Lamp Lighter
Glowing still
I sat last night playing music as my wife and daughter exercised. I recommend Chromatics, Dizzy, Hair, Phoebe Bridgers, and then some oldies like The Stylistics, Gordon Lightfoot, and if you want to go back just a few years, try “Princess of China” from Coldplay and Rihanna.
Be warned, though, as I thought I was.
When Haim’s new song “Hallelujah” took over, I felt very still and disquieted. It was almost 9:00, and daylight had just faded. I sat at my writing desk, hoping that my loved ones loved these songs. And still, I felt blue without understanding it.
The impressionists had it right: certain casts and qualities of light spin you right round, turn you on like a radio playing forgotten sounds. Fill you with rays of the departed and the never-gone.
And when I turned, I knew the feeling for what it was: the lamp that formerly sat on the living room table in my mother’s house — the one with the rose-red chimney that she lit whenever company was coming; the one we always kept burning when we set up air mattresses for our children since her house had only two bedrooms.
I see her hesitant steps, her stooped back, as she moves to turn it off after we’re settled.
And there, with her, we were settled on those late summer nights.
The lamp, and all its glowing, was one of the many pieces we inherited when she passed.
It sits now in my study window, and I always leave it on when my wife is out late, or back in the days when we could go out together to some public space.
I keep wanting to tell my mother that we are taking care of her “stuff,” her precious antiques, the ways she filled our lives with light, even when some of the filling came caustically.
As “Hallelujah” ended, I saw a rainy Fourth Avenue in my hometown, one end of which led to our favorite restaurant, the other end leading to her house. I see our car heading there, and on the street in front of her last home, the light always on.
It’s no wonder a little of me passed last night.
It’s no wonder that as I write, I turn the lamp on to remember, to reflect, and to feel all that I own.
