Fire and Song: the Immeasurable Magic of a Tiny Moment

This article again aims at a very human element of life. It first appeared on my Substack, here: https://rememberingtomorrow.substack.com 

Not so long ago, (though long enough that the chill was in the air,) my family and I had such a wonderful evening - an evening born of effort and pain, an evening short lived in that moment, but which captures where we are, where we've been, and what we'd like to run towards. In some ways, this evening was genuinely unremarkable; in fact, unless you were immediately involved, I would wager the magic of the evening would be completely lost on you. I almost wonder if me recounting it here isn’t an exercise in futility. And yet, sometimes the most human of moments are of such silent magnitude, so soft in coming and unremarkable in their narratives, that it is precisely by trying to relate them as a narrative that we can remember them best.

Let me try to recount the evening I have in mind. It began like so many other evenings, with each of us doing our own thing. I had a fire going in our very large family room and was probably writing something. More than likely there was a glass of Bourbon nearby. My wife was sitting across the room on the separated sectional, wrapped in a cozy blanket and reading, if I remember correctly, some Pieper on Virtues. If I had Bourbon, she either had Canadian or Wine; that much I do not remember. Our son likewise was independently engaged, playing and dancing with his Bluey family dolls (I think they are called the Heeler family? Australian Heelers and all that, so that makes sense). Our son did not have a similar beverage to his parents.

In the middle of this scene, a very small request brought the three independent worlds suddenly all into one unified cosmos: son came up to me and asked to play guitar. Didn't matter what song; he just wanted to hear the strumming. Who am I to refuse such a request? Ignoring whatever work I was engaged in at the time (how poetic that I can remember my wife engaged in Pieperian liesure, but cannot for the life of me remember what mundane work I was doing that kept me from doing the same), I began to strum and pick out the tune of You Are My Sunshine. Sad lyrics notwithstanding, that song is deceptively comforting, and my wife joined in. Second verse we were singing in harmony; when the song had finished we began a new one together, to the delight of our little boy.

And so, with the fire going, a child running back and forth, my wife and I singing soft songs, in the peace of our own home a hard-earned moment was born. Every bit of that moment took months of effort to pull off, months which paper cannot properly recount. The fire was only possible from all the work I'd done that summer splitting the maple tree so we'd stay warm. The presence of our son was the result of over 3 years to prepare and process our home and our lives for his coming. And then, once he did come, more lengths of time to acclimate to this new life and say goodbye to our old. How many more effort and time was put in, with such heartache and sacrifice, to introduce words in such a way he could speak them in a request.  All this and so much more effort went into the buildup of that one moment, lasting perhaps 30 minutes at maximum.  And then, unforetold, unlooked for, and unrepeatably, life came together and we could look out from the peak we had climbed. "Tis good, Lord, to be here."

Initially, I had intended to have a moral to this story. My little sister recently came up to visit us in our humble home, and we had many such familial experiences while she was with us. Initially, I was going to write a bit about her visit, and the circumstances which allow for her to travel to so many of her siblings, in one sense tying us all together from across the literal corners of this nation. I was going to write a bit about familial roles, and how not everyone within that family is an autonomous being who has equal trajectories, but rather settles in relation to each other a role or function such that at any given time there is still a dynamic that is at least reminiscent of the relationships of youth. So, going into this paper, the intent was much more lofty, philosophical, and heavy-handed than how I am leaving it.

How was I going to relate such a standalone story to such heavier philosophical morals? I am not actually sure. Knowing me, I would have found some way, however tenuous, to segue into a soapbox. And perhaps I will write about all that one day still. (If you are reading this, dear sister, know that you were almost the main subject of an article. I will accept monetary tribute as thanks for sparing you the spotlight…) But, as the great Dwight Schrute said (I will paraphrase): Not everything is a lesson; sometimes, you just live. And that, dear readers, is the hardest lesson of all to learn. Sometimes, our efforts pay off, and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes, our stories don’t have tangible protagonists, antagonists, character arcs, or points. Sometimes - perhaps, even, at the best of times - our stories are the end in themselves. Because it is in moments like this that God can whisper to us and give us a glimpse of the interpersonal communion that is to come.

Have you read Remembering Freedom yet? It is a book for the modern defender of truth. Designed to be both engaging and practical, this book articulates abstract concepts while providing real-life stories from married life, military deployments, and more to illustrate how “abstract” things look in the real world. If you are looking to enter into discussions, or if you find yourself wondering how on earth we got to the point we are at now, Remembering Freedom is the book for you.

Read Remembering Freedom Now!