Red Room Where the Writers Are

Special time of day. Nettle tea brews in a blue teacup to my right. Dog snoozes on the wooden bench to my left. Laptop on kitchen table before me, perfectly centered, promising  the decadent possiblility of words to come. Comforting sound of dishwasher droning and grinding behind me. Another day nearing the end. And what of it? All that running around and the making of phone calls and the words and and the endless errands, what were they all about? Don't we all have those like busy ants dashing from place to place. Otherwise what would our days be? I sit here now sated and content. The house is blanketed by the soft velvet night and all within its folds  have survived yet another day of life. Yes, I do think that life is all about survival. Fragile life. We never know. Off out the door and who knows if we will come back. And we even stop to make sure that the door is locked and secure.   And off we go, out into the world to pay the bills. Buy the groceries. To be nice to the neighbour. To drop some spare change into the charity collection box. This day, I buy a candle. A huge candle the colour of parchment, that costs, I am sure of it, more than it should. When I get home, even before I take off my raincoat, I search out the matches and light it. The pleasure it gives me immense. It is my metaphor. A big cream candle sitting on the table, even long before the darkness falls. It burns for hours and the wick stays steady, it never falters. The dinner table fills up to six people. We sit  to share the good food. Some wine is poured, a rich burgundy. We drink and laugh and the night encroaches, slow and sure. The candle spreads its golden light.  Ah how life is good. The laughter, the memories we share, the time my youngest son fell into the garden pond, the time my middle son almost drowned in a swimming pool in Portugal, the time I almost got run over, the time my husband was knocked out by a falling tree, the time, the time, the time......the time I believed I could not live again because of grief and desertion. All those times. The candle burns though. It signifies time and the passing of time and the light of time and okay, even the darkness of time. Because without light there is no darkness.  Soon the evenings will grow so long that candles will be redundant. Light will filter through the curtains even come midnight. But, you know, I will still light that candle. I will light it until it dies down, to the very end, to the very last, until the wax splays itself out, into a congealing mass, into something else...