The ax was one of the few practical things my father left behind. Along with the saw, it served as a reminder of his absence, as there was no other sign of his presence—or of any man, for that matter. My mother shared only sparse, jagged snippets of stories about him, none of which spoke of love.
I can picture her from the kitchen window, battling the biting January wind. She’d brace her knee against a chopping block, the dull edge of the ax buried in a log. Her arm rose and fell rhythmically. I can still hear the resonating thud, thud, thud of the log crashing against the battered block, again and again, until it finally split. Her jaw was clenched, her brow furrowed, either from exertion or perhaps frustration.
It’s hard to say whether she swung the ax to free herself from something or if she was trying to shout for help in a way that went unheard. It wasn’t a faulty memory that kept me from understanding but rather a lack of curiosity about her life. She had been alone—at least as alone as one could be with five young children—for as long as I could remember. She split wood, sawed logs, and we kids dragged fallen branches through cow-dotted fields, each according to our size, while she used that old, toothless saw.
With her arms full of split logs, she would trudge inside, dragging the dampness along with her. She stacked the chopped wood near the stove, and as it dried, it surrendered its essence, slowly forgetting what it was like to be whole.
I eventually married a man who also split wood. But when he disappeared—much like my father—he left no ax behind. Not that I would have used it if he had; I had only myself to keep warm. Once I was finally free from the shadow of marrying my father, I married again.
From my kitchen window, I now watch my husband teach our preteen son to wield an ax. I can’t hear them, but I see their breath mingling in the frosty air. I worry for my child, who is still too young to handle the heavy blade safely above his head. What if he accidentally hurt himself?
This is a lesson in manhood, but it’s not one of necessity. It’s no more vital than our fireplace, whose warmth, while comforting, serves as mere background for lazy winter mornings spent reading the paper, completely oblivious to both the luxury and the privilege of letting a fire extinguish itself, independent of wood and ax.
It’s been years since my mother first taught me to split wood—almost as long since I last swung an ax myself. She has passed on, and I don’t even know what happened to that ax. But I can still picture her, wielding the remnants of my father’s legacy to create warmth. Or maybe she’s leaning before our small, tiled fireplace, arms outstretched, pinning a flimsy page of newspaper in place, the toe of her worn shoe anchoring it against the grate. She’s waiting for the draft to kick in, head bowed, eyes fixed on the paper as she hopes the flame will catch, watching for that orange glow to blossom into a bright yellow.
She carefully picks her moment, that fleeting opportunity when the flame is strong enough to sustain itself but not so fierce that it consumes the page entirely. With a swift, frantic motion, she aims to whisk the paper away, like a matador dodging a charging bull. Then she steps aside.
Sometimes, she miscalculates, leaving the paper a second too long, and the faint smolder at its center turns into a full-blown fire. Meanwhile, her children huddle behind her, eager for warmth, clutching one another until she finally wrestles the paper into the flames, where yesterday’s stories turn to warmth and then to ash, the remnants floating up, light as air, being drawn into the great unknown.
If you’re interested in more about the journey to parenthood, check out our blog post at Intracervical Insemination. And if you’re looking for insights into fertility, Make a Mom offers great resources. For more on pregnancy and home insemination, Hopkins Medicine is an excellent resource.
In summary, my mother’s lessons on splitting wood served as a metaphor for resilience and survival, illustrating the complexities of life, warmth, and the legacy of family ties.