Theodore Walker

...and so, I light a candle...

My grandma used to always have a lit candle in the window in a special candelabrum she kept near her doorway. When I asked her about it, she'd tell me it would light when family or friends would “pass through”. She’d inherited this candelabrum from her grandma, which was probably difficult to do considering the inability for many African slaves to have personal property at that time, but this silver candlestick somehow had followed her family from the Virginia colonies in the 1700's to the West coast here in California. It would hold five candles, yet only one was always in the heart; yet the oddity which piqued my curiosity, was that this candle would always light as if on its own power prior to any news. I had always meant to ask her how it would, yet it would never come up in conversation.