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i know my kingdom awaits
and they've forgiven my mistakes
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-This Christmas eve is cold. We're not usually a Christmas lights kind of family- Dad writes off Christmas decorations as too pedestrian- but this year Mom said, I need luminarios.
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I didn't take her seriously, but she came home with paper bags and packages of candles, thick and stocky and smelling like vanilla. My sister filled the bags with sand and nestled the candles in like Easter eggs. So it's the night before. And I'm lighting the luminarios.
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I walk slowly, dipping to set the wicks on fire, and it occurs to me that I love my family. I think about how angry we make each other, sometimes. I think about all the problems we have, how scared we are that things are going to fall apart, because really that's all we know.
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I think about the disappointment, just under the surface. Marriages, children, entire lives that just went wrong. Choices dictated by fear instead of courage. Words said in anger instead of love, instead of encouragement. How we demand each other to fill us, to be things that aren't possible, and the fury that follows, then the sadness. I think about the changing faces, deaths, divorces. We're like every other family in that way, I guess.
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But as I weave and dip, touching flame to wick, I feel my love for them, which I too often ignore or forget. It swells like the light billowing inside the paper bags. I feel like I'm lighting their way home, making them welcome. It feels intimate, like I'm leaning over and touching a finger to each of their foreheads, smoothing out the worry wrinkle there.
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I walk back towards the lighted house, shaking out my fingers. One candle went out, looking like a house with darkened windows. I bend over and light it again. It's effortless. Flame costs me nothing. The more I give, the more I have. Dozens of luminarios, like tea lights on water, glowing lanterns in the sky.
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I want to say to us all, Everything changes. Things that are cold can suddenly flare up in the darkness, melt the molds that held them for so long, change their shape.
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The wax drips into the sand. My bare feet sting with cold. The luminarios seem to say, We can take it from here, sister, so I go back inside, morph from flame-bearer back into twenty-something daughter home for the holidays, but that warmth flares inside me, licks my swells and hollows, whispers in my ear not to be afraid, that I will never be cold in the ways I fear.
