The stars were out in full force that night, and as the air became tinged with just a hint of winter - our noses longed for the smell of logs burning in the fireplace... It's hard to justify having an indoor fireplace with daytime temps hovering at over 70 around Christmas but we do have a little round fire pit outside, which has been neglected for over a year. This was a perfect night to finally burn the kindling that sat dormant for so long.
Hubby and I dusted off the dew and cobwebs from our camping chairs and dragged them out to the back yard. A lime infused corona in hand, our heads tilted towards the sky, watching for the one we are supposed to wish on, while our teenager was struggling with making tight ropes out of newspapers. In short order, the air filled with the smell of smoke, and the flames danced lithely the lengths of termite eaten branches and were licking the underbellies of fat logs - smelling of pine. It was time to bring out the bamboo skewers and a bag of marshmallows...
Our seven year-old has only had one experience with roasted marshmallows until that night, and didn't remember much of it, so he watched in wonderment as we torched the angelic whites of sugar-clouds you could bounce on, - until the outsides were wrinkly black and the insides ran all gooey... The metamorphoses was so complete that at first, he was afraid to try them, and it took some courage on his part to finally take that first bite... "It,... the black part,... tastes like... mulch," says my little angel, averting his eyes, not wanting to ruin our evening.
So now, we are trying to just pink the skins for him slightly, and are careful not to catch the fluffs on fire, burning the tips of our fingers...losing patience; this, slow roasting takes so much longer; closer to the heat of the flames; afraid to touch the logs - thus for the next hour we feed our little one the goo without the crunch, the whole time trying to figure out exactly when he had tasted ... mulch.
I am restless now, and puzzled. I go on an expedition to his room, in search of anything mulch-like. He has the exacting vocabulary of a scientist - he is always dead on... "Tastes like mulch"... Hmmm. I am on all fours, under the bed, and then I catch a glimpse of something that doesn't belong there, an all-too-familiar cold blue of his homework folder, wedged with surgical precision in the 2 millimeter space between his bed and the wall...
In it, just as neatly, are two sheets of homework due the next morning, unspoiled by the barely black of a number two pencil... Not even the blank line designated for his name at the top of each page was obscured by a speck of charcoal...
What to do, but confront the little bugger... With his mouth full of goo, he tells us that his fifteen year old brother doesn't like him and must have hid it to get him in trouble... He swears by everything sacred to him that he is not lying - he knows that lying is bad, and would never do that... He loves doing his homework, and why would we ever ever suspect him of deliberately hiding something as important as all that, and...
Our firestarter teenager looks gravely at his baby brother - the one he couldn't wait to welcome into this world; the one he held in the skinny hands of an 8-year-old before anyone else did; the one he read "One Fish Two Fish" to so many times that he knows it by heart - the one who just told his first big lie...
The fire is winding down, the little one is long asleep, dreaming of white clouds of marshmallows, unspoiled by the flames...
We sit in silence and roast our marshmallows that taste like...mulch.
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