There used to be a fireplace in the living room of what had become just my dad’s house, but you could only feel the heat if you were close enough to touch the flames. It filled the room with a lingering haze that burned my eyes and set off the fire alarms. Our white-faced golden retriever, Jordan, would scramble for the basement, whining and trembling.
“Too much down draft,” Dad used to say, like the draft was at fault for why his house was always cold.
He didn’t buy pre-split wood like everyone else. He bought full logs, huge ones, the kind that made your muscles ache just looking at them. I ran the splitter. He did the heavy lifting. Calling me his “best little helper,” even when I nearly crushed his fingers with the wedge. Even when I wasn’t really watching, when the clouds or the glossy black pill bugs caught my eye.
The smell of split pine and cedar stayed with me, sharp and clean, mingled with sweat and sawdust that coated my skin like armor. Wood always felt heavier than it looked.
Dad would offer me breaks to get out of the scorching sun, but never took one himself. Sweat would run down his inked skin, glistening over the Frank Frazetta Death Dealer knight on his outer bicep like varnish. To accept or not felt like a test I passed every time.
We’d hand the half gallon of Stewart’s half and half tea back and forth between loading and emptying the truck. I’d try to swig it like him and miss my parched lips. I loved the sting of the scratches and splinters in my forearms, when the bark skinned me raw. Or when I would leave with ripped shirts and jeans like Dad always wore, even when we went to the grocery store or to my sports award ceremony.
To help was to love. And love, I learned, was hard work.
Dad never complained — about the weight of the logs or the heat, or the third shift he worked in the Walmart distribution center freezer. He never said much, but he’d wipe his brow with the back of his hand and fall asleep in his recliner by 5pm on weeknights with Jordan laying at his feet, the fire fizzling in smoke.
I would get annoyed when it was my weekend to be home with him, my parents’ first year separated, and he would leave before the sun had a chance to rise — doing yard work for neighbors, helping his brother deliver oil, replacing my grandma’s sump pump for the hundredth time, and return so tired we’d only get twenty minutes into a movie that I didn’t even really want to watch before he began snoring. I’d vent to Mom when she picked me up, I don’t even know why I bother going to Dad’s, he’s always working when I’m there anyway. That Christmas, he bought me my own black Easton softball catcher gear and glove while he wore socks with his big toe sticking out on the cold linoleum.
When it was his turn to pick me up from sports practice, he’d drive straight to the school from work. He always said it was so he could relax without worrying he’d fall asleep at home and leave me stranded. My friends would laugh when they saw his head tilted back, mouth open, catching flies in the driver seat of his red Chevy Cobalt with the black fender that we used to joke had a flashing arrow telling deer to jump in front of it.
After all those days of splitting, stacking, and sweating in the sun were over, Dad decided it was time for a change. My senior year, he replaced the fireplace with a gas insert. He said it was more efficient.
One night before I left for college, he told me with a chuckle about how in those early days, he’d move the pieces of wood I’d set when my back was turned. But he would high-five me just the same afterwards, with an atta girl, and offer to buy me a donut or iced cider on the way home. After he told me, I felt a tinge of guilt for carrying too many pieces to set them down right, trying to keep up with him — thinking I was helping and believing that was enough.
For a long time, I wondered why he never showed frustration or corrected me. But now, I think maybe he knew, and wanted me to believe my best was strong enough.
Maybe that’s what love is: bearing someone else’s weight without letting them know it’s there.
Flames erupt from the new fireplace with the click of a button now. I think of him coming home from his new job as a scaffold builder, kicking his legs up in his recliner, and not worrying about cold seeping in. From my dorm 301 miles away, I imagine smokeless warmth returning to our living room. I hope he feels the kind of love he gave, the kind of love he taught me.
How it burns, lingers, fills the room.
Alexa Livingston graduated December 2024 from the University of New England with a BA in environmental studies and a minor in writing. This is her first published creative nonfiction piece. Her other writing is featured in the Maine Monitor, UNE’s student newspaper The Bolt, and Sanford-Springvale News. She lives in Biddeford, Maine, with her blue tongue skink, Mushi, and visits her family in New York often.
What a beautiful tribute to the love of your dad. I love this line,”Maybe that’s what love is: bearing someone else’s weight without letting them know it’s there.” This piece if filled with so many wonderful layers of wisdom. Congratulations, Alexa!