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Candle bonding

Making candles and catching up with the girls is a day well spent at the Melting Point

By Paola Lastick

Visions of mom gathered around the dinning room table with a group of long-haired friends, wicks in hand, pouring hot wax into tin containers of various shapes to produce candles of their own design — that was my inspiration to stop into the Melting Point.

If mom and a group of housewives could do it, so can I. That was the thought. Of all the places in Chicago that offer make-your-own candle workshops, the Melting Point appealed to me because of their commercials. In them, groups of women bond as they select colored blocks of wax for their candles. I want to bond with my friends, too. Deepen the relationships I fostered with old high school friends through all these years.

I make some calls and leave a few pleading messages to meet at Clark and Rosalyn Place.

“It’s right in front of a Mexican restaurant,” I say. In my experience, when you want to get someone to do something, all you have to do is mention food and they’re there.

In the midst thunderous rain, I am the first to arrive, as usual. While I wait to see which of my friends will trudge through the rain for me on this Easter afternoon and move up in the ranks of friendship, I make my way through the studio. Kat, the sales associate at the counter, asks if I need help. I nod; my friends should be here any second now. I tell her we are going to bond like the girls in the commercial while we make some candles.

While most of the store’s contents are made out of wax, they also have gift items which are not. They have frames and make-your-own picture magnets on display, along with fancy photo albums that say New York, Paris and London. They even have incense sticks and holders. The windows are large, making the studio appear fresh and open, with the scent of the candles delicately perfuming the air.

I make it through the whole store, and my friends are still not there. I pull out my cell phone and dial the one person I know would come to my rescue. I beg my sister, and 15 minutes later, she walks through the door. Suddenly, I didn’t feel like such a loser, as at least I have one person to bond with me.

My sister and I gather around Kat as she explains the process of candle making. First, we are to choose from the blocks of colored wax that are lined against the wall. And there is no limit to how many colors we can choose. Then, we are to take our pieces of colored wax and break them off into small bits and chunks with our spatulas, which I am told must be held with both hands for safety reasons. I didn’t think making a candle had any elements of danger besides the possibility of a burn due to splashing hot wax.

The small pieces of wax are used to fill the tin containers we selected to shape our candles. Going along with my mother’s flower theme of the ’60s, I choose a five-petal flower shape. My sister selects a tall, square one. How predictable. Once the containers are filled to the rim, we are given six or seven different scents to choose from for our candles. Feeling confident that we understood the instructions and dangers of candle making, Kat says it’s time to get started.

My sister picks out two shades of green as her accent colors, and I go for the orange, pink, purple and dark shade of green for mine. We drop our wax blocks on the marble stone atop the work station and begin chipping away with the spatula. I chip enthusiastically, breaking off pieces at a rate of three to my sister’s one. I rock the spatula with both hands, applying constant pressure, while my sister complains that her pieces are too hard to break off. Oh please, give me a break. How hard can they be, I thought. I offer to help, but she says she’s OK and knows why she’s having problems with the wax. I figure she probably doesn’t want to admit she needs help from her little sister, so I don’t offer my superior muscle strength anymore. Instead, I ask her if she remembers how mom would make candles with her friends when we were little.

Of course she remembers. She had stayed up once or twice helping out at one of mom’s candle parties. What? Where had I been? I never got to help out. If only mom could see me now.

I finish chipping my colored pieces of wax and toss them in my flower. In they went, in no particular arrangement. The green square piece sat next to the purple triangle that was leaning against the pink half-circle. In all the colors went until my wax pieces were gone, the tin flower full to the rim. My sister is only halfway through filling up her square.

Once my sister is content with how her green pieces laid next to each other, we call Kat over to our work station. We were ready to choose the scent for our candles. After smelling all the test tubes full of yellowish liquid, I choose rain as my scent. My sister selects pumpkin spice. Kat then disappears to the basement, where she prepares the filler wax with our chosen aroma. Five minutes later, she returns with two tins full of clear, melted wax to pour over our colored pieces. But before we can handle the hot wax, we each have to put on a pair of goggles. This is the dangerous part, where we pour the scented wax into our tins and wait for it to cool off.

Outside, the rain is still coming down strong. While we wait for our candles to harden, I ask my sister what it was like to make candles with mom and her friends when she was little.

“It was fun,” she says. “I got to hear stories about how mom met dad and how dad proposed. She would tell her friends stories of how she chose our names when we were born. She took one look at each of us and knew exactly what to name us. Things like that.”

A bit later, Kat emerges from the basement holding both candles. Mine is a hodge-podge of scattered colors, not one laying harmoniously with the next. My sister’s candle, however, stands tall and strong, its colors working together to provide a sense of congruity. Holding her candle in my hands, I secretly thank my friends for standing me up. Next time, though, I’m inviting my mother.

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