A Cuppa, A Fireplace, and A Disconnected Router

A dozen years ago or more, we started observing “Earth Hour,” a time when you disconnect all the devices, appliances, lamps, and anything with a little glowing blue or red light that you can safely disconnect for an hour or more. It started in solidarity with Earth Day, when my employers encouraged people to try to switch off for an hour to consume less energy.

We enjoyed it so much that it become a near weekly observation. I’d go down to the basement and unplug the modem and router; we’d unplug the TV, and switch off any power strips connected to lamps and devices. There was an immediate sense of calm in the house, as if, when all the electromagnetic fields from the microwave and the television, and the router’s radio waves ceased, there was an instant settling of jangled nerves deep within our bodies.

I’d make a fire in the fireplace while Mike went around lighting votive candles in our collection of little lanterns.

We had such a mild winter this year that it barely felt like winter at all, so we haven’t had fires in the fireplace much. Just Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and maybe back on Halloween when it snowed.

But it’s been unusually mild since then, and we’ve had a very early spring. The trees have budded and the jonquils and crocuses are up. But Friday we had a snowy day–that wet, sticky, spring snow that can’t seem to accumulate under trees, but covers the grass and surrounds the flowers that have already blossomed.

And I looked at the logs that had been sitting in the bucket by the fireplace (it’s actually supposed to be a drinks cooler, but it’s shiny and nicely shaped and I use it to organize firewood) and I thought, why not?

I went downstairs and flicked off the power strip that connected the TV, the modem, and the router. Then I came back up and prepared a fire in the fireplace.

My brother had given me a box of fire starting candles a year or two ago, and even though I’m kind of ashamed of using them (we’ve always been kind of competitive in my family about who can build the best and longest-lasting fire, or who can poke a fire in just the right way to keep it blazing, so the candles felt like cheating) but they worked so well that I bought a new box when I used up the ones my brother had given me. I laid the fire, with the candle in the center, opened the flue, and lit the candle.

Once the fire was crackling merrily behind the firescreen, I lit the votives that were still in the little lanterns on the mantelpiece (three lanterns, one for me, one for Mike, and one for Angelic Daughter). Then I grabbed my Mom’s two little ceramic frog votive holders (frogs were a collecting thing for her that just sort of happened-I’m not sure she even really liked them that much, but we kept giving all kinds of frog figurines to her over the years) and gave them fresh votives. I put them on the coffee table I found at a local thrift store that now sits in front of the new couch, and lit them.

And then I sat back and stared at the fire, and talked to Angelic Daughter, and then we stopped talking, and just sat in companionable silence, with me getting up occasionally to poke the fire or throw another log on, or fill the kettle and once it whistled, pour boiling water over a tea bag in my favorite cup, that says, “Tea, novels, and Oxford commas” on it.

I think that this “Earth Hour” was the longest stretch of time I’ve spent not checking my phone since the pandemic started in 2020. And it was blissful.

I spent a second or two feeling guilty about particulate pollution from wood smoke going up my chimney, but comforted myself with the idea that wood only releases the carbon it took in when it was living, so technically, it was a neutral exchange and some other tree would soak up that carbon again soon. That’s what I told myself, anyway.

I think there is something primal, something that speaks to instinctive, ancestral memory, about sitting near a fire at night, feeling the warmth and enjoying the glow and the crackle. A campfire can make you feel safe in the wilderness during a dark night, with unidentified snuffling and rustling going on in the woods around you.

A hearth in your home makes you feel safe, as if whatever happens, you’ll have a way to be warm. I keep a cast iron pot next to the fire, to cook in just in case the power goes out for long enough to make that necessary. I’ve never had to use it, but you never know.

The best part of Earth Hour for me is just the being together, undistracted by notifications, vibrating every few minutes on my phone. Even Angelic Daughter set her phone aside, stopped watching her YouTube music videos, and assumed what is for her an unusually calm demeanor, with none of the anxious physical habits so typical of autistic people. There was no rocking, no hand flapping, no humming–just being.

Just being together, in the glow of the fire.

May you have an hour or two of blissful peace and quiet with someone you love most of all.

Signing off to go spend our nightly “music time” together (when we rarely play music anymore, and usually just sit in the same room, each staring into our own phones, but occasionally chatting about something or other) I remain,

Your peace-ing-out, trying to look at my phone less, made-two-little-crosses-for-our-front-doors-out-of-palm-fronds-today, and looking forward to Easter,

Ridiculouswoman