, perfectly split and seasoned for more than a year. Paul Bunyan never made a better fire.
You'd think my husband would just want to come home and sink into the sofa, savor a snifter of brandy and enjoy the warmth.
Think again.
He comes in, suspiciously eyeing my fire. He silently removes his jacket and walks to the fireplace, scowling.
Then the inevitable happens. He reaches for the brass tools and begins poking. And prying. And clamping and lifting and shifting.
The man cannot help himself. No matter how perfect the fire, how well-engineered the log arrangement, he has to adjust it.
There is something about the sight of a fire built by a woman that disturbs men. Like in the summer, when we light up the grill. Why is it that a man who can't find the kitchen with a compass from October to April suddenly becomes a chef when the Weber is wheeled out in May?
Is there something deep in the soul of a man that makes him feel in control when tending a fire, or lighting a cigarette for a woman, like they did in old movies, when smoking was cool and ladies never played with fire?
DAVE SAYS:
Uh-oh, Kerry. Something's smoldering here, and I fear it's your imagination. You're reading your husband's relentless fire-poking as criticism. That's not how he means it. Maybe he can't quite come out and say it, but what he's really doing with the fireplace and the barbecue grill is defending the final, shrunken boundaries of male turf.
This all started when there was just Adam. One night he stoked up a fire and grilled himself a platter of ribs, which turned out to be the last peaceful meal he'd ever have. He fell asleep with one rib left untouched. Next thing he knew he was awakened by a sharp elbow in his side and some stranger complaining about his snoring. Hello, Eve.
This was reported in Genesis, but Eve used some of the early pages to start a fire, which Adam felt compelled to poke at with a stick, thus kicking off the debate that continues in your living room to this day.
This is visceral stuff, Kerry, passed down to us through the same guy-genes and Y-chromosomes that are responsible for chest hair, knuckle-cracking and an illogical urge to scream epithets at hockey goalies.
Through the ages, our rational selves have given up acres of psychological turf to our mothers, sisters, wives, lovers, female colleagues, bosses, Donna Shalala and Hillary Clinton. The last boundaries lie beyond the reaches of our rational thought, in that genetic stuff we cannot supersede. Fire and red meat. It's our domain. It's about all we have left.
When you light a fire, you see in it warmth and security for you and your babies and your puppy. That's not what guys see. Down in the coals, under the crackling logs, we see the embers of millennia of smoky, primordial cave fires. We see the sentry flames of the Roman legion, the funeral pyres of dead Viking heroes, the lonely campfires of lost French trappers.
When your husband gets home from a hard day of having his psyche crushed by 20th century angst, let him poke the fire for a minute or two, if he wants, and don't take it so personally.
If you look closely, I'll bet you see that his eyes are a bit glazed, as if he sees something in that hearth of a time when his role in this world was more blood-thumping than simply tracking down the best kiddie seat for the back of the Volvo.
Let him adjust the flue, jostle the logs, kick the coals around until they're glowing just right. He's away somewhere, but he'll be back in a minute.
When he does, he'll feel a little better and he might not even know why.
But he'll be ready for that snifter of brandy, and he won't even flinch later when you shoot him an elbow and tell him to lay off the snoring. by CNB