sage and rage

Photo by Apothecary 87 on Unsplash

It took three tries to light the match because my matchbox is nearing the end of it’s 250 count and the gritty stuff is almost worn smooth on both sides. Two flames sprung up in the candle, one from the wick and one from a beeswax-soaked lavender sprig floating on the wax on one side of the candle. Lavender burning smells amazing, in case you’re wondering. Like regular lavender but smokier, more intense. The flame got big, blackening the side of the glass candle holder. It’s already not the prettiest candle, being the one I resurrected after the original wick failed to stay lit, so I don’t mind. I use it as my writing candle, so it’s appropriate that it looks messy and slightly the worse for wear. Like my brain. I watched it flare up bigger, blackening that entire side of the glass. I watched it dying down into a smolder, an uneven blotch of orange-gold on the black lavender sprig. The wick had burned down too far by then and also gone out. I got up and snapped a short piece off of a stalk of dried sage I keep in a vase on my kitchen counter. Pushing it into the softened wax beside the wick I lit the sage, using several matches to burn the stalk down to the wax before it would do more than smolder. Burning sage also smells amazing, like a Thanksgiving Day campfire. A tiny blue flame surrounded the glowing white three-pronged end of the sage. The blue flame got smaller, surrounding a glowing white two-pronged end of sage, the other one black ash. Then, just one of the prongs, the right-most one, continued to smolder while the middle one smoked, it’s grey ash looking fragile as dust. The wax around the edges of the candle had solidified again, leaving only a small pool around the tiny ember of the sage stalk.

Why am I talking about my lavender candle? It’s not some half-burnt (ha!) analogy for life at the moment, although that could probably work if I thought about it. I’m just procrastinating. Lately I dread writing. It’s too hard right now, all the reparenting shit and trauma. And what makes it worse is that, while in the middle (er, beginning) of learning to reparent myself, I also have to BE a parent. That’s just not fair. I should be able to press pause somewhere and take care of my own shit while the kids exist in a kind of emotional stasis so I don’t fuck them up any more than I already have until I can learn how to not. That would be lovely. And terrifying, because I probably would never decide that “I’ve got it” enough to press play again, and then they would have missed that much of their journey. Like it or not I am part of their journey, perhaps the most important part right now, next to them, because I’m their primary caretaker and with them all day every day (and night). Talk about terrifying. And humbling. And…what an opportunity (if I’m feeling really brave, which isn’t often where parenting is concerned).

Oh! Now the side of the sage that was burning is trailing smoke and the other side is burning again instead. It smells like somebody burned the stuffing.

There I go again. I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t want to talk about frying veggie burgers the other day while my mom told me about this one kid at the preschool where she works, how he used to be such trouble. But then the most amazing thing happened: his parents started setting limits and being consistent and spanking him, and now he’s like a brand new kid. Now, he comes in the classroom and sits down and says, “I’m a good boy now.”

I’m a freaking good boy now.

I don’t want to talk about how it felt, dying inside, stuck there with my hands in gluey rice and egg and red lentils, patties spattering merrily in hot oil beside me, the only response I could manage was not making eye contact (frying food makes a very good excuse for that). I don’t want to talk about blowing up at my husband later that night, after my parents went home. I had been simmering at the table, lit candle and mala beads clicking, trying mantra after mantra—I’m safe…I’m enough…I’m loved…all of which kept turning instead to naming my feelings—hurt…betrayed…angry…sad..unsafe…unprotected…unloved…abandoned…small…afraid…frustrated—in an effort to calm down, to coax my inner child out of hiding and back into my body.

There goes the last flicker, up in smoke. A tiny trident of ash suspended in a sea of grey-yellow wax flecked with black bits of soot and burnt lavender. I relight it, again. It only takes one try this time.