Candle of Hope

In 1992 I attended Natalie Goldberg's writing workshop in Taos, once in February and once in August. I remember most all of it, the people and their stories. We were to prepare for the workshop by reading several books. The one I ember best was a book by Pat O'Brien called "The Things we Carry". It is still today one of my favorite books. We were to read it because he writes with such detail, it was a lesson to be learned and I did, perhaps too well. What impressed me also was "the things we carry" not meaning the physical burden of a knapsack, but the stories we carry, the emotional scars and burdens. But we also carry good memories, things we carry forward from our childhood and so I carry the story of the candle of hope. At least it is what I called it only recently; in days gone by I'd refer to it as lighting the candle. It didn't mean the latest scented one or one in a fancy glass or pot, no, just an ordinary candle.


Way back in my childhood, I'd say sixty years ago, I would spend much time at my grandmother's. She was my father's mother and one of my favorite people. She was funny and kind and covered up for me when I read way into the night and couldn't get up the next morning.


When a thunderstorm blew in and the sky grew black, lightening struck the sky and the lights in the house blinked a couple of times. She would get out a candle and light it. I, in my childhood memory interpreted it as a candle to chase the fear away but don't remember if I was afraid of a storm. My grandmother was catholic, but I don't ever saw her slide rosary beads through her fingers, nor do I remember her ever going to church. So I know it was not because of religious reasons.


Lighting was one of the things I carried with me when I came to the United States in 1959. I was nineteen years old. I don't remember when I started to light the candle, perhaps when I was homesick. I would light the candle when someone was gravely ill and believed that it would make things better. I may have lit it during a thunderstorm in the early days. My former sister-in-law laughed at me until her son, born with water on the brain faced yet another surgery. She felt it helped because he lived. I realized that miracles like that don't happen, but realize that it helped her that someone outside of herself shared her hope.


Once again it's time to light the candle, I did so a few days ago and it has burned for three days. Tonight it will finish burning so I sent my husband to the store and told him to buy several more. I didn't tell him I'm afraid for it to burn out, but he knows. He knows my candle lighting in every Catholic Church in every town we came to during our world travels. I have made trips to the Santuario de Chimayo just to light a candle for a friend when he went to Iraq during the first war there. I lit it for my grandson when he went to Iraq during the second war there and he came back in one piece. I finally named it the candle of hope.


My husband came back and found three as backup so the light  won't go out after all. I lit the new one which will burn for three days, and nights and I feel better and have reason to hope.


While I was worried about the candle burning out I realized, at the age of seventy, that my grandmother probably lit the candle so she would find her way in the dark if the lights went out and it had nothing to do with helping to assuage my fear or prayer. 

I guess I'm not a fast learner, but despite my realization this late in life, the habit of lighting the candle is too ingrained and I'm not letting go with it. In my life, as long as it burns there is hope.