Lakeside Candle & Soap Company

There are candles burning at my bedside tonight. The window is ajar so that I can hear the rushing wind. What a stormy season in San Diego. James Taylor is singing about Carolina and my mind is wandering. It takes me back to another stormy season - two, maybe three years ago. High school, I drove to the Lakeside Library and laid outside in my white Tacoma, Milly, reading, parked under the pepper trees. A wandering spirit overtakes me when it rains. I wandered that day, climbing trees and talking to strangers. My restless feet took me down the street, past the post office and into the Lakeside Candle and Soap Co. on the corner of Woodside and Main. I meandered through, touching everything, smelling some, talking to Bobo, the parrot who occupied a man-sized cage in the corner. I was enjoying fairy illustrations on some greeting cards when the tallest man I've ever seen stepped in from a back room and introduced himself as Tomas (TOH-mas). He was around thirty-five with broad shoulders and a disproportionately small head. We shook, his massive hand engulfing mine. Over the next hour, Tomas told me his story - how he had dressed as a monk for a book report in elementary school earning him his nickname (what his real name was, he wouldn't say) and about his two-year-old daughter. We talked about God and about Lakeside and about my literary aspirations. I bought a candle that day; round with a colorful, stained-glass pattern. I went back to visit Tomas twice after that. His shop closed before the end of the subsequent summer. But that candle is burning on my table this night, and I am thinking about that stranger who is, in a way, my friend.

"Everywhere, in every town, in every street, we pass, unknowing, human souls made great through love and adversity."

-Frank Borzage "Street Angel"