Candlemaking

by Cadence Hodge

(Note: This selection is excerpted from a longer story.)

For as long as I've been alive, my mother has always lit scented candles in the morning. She makes them herself. She plucks flowers from our covered garden and drowns them with olive oil, letting their fragrance permeate the mixture. When I was little, I would run into the kitchen to watch my mother as she melted wax over the stove and carefully poured in the scented oil. The scent was so strong over heat that it made my head spin. The candle making process only occurred about once every six months since my mother always worked in large batches, and every six months I would watch from the kitchen table in awe of her meticulous and gentle nature. Now that I'm older, I get the pleasure and privilege of participating in candle day. 

Clusters of foam flowers and hydrangeas greet me as I walk out into our shady garden. Only the smallest bits of light trickle through the barrier of vines, kept hydrated by an irrigation my father fashioned out of old pipes before I was born. The humid air is thick with the scent of nectar, and even though we no longer keep a calendar, I know it must be summertime. My parents told me stories about their summertimes when I was little—how the sun rays beat down on your skin until it turned bright red; how dry periods turned all the lovely green things to a dull brown; how poor creatures baked to death in the sunlight and created an awful stench. I'm grateful to be under the shady protection of the vines, and I'm grateful for the sweet scent of candles that has made the idea of stench unfathomable to me. I'm grateful to be safe. 

I begin work on a spray of primroses, plucking tiny pink blooms from their stems with utmost caution. Picking flowers always comes with the risk of putting a hole in the vines. When stems become intertwined with the vines, pulling them too hard or trying to take too many blossoms at once could expose our livelihood to the sun, a cruel star that could make everything go up in flames. My parents showed me pictures once—charred remains of buildings, scorched flower beds, trees reduced to nothing. The pictures frightened me as a little girl. They still do. I always wonder how my parents managed to live in that world. I always appreciate the fact that I don't have to do the same. 

"Drusilla, hurry up out there." I turn to see my mother calling me from just inside the house. "You're dawdling." 

"I'm coming, don't worry." I look down at my basket, and I know it's not nearly full enough to make the batch of candles my mother and I usually make. I start pulling larger and larger clumps of blossoms off of their stems. I know I'm supposed to be more careful than this, but my mother is calling and she's already annoyed with me for waking up too late on candle day. 

"Dru-sil-la. Finish up out there." When my mother stresses each syllable of my name, I know I'm in for it. I snatch one last handful of primroses and run inside the house, praying I didn't damage the vines.

On any other day, I would've received two scoldings—one from my mother for "dawdling," and one from my father for upsetting my mother. Today, though, I receive just one from my father as my mother gets to work on the candles. 

"Drusilla, you know your mother has enough to worry about without you being off schedule. She does so much for you—we do so much for you—and still you wake up late on candle day." 

I stare down at my sandals and silently bear my father's reproach. Arguing only prolongs it. When he is finished, I say, "I'm sorry, father. I truly am very grateful for your protection and your providence. I'll do better. I promise to be better." I glance up from my shoes and see that my father is satisfied with my apology. 

"Drusilla, I need you in the kitchen," my mother calls from across the room. I shuffle into the kitchen, still ducking my head to show how sorry I am for mucking candle day up. 

"Separate those petals, please." I stand at the counter and begin plucking the dark pink petals of a turtlehead flower from their stem. Petal-plucking is my favorite part of candle day. It's something of a meditative practice for me. Sometimes I count the petals, other times I note the varying shades and colors that can come from just one flower. Today, though, petal-plucking leads my mind down memory lane. 

I sat on the back porch, watching my mother's head bob up and down among hydrangeas and coral bells. I was only three years old, but even then I admired the carefulness of my mother as she plucked flowers from stems, leaving no gaps in the vines that surrounded our house. Whether it was out of pure curiosity or that strange impulse to mimic others that falls over us when we're the littlest of people, I toddled over to the other side of the garden and began to pluck. I remember looking down at my soft, grubby hand, clutching a sprig of primroses I'd haphazardly yanked from its bush. I continued plucking and pulling and prodding the flowers until I'd created a small opening in the vines—it was just big enough for me to stick my hand through. Sunlight poured in through the hole, and I was entranced by it. On all fours, I peeked through the hole…

[To be continued…]