For more than twenty winters I rose in the dark, scraped ashes, coaxed the banked coals alight, fed the flames before feeding animals, making coffee, waking children for school. All day whoever was home would tend the fire. Then last thing before bed T would pack the firebox with logs and turn the draft down low so that the embers would be simmering for me in the morning. That stove was our constant care. Our love for it kept us alive.

So it has not been hard to get back into the wood fire routine, and thus far the house has been completely comfortable. I worried that I would be cold during my zoom class, upstairs with the door shut. But the chimney runs through the study wall, and that ambient warmth keeps the room cozy. We may get to the point of having to borrow some space heaters. For now we are more than fine.

Altogether yesterday was a good day. T confabbed about heat systems with our older son, who is renovating his Chicago house so has been thinking hard about options and costs. Our younger son sent a photo of his partner, happily out of the hospital and back home with their cats. My class seems to be going really well, and I am still excited about my draft. In the evening we went out to a cheerful dinner party with a passel of friends. We returned to a warm house and a fine slow-burning bed of coals. And there was no sign of a bat.

Now here I sit, on a chilly rainy mid-November morning, tucked into my couch corner, ensconced in my shabby red bathrobe, a cup-and-saucer of black coffee steaming on the table, a big kitten crunching up chow in the dining room, my beloved upstairs among the blankets, fire purring, clock ticking. Okay, yes, we have no furnace and T is joking about staging an art heist so that we can afford to replace it. Okay, yes, the goddamn bats. But I surprise myself by how sunny I feel. I grew up in what you might call a glass-mostly-empty household. By some freak of circumstance I turned out to be a glass-mostly-full kind of simpleton. I have no idea how that switch happened. Well, I do have an idea . . . Thank goodness for friends and laughter.