Puddle Deep Memory

I finally took the time to shred old and outdated bills, notices, letters, etc. When the task was over, I had three Trader Joe’s grocery bags filled with tiny scraps of paper. Looking at them made me think if I owned a house, I’d have a wood burning stove in my living room, and a fire pit in the backyard. This led to the memory of my father and when he would rake the front and back yards, he’d drag a cardboard box with him to throw in small branches. He would use them as kindling for the stove at our house.

Another recollection is the wooden boxes that clementines came in, sitting on the brick platform where the wood burning stove was, filled with old newspapers and twigs. Dad would put the whole box in, light the corners and soon our family room would be eighty degrees in the middle of winter.