Everything is unusually quiet on this late afternoon in Autumn. A fierce electrical storm has interfered with the power service and the houses up and down the street are dark and motionless as thunder rumbles in the distance. The natural light is meager and too weak to penetrate the dark rooms of the hushed houses.
Inside my house, my three children stand in a row--their little bodies pressed close together--watching the raindrops race down the surface of the window. They are subdued and not quite themselves. Only half an hour has passed since the peak of the storm and the memory of their fright still clings to them.
The bricks of the hearth are hard on my knees and I am glad to finish preparing the kindling for the fire. The sharp scratch of the match head against the box catches my children's attention. They wear identical expressions--eyes wide with surprise and mouths forming soft "o" shapes. I lean into the fireplace shielding the match from the draft my movement creates. The flame swiftly catches and spreads across the carefully laid kindling. The cool murky ambiance recedes as the flames swell within the fireplace.
For several minutes we all gaze at the dancing fire, admiring the brightness. Then I rise from the hearth and walk across the deep red oriental rug to my well-worn rocking chair where a copy of "The Boxcar Children" rests.
"Come. Sit on the couch," I say and they clamber up. I begin reading aloud.
I feel my voice traveling with the glow of the fire out into the heavy gray afternoon. Love shines from the window of my little house out onto the long street where everything is inert in the steady rainfall.