I will never in my life watch a wood fire burn without thinking of my maternal grandmother. Kate always had a fire place and used it.

I vividly remember going to her house one year for Xmas and sitting by the fire to eat pound cake and drink orange juice. The orange juice was odd. Not as odd as drinking it after brushing your teeth. But, it should have been milk. I suspect something didn’t get picked up at the grocery. And, aside from my grandfather who had already gone to bed, I have no clue where the rest of my family was.

When I reminded her of that night 30-odd years later, she was surprised that I remembered it, too.

After her house was broken into twice after my grandfather died, she decided to take my parents up on their offer to live with them. (She was out of town both times.) That mother-in-law’s apartment had a fireplace, too. When she didn’t remember to open the flue when she started a fire and sat bundled in a blanket with the windows open until they came home from work, her daughter and son-in-law had to start making plans for her to live somewhere with more supervision as they both still had to work full time and there was no one to stay with her when they weren’t there.

I have no idea how many nights we sat by a fire and talked about poetry and history. She was especially enamored of the Tudors.

Orange and black embers with a lick of blue flame is a portrait of my Mama.