Mood Lighting

We had our friends Robert and Charity for dinner

We've had three lovely second-year medical students staying with us -- Madeline, Sarah, and Hope. We welcomed them with dinner on our porch the day they arrived. On that night I had a vision.

Our porch has one high-wattage fluorescent bulb that gives off a powerful, cold glare -- not dinner party lighting. For months we have been amassing a small battalion of washed-clean glass jars, presumably awaiting re-use. I was almost sure we had twine tucked away somewhere, and long candles can be had in town for 8 to the dollar.

The next morning, I sat down to cobble my vision together. I found twine -- inexplicably knit into what must have been a rude fisherman's net or a hammock for a kitten -- and spent an hour untangling it into usable pieces. I removed the labels from all our glass jars in soapy, scalding water and stared to bind their necks with twine and take measurements for the lengths that would hang them from our porch rafters. By mid-afternoon I had ten glass lanterns neatly hung.

We've so far lost one to a tilted candle that burnt into the glass and shattered the jar, and lost another to a flame that licked too eagerly at the hanging twine until it snapped and crashed to the porch. No one was injured :) I've trimmed the candles to keep their flames just below the lantern rims and filled the jars with sand to keep the candles straight.

For the past week or two, we've all gathered on the porch for dinner under the twinkling glass lights, pulling the couches close to eat and talk into the night. Most nights we light a fire of charcoal in our clay stove and watch the embers crackle and settle into deep oranges and astral whites and, of course, we roast marshmallows.