All We Do Is Drip

Week 38: Written September 21, 2016

Calvin liked candle wax. The wet kind, mid-drip, too hot to touch. As a kid, he’d watch it like a cat watches birds, wondering just how far that little drop would go before it cooled down and froze, forever, in one place.

Why did some zip down the candle like race cars, collecting at the bottom of the holder, while others barely escaped the flame?

He felt bad for the failures. They reminded him of those men who hung out by the diner, still dressed up like high school kids from the 1980s. With their hair swept back, stuck in place with pomade, and their worn out leather jackets, they were creatures stuck in another time. They were trapped here, still home, never getting a chance to leave and see the world.

At the same time, the puddles of wax looked pretty sorry, too. Had they just gone too far, strayed off the beaten path and wound up lost completely? That was better, he thought. It was like that poet once said: Better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.

But he realized something one day, as he watched a candle burn to completion, top to bottom. It was a snow day, a blizzard, and the weight of the snow had brought down the power lines outside. After the fireworks had ended, all they had for light were candles. No TV, no games, no computer. Just candles — and Calvin was just fine with that.

As he watched the candle burn, he saw something he felt stupid for not seeing before; those hardened drops that couldn’t escape always got a second chance.

Eventually the flame burned down to them again, melted them again, ignited them and inspired them again. Sometimes, they’d use that chance to zip down to the bottom in one slip. Other times, they’d stall a second time, waiting for that third chance to come.

And come it did.

If only life was like that, he thought: one chance after another. Even the puddles at the bottom sometimes got a second chance, at the very very end, when the candle was burning its last flame and the wick was nothing but a tip trapped in a tiny cylinder of wax. If the flame held on long enough, all the wax that remained melted into a pool together. That pool took the longest to solidify, holding on to the warmth of the wick’s final glow.

And he sort of found that to be the saddest scenario of all, that — in the end — no matter how far we got from home, we all wound up stuck in the same place.