Memory Of A Candle

• Ella Page, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2022

I’m a writer. I’ve always been a writer and will be until the day I DIE! I dramatically announce to my sisters and brother whilst we enthusiastically jump around the house. My siblings and I have always been quite poor. We’ve been raised by mother for the last couple years as father is still fighting in the war with our oldest brother Nathan. Mother is the most generous and kind person in the whole entire world. My four sisters and I are all born only one year apart, except for Mathew as we are twins, and then Nathan the eldest who was born five years before the rest of us. My sisters and I have never truly behaved as young women should and we never thought we would have to. Well everyone except Rose (she’s a bit odd). Mother always seemed so happy to see us still act as children.

December has just begun and the nights are getting colder. But Christmas is in December and it is my favourite time of the year. We don’t usually get many presents. But Christmas is when my siblings and I put on our annual theatre shows in the glorious theatre of our lounge. Which is the only present I will ever need. The shows are usually presented for the young children that live near us and our parents but for the last four years its just been mother. We all have allocated rolls in making the play each year. I always write the scripts, Mary loves making clothes which is why she is the costume designer with Rose as her apprentice. Mathew helps everyone in every way, he would always be at my side listening to all my crazy ideas, helping the girls chose the correct colour for the characters costumes or helping our littlest sister Olivia make the props and backgrounds for the set. We’ve put on so many shows about princesses, princes, pirates, fairies, mermaids and so much more it is my favourite part of winter and it seems to make everybody so very gleeful. After Christmas dinner is when we perform our show and our best Christmas memories are made. When the show is finished we sit talking together, me in my rocking chair in the corner of the room staring at everybody’s joyful faces whilst the glowing candle in the middle of the table begins to melt spreading the beautiful scent of cinnamon and spice.

I walk around the room with the lingering smell of that candle fading until it becomes the essence of my childhood wondering in the air. I then sit down once again on the old creaky rocking chair the same way my younger self did. A tear drop running down my old wrinkled cheek wishing I was able to go back to the those times and be with the people I loved so dearly and occasionally took for granted. The memory faded entirely as the flame of my candle weakened. Whoosh….it was gone.