My Father Was a Candle Maker

My Father Was a Candle Maker

When I was seven, I believed my father could trap sunlight.

I’d watch him work in the back room of our little shop, surrounded by boiling pots of beeswax and shelves lined with jars of crushed herbs, dried petals, and pigment powders. The air always smelled like lavender and honey, and his hands—though rough—moved with such gentleness, you’d think he was sculpting something sacred.

And maybe he was.

He made candles the old way—by dipping wicks over and over until the wax built up like time itself. Some candles burned for hours. Some, for days. And others, he said, “were never meant to be lit—only kept.”

He rarely explained what that meant. My father was a quiet man. A man of rituals and silence. He believed in doing over saying.

Our shop, Davenport & Son Candles, stood on the corner of Ash and Mill, next to a cobbler and a watchmaker. It smelled better than both, and drew in women with wide-brimmed hats and boys with empty pockets who wanted to smell something sweet.

But behind the counter, the magic happened.

My mother died when I was nine.

There was no warning. No build-up. Just a cough that didn’t go away, a bed that stayed cold, and the quiet way my father folded her nightgown and didn’t speak for days.

He never cried where I could see.

But he made a candle that week.

A tall one, nearly black, wrapped with a red ribbon that had belonged to her.

He never lit it.

He never sold it.

He just kept it on the mantle, like a sentinel.

After that, something in him changed. He worked more slowly. Talked even less. And at night, I would catch him sitting by the fireplace with a single candle lit—not for light, but for memory.

By the time I was fifteen, I knew the craft.

He taught me how to mix beeswax and bayberry, how to use rose petals for a subtle sweetness and clove for depth. He showed me how to twist a wick just right so the flame burned steady. He said scent was the closest thing to memory we could bottle.

That fall, he made a set of twelve candles and told me to place them in a special box. “Don’t sell these,” he said. “Not yet.”

Each was marked with a number. No names. No labels. Just twelve hand-dipped candles, sealed with wax and mystery.

I wanted to ask questions.

But with my father, silence was part of the language.

He died in his sleep on the first snow of winter.

No ceremony. Just a quiet letting go.

The town mourned in the way towns do—whispers at the bakery, flowers left outside the shop, and someone offering to ring the church bell an extra time that Sunday.

I didn’t touch the candle room for weeks.

I left the wax to harden in its pots, the petals to dry on their trays, the smell of his work to hang heavy in the air like breath held in.

Then one night, when the wind howled too loud and my chest ached in that dull, familiar way, I found the box. The one with the twelve candles.

I chose number 7—for no reason other than it was in the center.

I lit it.

The room filled with a smell I couldn’t place—like pine needles after rain and something sweeter, like oranges.

It burned calmly for nearly an hour. Then something strange happened.

The flame flickered blue for a moment, then danced low. I leaned in.

There, inside the melted pool of wax, something shimmered.

A note.

Folded and sealed in glass, now revealed by time and fire.

With trembling fingers, I pulled it out. My father’s handwriting greeted me:

"If you’ve found this, then I’m no longer there to explain it myself. These twelve candles are pieces of my life. Each holds a story, a memory, a truth I never told you aloud. But I want you to know me now—not just as your father, but as a man who lived, who loved, who hurt, who healed.

Burn them when you need answers."

I read it three times before the wax hardened again. Before the flame settled back into its steady dance. Before the silence in the room changed—not gone, but softer.

I haven’t lit the other candles yet.

Not because I’m afraid, but because I think I want to earn them.

One day, maybe when I’m ready, I’ll burn number 3, or 11, or the one he made with her ribbon.

For now, I make candles the way he did—slow, honest, without shortcuts.

And sometimes, people say there’s something different about mine.

Something warm.

Something like memory.

I smile, thank them, and say nothing.

Because some stories, like candles, aren’t meant to be rushed.

They’re meant to be lit when the room is dark enough to feel them.