All Creature Comforts Great and Small-Part Three

The Fire is So Delightful

Last Friday as I was getting dressed in our hotel in Riga, I noticed that my clothes smelled like a campfire. I was immediately transported back to our little guesthouse in Ventspils. The first week it was cold enough that David had to light the fireplace. Apparently it is not uncommon in Latvia for some people to have limited electric heat vents while a wood-burning fireplace provides the rest of the heat for the house.

We have a fireplace in our home in Lakewood that we find very quaint and charming on cold winter nights around Christmas. David is great at creating a roaring fire. He pops in a Dura-flame log and with a stroke of a match the job is done. We’re not quite as sophisticated as other people we know that merely flip a switch to create a warm gas fire flickering around fake logs, but we do what we can.

However, this fireplace was different. It had a function and a purpose, to keep the whole house warm. It was jam packed with beautifully split wood, and on the hearth were little fuel-soaked white squares and a box of matches—couldn’t be simpler. David meticulously placed the small Styrofoam-like squares strategically around the stack of wood, and started lighting matches.

After he’d gone through about half a box of the handy dandy starter cubes, it became apparent that this was not going to be as easy as it seemed. I came over to help by blowing on the embers while he moved the wood around and, in an exercise in futility, continued lighting matches.

I thought, “Now how is it that some careless person flicks away a cigarette butt and ignites an entire forest, but all the kerosene and matches in the world will not kindle one small pile of wood?” At last, with a little more effort, we had achieved an anemic but steadfast flicker.

Next, David tried to remember what our Russian landlady had instructed about the multiple flues. One was to be slid to the left, one left open, and one not to be touched. Unsure of what she said, or which was which, he just moved levers around and hoped for the best. Meantime, the flimsy flame was fizzling. Right about then, Baiba came home. She said, “What you are doing?”

“Trying to get the fire going.” David responded.

“Why you don’t do this?”

And with that she pulled out a knob and, boom, there was a healthy roaring fire. She obviously knew something we didn’t about how to get helpful oxygen into the mix. It was just one more example of our dependence on the girls while in their territory.

Eventually David became quite adept at building and lighting the fire. The girls asked the landlady for kindling, which helped tremendously, and we had all the firewood we needed. The hearty supply seemed to be directly connected to the fact that the landlady had two teenage sons who came home on weekends to help around the house. Agnese requested more wood, and before you knew it we had enough to tide us over from now through Christmas 2012.

Even with David’s newfound skill, this was not an efficient heating system; the girls froze and we sweltered. Every evening our room would fill for a time with hazy smoke, and in the morning our lids had to be peeled from our dried out eyeballs. Eventually the weather became warm enough that we didn’t need to light the fire. It’s funny, but I’m going to miss that fireplace.

Julie Payne and The Six Dwarf Beds

Our little guesthouse had enough beds to sleep six. I’m not going to say six adults because the idea of six full-sized human beings in that tiny house is a little frightening. Three of the beds were in our room, two were in the girls’ room, and one was in the bathroom. Don’t picture enormous rooms; picture tiny beds.

The beds were about two feet off the ground with teensy little headboards. They were long enough for someone who at maximum is about 5 feet nine inches tall; they had no box springs and the mattresses were about three inches thick, tops.

The mattresses and the pillows were reminiscent of sacks of flour. Trying to fluff up the pillows was like trying to fluff up a punching bag. There was absolutely no give, and no dent in the pillow in the morning where our heads had been.

In spite of it all, I slept really well there, and so did David. I don’t know if it was a hidden benefit of jet lag, the fact that the days were long and the nights were short, or just the contentment of knowing that two Sleeping Beauties were fast asleep in the next room. All I know is Snow White couldn’t have slept more sound.