Candles

I love candles ... all kinds.

For the longest time I stopped using them. After the tornado hit our house, I was not having a good week. I had re-broken my wrist carrying Jessie into an interior room of the house. The brick outside was covered in pink fiberglass insulation and it was getting tracked in and under my skin, the roof was still pouring water into my house even after it had been temporarily 'repaired' and the house stunk (wet fiberglass, wet plaster, I don't know what else). Couldn't do much with the other stuff, but I thought I could fix the stink. I had a small two piece pottery thing, with scented red wax in a bowl suspended above a tea light. I had never used it before - it was a gift from somewhere / someone. I lit it and set it on the ledge by the stairs. It was making the house smell lovely. A while later I walked out of my bedroom to find the banister on fire. The bowl with the melted hot wax had cracked, leaked red wax all over the ledge and was on fire. I was holding a big mug of diet coke and did the first thing that came to mind - pulled the lid off and threw it on the fire. It put the fire out, but exploded red wax all over me, the walls and the light grey carpet. I think I was more scared when I saw the fire than when I watched the tornado rip though our backyard. No more candles for me. Spent years getting that red wax all cleaned up.

Moved to Norway and candles were such a part of Norwegian life - I gave them another shot. Not really reasonable since we lived in a 100 year old home made entirely of wood - the walls, the floors, OK, except for the roof - it was a sod roof that grew grass and small flowers, but everything else: a tinderbox ready to go. I was careful, never left the house with anything except the wood burning stove lit (we used it for heat, so I kept it stoked until around 3:00 in the afternoon and that would carry us over till the next morning). Even being that careful - because it was a bunch of dry wood just waiting to catch fire, for some reason every time I returned to the house and drove in the entry and could see it, I was mildly surprised it was not a smoking pile of rubble.

When I came back I found something that gave me the fragrance without the flame, a Fragrance Lamp - I like to use these because it will fill a large space with fragrance unlike a small candle.

But sometimes I miss the soft flickering light of candles. Especially on dark winter days and days like today where it is just plain gloomy. I can light a jar candle and put it on a stone coaster on my desk and it cheers me right up.

I'm not completely stupid - I have never used those ceramic contraptions again. I don't know if I have even seen them sold anymore ... I wonder why?