Saturday is marshmallow night at our house. I am in charge of the fire. The logs are halved and then quartered to provide just the right level of burn. Once cut, the fuel is arranged into a metal bucket and set next to my chair – we each have our own chair in the circle. 

The marshmallows are tumbled into their bowl. Our long pointed sticks are assembled against the deck railing. I tune in the seventies channel and set the volume just right. The setup is always the same: crumpled newspaper establishes the base below thin crisscrossed kindling topped by two logs. The sun disappears behind the house and the sky begins it’s  turn from blue to black. I drop a single match into the pit, and the storytelling begins.

There is something about gathering around a fire in the evening that opens the conversation. The contrast of the wet ocean air and the dry fire heat? The bright light of the flame against the star-pricked sky? The breeze that sounds the chimes? The crackle of popping sap? The fire calls for circling up, talking, and listening through the flames about yesterdays and tomorrows. Storytelling grounds us to the evening – the moment – the present.

It is the stories we choose to share that reveal who we hope we are becoming. Our stories hold front and center what we value. The details we recall invite listeners to consider the world as we filter it. The characteristics we highlight hint at how we hope we respond to what comes our way – welcomed or not. Our stories take everyone to the “back in the day,” the “do you remember when”, the “I have a version of that”, and the “can you believe we were ever like that” recollections that name the experiences and the people we shaped ourselves against.

Our renderings are unique reminders that no two of us are alike, and that even the same experience at the same moment is as different for each of us as the circled print left by a single finger. We speak the same language and yet – somehow – the stories we tell are differently recalled – uniquely filtered.

In the end – it seems we come together to tell our stories to both reveal our uniqueness and confirm our common ground. We share the need to stand in solidarity. And -at the same time we want very much to be essential. 

When the flames lower into the pit and pull into burning red coals, we turn away from our stories, reach for our sticks, and join in the careful turning of the marshmallows. Freshly confirmed by the unique roles captured in our stories, and re-tethered to a world larger than our personal space – we feel at home, safe, calm. Our living settles into simple: a single rotating stick in the middle of a burning pile of coals under a night sky on a planet spinning in a galaxy lost in the universe. We focus – together.

Like so many things, fire can be good and bad. So often our approach determines the impact. Our relationship to a thing frames our experience – setting the stage for how we interact. A fire designed for storytelling is built to keep the flames tight, the smoke rising, and the heat low enough for us to lean into each other. Too much flame and we lean away from each other, too much smoke and we cannot hear through our watering eyes. A fire built to settle into hot coals for roasting marshmallows gets it just right: the wonder of the first flames, the heat of the middle fire, the warm glow of the coals in the third act. 

Marshmallows – the perfect excuse on a summer night to tell a familiar story or two in an unfamiliar way that brings us close enough to touch while leaving enough space to hear each voice clearly.

Peace,
Chris