Lighting Candles

Better late than never, we rolled the remaining wax sheets from last Candlemas.  It's not time for Easter or the Equinox, so we'll keep the Valentine mood for a bit longer.  The children are all big enough to roll their own candles, which is so new to me.  There has always been someone who was too little for the job, but that time has passed.  Everyone enjoyed seeing their creations lit up.

In other news, the days are full of birdsong and burgeoning bulbs and work.  We have done school work and errands and my own new work, which I am able to do mostly at home.  I work for my mother now, for the accounting business that my grandmother started about forty years ago.  I've worked off and on over the years, but this is now a lasting responsibility.  My long-term plan is to restructure our school year to allow our "Summer" break to fall from February to mid-April.

I am still taking extra time for connection, as my children experience an attachment void and learn to forge new relationships.  It is funny that the crumbling of one family has also meant the rebuilding of another.  We are enjoying more time with my family, more chances to get together and cozy up over family meals.  It feels like we were not often able to be together, and now all of that has changed.  The schedule, with all its variables, is enjoying more predictability.

A lot is new these days, which can feel difficult to remember.  It feels so much longer, like a slow train crash.  The changes we have experienced are so profound, and yet not.  I have been largely alone at my tasks for three and a half years, and yet everything has more weight now.  I know that things will be busier, what with my year-round work being a jack of all trades, master of some.  I also know that this time is particularly full of appointments and errands, and things will even out.