Hearth to Hearth

Along with the dishes and towels, pots and papers that we are packing as we prepare to leave, I am slipping in a load of home-grown, hand-hewn firewood. One full blaze-worth.

While there is no wood-burning stove where we are going, there is a working fireplace.

And that promises an answer to the pesky question: How does one make 'home'? How do we turn a strange space into a trusted place where the most intimate moments of our lives will be played out?

I'm thinking: fire.

There is a very good reason why we have housewarmings.

A housewarming, I submit, is a descendant of the age-old ritual of transferring flame from hearth to hearth.

The new space we enter is cold to us. We stumble within. We don't know where the floorboards creak, what "low" means to the back-left burner, or how long the shower takes to get hot.

To help us over this awkwardness, family and friends gather to bring "fire" from their homes to light up the hearth that will warm ours. This tribal tradition contributes the spark that brightens the night, keeps the cold at bay, cooks the food and warms our drinks. Even more, it lets us know we are not alone. The fire binds our hearth, our home, to theirs.

It is this fire of family and friends, this intimation of intimacy, that warms our space until the welcome tumult and friction of daily life kicks in.

Only today, none of us has hearths. So instead we substitute food for fire, the stuff that comes from the hearth. In Judaism, we bring bread and salt to warm a home, binding the essence of kitchen to kitchen, and hinting at the presence of the eternal flame that lingers from the days of the Temple. Typical contemporary housewarmings often resemble potluck dinners, with guests bringing all sorts of sweets, treats, and casseroles.

But Avram and I are not starting a new home. We are pursuing an academic adventure in a temporary home. We will be living in someone else's space, cooking on someone else's stove, sitting at someone else's table.

And that is fine with me . That, in fact, is part of the charm of this sabbatical. But that is also all the more reason that I want to build a bridge between here and there. To bring just a bit of "here" with me while I am becoming "there." (Which raises the whole question of how much of self to bring along and how much to leave behind. And the role that stuff plays in that equation. But that is something to be explored elsewhere.) So I am taking one blaze-worth of firewood from home to burn our first week in Boston.

With any luck, that will be just the right amount.

(Photo of the fire that burns as I write this.)