A Warm Fire, Conversation, and a Book

Our recent move from the Zuck homestead to our new home has me reflecting back on our time with David and Sally. That first winter was especially special because of its evenings.

After dinner David and Sally often walked over to our home and the four of us sat in the family room with a lively wood fire in the fireplace, coffee and dessert, and enjoyed an evening of conversation, laughter and reading aloud to each other. Our reading material might be Flannery O’Connor one night, a Dorothy L. Sayers short story the next, or an excerpt from C.S. Lewis on another night. We gave each other permission to doze, though we discouraged falling off the furniture in one’s sleep – it tended to frighten the dogs.

We reminisced about years gone by, about friends now buried and those still with us, about growing up in the environs of Drew University (David’s parents were professors there), or in Luther, IA, a farming community of 150 people (Vickie), or in Kensington, MD (both Sally and me, though we didn’t know each other).

On most nights we laughed, on some nights we laughed so hard we cried. As an evening came to a close David would crank up his manually-powered flashlight and David, Sally, and Wallace (a rat terrier) would negotiate the two-minute walk home. I went to bed those nights in the warmth of friendship, joyfulness, and intellectual stimulation.

What a shame our lives don’t have more of those evenings. I envy past generations who created their own entertainment, who valued conversation, who delighted in friends and company. We may know more “data” today and our economic standard of living may be greater but I don’t think we are any wiser or more human than those gone before us – in many respects we are less on both counts.

That was a sweet winter indeed, that first winter on the Zuck homestead.