I Got This Package

A couple of years ago, I got this package.

Ohhhhh. Well, yes. It was from my sister JoAnne, and I did indeed understand it. And here’s the story.

I was nine and JoAnne was four and a half the summer we moved into our new house (and the same house where David and I live, now). In our previous home, we’d had those little pilgrim candles. They were part of the harvest decor on our Thanksgiving table each year. Mother never lit them; they just appeared each November and we liked them and thought they were cute. I guess it seemed frivolous to her to light them and let them burn down, only to have to replace them each year. So, they were out again, our first Thanksgiving in the new house, and we were thankful.

Then they got packed up, probably near the Christmas stuff. On a shelf. Up high. In a garage that got the blaring afternoon sun. All spring. All summer. All fall. And even all winter, even though it wasn’t so bad in the winter.

(You see what’s coming, don’t you.)

When we unpacked our Thanksgiving decorations the next fall, the poor, pitiful little pilgrim candles were badly misshapen, all bent over and bent back. Not festive. At all. But the jolly part of the disaster was that she said we could go ahead and burn them, since they weren’t going to be any good as decor any more. So we did.

She gave us an aluminum pie pan to hold the candles as they melted. I imagine that she or Daddy lit them, and we delightedly watched them glow and burn. It was wonderful.

It was a Saturday afternoon, and Mother left to go shopping with a friend. Daddy was at home with us, but he was outside, doing some yard work. Both JoAnne and I remember that some other child was there. We think it was the little girl from a house across the street. We’re not positive, but we think so.

The candles burned and melted, down, down, down, into a pool of gray (all those different colors on the pilgrims is just a thin layer of paint, to make them cute. Otherwise, they’re gray wax all the way through). We were sad when they were close to burning out, their wicks being spent. But…I had an idea! We could get toothpicks and stick them in the wax, and light them, and then we could still have beautiful light, just like when the candle’s wicks were burning.

So I got the box of toothpicks.

And it worked. We could light the toothpicks from the last of the burning wicks. We put several (well, sort of a LOT) of toothpicks in the pie pan’s lake of wax. Flammable wax.

They burned and burned and burned, and really, they burned so brightly that it was as though the whole pan of gray wax was afire.

It was.

While we were watching the wonderful, magic flames, Daddy came back into the house. And JoAnne and I agree that there weren’t many times in our lives that we saw him so alarmed. He yelped, grabbed a kitchen dishtowel and wetted it down and threw it, vigorously, onto the pie pan of flames. It worked immediately, completely extinguishing the fire. And spewing gray drops and spatters of wax all over the place. If I looked carefully, I might be able to locate one or two even now. (But probably not, as Mother was an amazing housekeeper.)

I don’t remember that we got into trouble over it, even though we came close to burning down our practically brand-new house. I don’t even remember if Mother replaced them; I know you could still get them at the T.G.&Y. store at the mall.

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
    his love endures forever.

Psalm 118:29 (NRSV)

Happy Thanksgiving to you! And be careful!