"Tis better to light a candle than curse the darkness."

Her mother used to say all the time, every time the power blew. Charlotte remembered years as a child when it seemed the power went out almost every week, lines knocked down by a tornado, or a hurricane, or a blizzard. Times when it seemed some god cared little for their small community, for the people there, except maybe to watch them squirm and struggle. Her mom would just pull out her candles from the utility closet and light them all from a single match, ever frugal, then place them around the kitchen. When the power came back on, the candles would be swiftly blown out and packed back away for the next time. They were never left out.

Not decorative items, candles. Not for Char’s mom. Not growing up.

Char knew, each time she lit a candle in her apartment, miles from the wind-swept plains and the small house at the mercy of the elements, that candles meant something. More than just power to banish a physical darkness. More than just a flicker of light.

She wasn’t some kind of anti-technology Luddite. No, she used computers and watched TV, set up her Tivo to record repeats of "Charmed" and daily showings of "Passions," but she did it in candlelight. There, a line of tea lights on the windowsill. A vanilla scented candle in the bathroom. Stout pillars of wax mounted on small shelves to either side of her queen-sized bed in her defiantly peon-sized New York City apartment. Different scents for different seasons – evergreen in December, when a tree wouldn’t fit in her studio, lilac in the spring, and ocean breezes in the summer as the air conditioner manufactured cool air to fill the small space. October was pumpkin, February cinnamon, April a fresh floral scent that reminded her of rebirth.

It was easy, at home. To light a candle. It made the memories softer. Her mother dying of cancer, the fluorescent lights in the hospital painful to her eyes, a candle at her bedside, lit only when she had visitors. The fire that broke out one night when she was alone, a stray spark igniting an oxygen tank, the entire cancer ward reduced to ashes.

Char still thought of the fire as her friend. A glow of warmth in the cold black night. Heat and comfort, and beauty, a cavalcade of color in a small space. She surrounded herself with them as other people surrounded themselves with friends, with warm bodies and light conversation. She bought them on sale in department stores, and paid full price in boutiques. A new scent had her closing her eyes and assigning it to a memory.

Tonight, as the darkness crept closer and closer, and night fell for longer and longer, Char unwrapped a new tall pillar of golden beeswax and placed it in the middle of a circle of tealights. The microwave warmed up her frozen dinner as she closed her eyes and lit the candles, banishing the darkness without and within.

Her fingertip glowed until she blew on it.

By ktbuffy

Links:

• Squirm and Struggle
• A Cavalcade of Color

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