Burning Down the House

The other day, as I sat in speech therapy with my vivacious, rambunctious, fuller-than-life child (don't pretend you don't know who I'm talking about) while he alternately struggled valiantly to meet the challenge of a new phonological sound head on or stubbornly refused to say anything at all, K's therapist placed what must have been the 20th picture so far in front of him during one of his particularly long mute streaks and asked him to say the word.

I saw it before he did and I think I must have groaned out loud from my little chair in the corner of the room because both of their heads snapped towards me before focusing in on the picture again. He looked at it for just a moment and the internal struggle that ensued could be read on his face as easily as if it were typed in large print edition - to keep the tight-lipped silence or capitulate before the OCD Gods -before his sweet, innocent-as-they-come little boy voice piped up clearly in a perfect rendition of the word: "Match."

Just typing that word makes me cringe and run to double check that our stash of the handy little tools are safely under lock and key - the tools that, in the wrong hands, can quickly become a gateway to hell. Or at least what hell might look like in the middle of the woods on a dry winter day. Trust me. I know about that of which I speak.

I think it started with firefighters. Watching "There Goes a Firetruck" with the ever popular Dave and Becky over and over again until the script could have been recited word for word if my most special of K's had been able to make his brain organize them correctly. Or perhaps it was the old family pastime of brush burning, piling the limbs of trees long felled for firewood or the electric line high into massive pyres (sans corpses) to be doused and burned all over the farm until all that remained was a smouldering pile of ash - a budding pyromaniac's delight. I certainly know that the wood-burning stove, our only source of heat in the house, did not help matters. I should have been wary the moment he started jockeying for ringside position as fires were meticulously laid and tended, his sharp, obsessive-compulsive little eyes missing nothing.

It seemed a manageable obsession - unlike some of his previous flings. Put the matches up on the highest shelf in the highest cabinet in a hard-to-open tin - a place that challenges even me and my trusty step stool. Viola'. Obsession managed.

Uh huh.

Lesson #294. Please refer to my previous accounting of his ability to channel his inner spiderman, if you have not yet already. What can I say? I'm a bit slow sometimes.

I should have been on high alert the moment he started bringing twigs into the middle of our house and piling them carefully. But in my ever-optimistic, homeschooler sort of way, I simply paused and was impressed by his skill and mastery of brushpile construction at such a young age. I was proud, even, of the life skills he was learning. I basked in my Mom Moment and continued on with my chores, leaving him as contentedly busy as a beaver weaving his dam.

I don't remember where I was in the house when I heard the scratch. That unmistakeable sound of match running slowly down the side of the box, immediately followed by a muttering. I was back to the middle of the house in a flash... I can perform cardio when I absolutely HAVE to. There was my youngest, crouched in the floor, box of matches in hand, hunched over his little brush pile. "Wite it?" he said as he looked up at me expectantly, clearly believing wholeheartedly that I would assist in his burning of the twigs and producing a wrath like no other when I failed to comply.

After that, the match stash was moved to another, highly covert, location. Strike Anywhere matches were permanently banned from the premises, as a precaution. Temporarily thwarted, all was quiet on the pyro front.*

*Please note the use of the word "temporarily."

My little fire marshal's obsession continued to flourish. He talked only of becoming a "firefighter cooker" - his two obsessions meeting and melding into one very plausible job opportunity down the road - being the firefighter responsible for cooking in the station. I have to say, I was impressed. I put all fire extinguishers on the topmost shelves in the laundry room to prevent him from lugging them around as makeshift oxygen tanks strapped to his back and said small prayers that any house fires would start in that general vicinity. He was rarely without his rubber (fireman) boots, fireman hat and makeshift goggles. Sometimes he'd throw his plastic fireman coat on, but the broken buckles seemed to frustrate him and cause more angst than delight. He began to get very hands on with the woodstove chores. He would eagerly trot in with small pieces of firewood, bargaining labor for a chance to shove one in the stove. It never worked, but he never gave up hope. He was always by my side as I re-filled the stove and if he wasn't, as soon as he heard the door to it open he would mysteriously appear and just as mysteriously disappear after the door closed, his dream of firemaster once again thwarted. He patiently waited.

I was upstairs putting away laundry one winter day a couple of years ago when I heard the stove pipe which runs up the middle of our house crackling and popping - a telltale sign the stove is WAY too hot. Now, our house is open to the center, with a loft running around 3/4's of it. I looked over the railing to see what in the world might be causing the stove to have gone amok and immediately spied my then 4-year-old son standing back from the open stove door, half a log sticking out, vents wide open and the stove roaring like I've never seen it before. I ran down the stairs and luckily was able to push the flaming log all the way into the stove, slammed the door shut and completely shut it down until the stove pipe turned from cherry red back to its original stovepipe black. I lashed the freestanding gate (originally placed to prevent children from accidentally tumbling onto an 800+ degree stove) to the railings enclosing the other two sides of the stove and hoped that he wouldn't learn to untie ropes anytime soon.

I think that bout with the flaming log sort of scared him, because while his passion for all things firefighter remained at a high, his zealousness to actually implement his knowlege of the profession seemed to have dropped off somewhat. The stove was now contained in a maximum security enclosure. The matches were now under lock and key in my filing cabinet. We seemed to have come to a stalemate.

Until late this past Fall, as I sat in my office, back to the window whilst the kids meandered lazily in and out of the house, enjoying the dwindling days of warmth that Fall in Kentucky often brings us at her leisure. I was working over something when Oren walked into my office in front of my desk to talk about something. As he's talking, he looks out the window behind me, stops dead mid-sentence and yells, "The woods are on fire! THE WOODS ARE ON FIRE!!!!" And in the next breath,"Kellen!"

I turn behind me and there, in their late autumnal glory, are my woods. Burning. (Have I mentioned that we are surrounded by over 200 acres of forest?) Kellen's coup de grace. We ran out the laundry room door (past the fire extinguishers long forgotten, I might add) which happened to be the nearest exit to my office and the closest entrance to Dante's Inferno. Oren immediately went into high-gear, grabbing a large stick and pushing dirt around the fire, creating a fire break (yes, we've had a forest fire before... though that one wasn't of our doing) and then smothering the fire with dirt and buckets of water we have for the dogs. Within minutes, my eleven-year-old WonderBoy had the situation single-handedly under control whilst K and I stood dumbly, looking at each other. He, with the fear of a deer caught in headlights, not knowing whether to make a break for it or stand his ground, but knowing that either way he was completely screwed; and I, with thoughts of "what if" competing with the homicidal urges rushing through my adrenaline-drenched blood.

I didn't kill him that day, and I'm very proud of my self-control in that regard. In hindsight, I realize that I am very lucky that he chose to burn the woods in line of sight of my window, that Oren walked into my office at that particular moment, and that he only had one box of matches. However, I'm not so lucky that he learned how to pick my filing cabinet lock. I'm beginning to think that I just need a vault. Or a cage.