Dining by Candlelight

Just as I was about to start making dinner tonight, the dark sky opened up and a slow and steady rain began outside.  I started to hear the raindrops hit the air conditioner in the window and all the sudden, a streak of lightning flashed outside.  “Good thing we’re in for the night,” I thought to myself.  And since I couldn’t decide if Nick had one last soccer practice tonight or not, the now-wet fields certainly sealed the deal.

Minutes later, the house went completely black.  You know the kind.  Utterly pitch black.  I waited for a few seconds to see who was going to start screaming or crying first.  Silence.  And then, “Mommy?” came quietly and with great hesitation.  As in … perhaps when the lights went out, Mommy suddenly disappeared too.  Like really, I had been standing just a few feet away from them, where would I go?

I started making my way towards the kitchen to hunt for some matches and candles, and just as I reached the threshhold, the whirr of the lights coming back on and all electricity springing back into action came.

I started lighting the candles anyway.  Our babysitter is a candle fanatic and always has them lit around the house, far from Madeline‘s reach, of course, nicely punctuating the space with bits of flickering light.

“Ohhh, it looks so pretty in the dark with the candles,” Nick said.  “Too bad the lights came back on.”

“Well, there’s no reason we can’t have the lights off anyway,” I told him.  I grabbed a few more candles from the closet (gotta love the Yankee Candle outlet) and started lighting them for the dining room table.  “Why don’t we eat by candlelight tonight?”

“That sounds like fun!”

He had already set the table for me (one of his regular chores), and minutes later (love leftover night for an easy dinner!), we were dining by candlelight.

“This is fun, Mommy!”

“It is, isn’t it?”

Something different.  Something fun.  Something spur-of-the-moment.

And the best way to avoid seeing the mess that Madeline was making with her bowl of blueberries.