My Candle

I love my website and blog.

My website and blog give me an opportunity to pull out all the old dusty papers and folders where bits and pieces of me have been stored. Assorted thoughts on paper scattered through my years of putting away, here and there, some never to be found again. Now, where did I put…. I know I wrote a little essay about....., search - search again - it's nowhere to be found. Must be in the same place as that binder that held my collection of wildflower information I assembled for a few years. I've looked high and low. Maybe that's with the pair of glass candlesticks.

To put YOU in the know: There is a pair of inexpensive, short clear glass candleholders that I have seen four times over the last forty years. I have looked and looked for them as I wanted to use them, but the only times I have seen them were: when we moved house to house.

As I packed our belongings for moving, I would come across them and with a disgusted feeling would think: Of course! That's the logical place! That's right where they should be! Why didn't I think of it? In three houses I've thought that. And now, in this, yet another house, it's the same thing - again! (Exasperation!) I have looked high and low, but they are nowhere to be found. I think there is an imp who plays games with me. Some little playful, impish spirit deliberately hides things. Wherever the glass candlesticks are, there surely is a stack of my papers and binders of information collected, plus who knows what else is with them; possibly everything we've tried to find for years.

Reminds me of maternal grandmother Mammaw Bennett's story about their pet raccoon. She said when she was a girl (my mind's eye pictured a log cabin), they (her four sisters, Brother, and herself) had a pet raccoon. I asked, "What did you call it?" She replied, "Cooney. But, he kept getting into trouble". "Why?", the child asked. "Because he kept hiding things. He'd hide Ma's thimbles and scissors and spoons and every shiny thing he could get his paws on. One day Ma was fed up with the aggravation of him hiding her things with her having so much to do and trying to get her work done. So Ma took Cooney for a walk in the woods - and came back without him."
"Oh--", said the child.

The child is grown and old herself, now, and I think somewhere there very well could be a little imp who steals during the night, then hides during the day, perhaps in the woods where it plays with a raccoon called Cooney. And, there are some of my belongings that may never be found again - unless we move to another house. I'd like to take that pesky imp for a walk somewhere. Until then, I will work with what I can find.

A routine has established itself. Daytime is for gardening and people, then interacting with family into the evenings. Then quiet nights into mornings are for writing, plus website maintenance, with an occasional sleep-in to catch up. The hazy feeling in my head and lethargic body remind me, I'm "burning my candle at both ends".

An ode to blogging and website writing could be
Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem that goes
round and round and round in my head:

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--
It gives a lovely light!