By Scott Graber
It is Tuesday, early, and my laptop says it’s 29 degrees in Port Royal. This morning I have a fire in the hearth — a much needed fire that is in no way decorative—and a cup of whole bean coffee.
The frigid weather was predicted for a solid week before its arrival and we were reminded about black ice, hypothermia and how to operate portable generators when the power lines come down.
I, myself, find this cold weather memorable.
Generally these are good memories associated with a fire; a fireplace; keeping the wood burning; and drinking several fingers of The Famous Grouse with a friend in front of that effective, adjusted, well-tended fire.
But these cold weather memories begin with my father — an immunologist — who grew-up in the depression. He was a cautious man, driven by his work, who loved building small fires in a dark, still-frigid cabin while the rest of our small, sleeping family dreamed of beaches and Snow-cones.
This early morning fire-building sometimes involved me and generally happened at national parks — in those days inexpensive cabins came with these parks — and my father and mother were careful about money. Mesa Verde, Big Bend and a stone hearth were usually the setting for stories about his childhood, his medical work, and sometimes his tour in the Aleutian Islands.
By the time I got to college, I was thoroughly inoculated with this need to assemble small fires while others slept. I remember one effort — when I found myself (and a young woman) snowed-in just outside Williamsburg, Va. — coupled with the facts that there was no electricity and that vehicular escape was blocked with several feet of snow.
All we could do, in these circumstances, was tend the fire and talk. The fire-tending part was interrupted by infrequent trips into the woods looking for dead or ice-distressed, just-fallen limbs and the hauling that lumber back to the house.
I’m sure there was some kind of nutrition — probably potted meat, sardines or tuna right out of the can — but mostly it was talk about my uneven experience at The Citadel; her consistent success at William and Mary, periodically peppered with the strange and bizarre “war stories” necessarily attached to life in the barracks.
I was good at telling these war stories, animated, but those long-ago, smoke-scented, snow-brightened days gave us time to get past the anecdotes and into the future and what we believed that future would look like.
In that setting — unscripted hours of fire watching with very few interruptions — I was unfocused, uncertain and unable to describe a life that she wanted to be a part of.
Some years later I found myself snowbound near Westminster, Md., visiting my (former) Citadel roommate Buff Stansbury.
He had a furnace — a furnace that required a steady supply of wood — and so our time involved chopping, splitting and hauling the wood back to his Revolutionary-era farmhouse.
Buff was just back from Vietnam — having spent a year engaging the North Vietnamese in a visceral and tactile manner — and so we talked about that year and what he wanted now that he was back home.
Eventually he asked, “And so, Scott, where are you going with your life.”
After a period of silence I said, “I’ve got a law degree but I’m really not sure.”
“Not sure?”
I told him that the practice of law was focused on closings, fees, and my particular job (then) was writing-up covenants for wealthy retirees on Hilton Head Island.
“It’s not the work I thought I would be doing.”
I didn’t keep a journal in those days so I can’t remember how, precisely, he replied; but it was snowing and we were taking turns splitting wood and it was something like, “It’s time to nail that part down.”
Then I do remember Buff saying, “And, by the way, you need to think about a family …”
Fifty years later my son is seen sitting in a monitor-lined room in Stamford, Conn. He is getting ready to edit a televised football game and will, as is his custom, text Buff before the broadcast asking about knee injuries, contract negotiations and defensive strategies.
And I, as is my custom, follow their text conversation on my cell phone. But then, without fail, my mind returns to a bright, snowbound afternoon and a conversation between two callow boys trying to imagine their clouded futures.
“And, by the way, you need to think about a family …”
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.