If you live in an old farmhouse and you have some money in the winter, sooner or later you think of a wood stove, one of the most comforting, familiar and grounding warming devices ever conceived. There are many simpler and easier ways to heat things. Wood stoves are noisy, they creak and groan. One needs to be very careful and thorough about installing and maintaining them and making sure they rest on fireproof platforms and are efficient and safely designed and located. They can be smoky and smelly, and of course, you have to haul a lot of firewood around.

I love wood stoves and in sometimes drafty old farmhouses, they made such a wonderful difference during those cold and blowy winters. I had two, one on the living room, a big Regency, and a smaller room upstairs, in the room I thought would be my office but never was. I rarely used this stove and when we moved, we thought it made sense to leave it behind. A month or so I was fortunate enough to get a giant and beautiful old Stewart Oak stove, colorful and imposing, the heating source of a local general store. We were supposed to install it today, but a number of things happened to stop the installation. We didn’t have the correct stovepipe for this 1902 icon. And the stove company installer was skeptical. It wasn’t efficient, he said, and he wouldn’t trust it. It would burn too hot, be smoky roast half of the house or worse.

I saw it wasn’t going to work. I remembered my second stove, forgotten and never used up on the second floor. It cost me a lot of money – several thousand dollars – for something I didn’t need and barely used. Now I need it and will use. Why install this beautiful old relic that wasn’t really appropriate for the space or our needs. It was big enough to heat a good sized City Hall? Why not make use of that second stove. I called John the installer and he said that was a great idea. He would cover up the hole with attractive tin and go get the stove, bring it over to the new house and have it going by mid-day. I wasn’t even here when he put it in, but when I came home from shopping there it was. I fired it up, and it burned cleanly, evenly and efficiently. It threw a gentle, even heat. It has all sorts fireguards around it, bottom and rear.

What was the message here? The stove was a monument to my wastefulness over the years. To my casual ideas about money. To my willingness to get things I didn’t need and throw away things I did. To my notions of myself as a big shot, an idea that has fitting gone up in flames. So I got a wood stove and didn’t need to spend thousands of dollars on one. Nor did I need to rehab an ancient stove that burns too much wood, runs too hot and smells too much. What was I thinking? Why would I leave it behind and get an ancient thing that was sure to be trouble?

Not only will my stove keep us warm,  It will save a lot of money on oil in this small house. I have changed so much and learned so much. I have so much yet to learn.

I look at the stove and feel regretful. I look at the stove and feel grateful. There are lessons in everything in life if you are open to them, and the stove speaks to some of the most painful lessons I have ever learned, and am still learning. And here is yet another cliche I am learning to consider: everything happens for a reason. Everything.

So I think this neglected but beautiful thing is  a generous stove. Despite reminding me of things I need to remember, it is also keeping me and my office warm and dry as I write this. And so what I am  mostly feeling is that I am very grateful for it. As John, who was visibly relieved that I changed stoves, he hauled out the old stove to try and sell it at The Stovery, he smiled and said, “I never really trusted the old girl, beautiful as she was, she was just a steel pipe. Maybe she just pushed you in the right direction.”

Maybe she did.