Chdamn
Dungeon Master
Staff member
2A Bourbon Hound OG
Charter Life Member
Benefactor
Multi-Factor Enabled
I originally posted this on the, now, Canuck website but felt like it needed to be here as well.
We had been dating a couple of years and I was stationed at Lejeune. While listening to the radio in her dorm room on one of my visits "Bad Moon Rising" rang out over the airwaves. As I started singing along she asked "You like CCR too"? Since I own every album they've ever released and was raised on CCR, Dr Hook and Beach Music you could say I'm a fan. The poetry in their lyrics has always touched me.
The next time we were in the car I threw in a CCR tape. "Cotton Fields" was the first song up and she asked me what band this was. It was then I realized she had only heard the common radio songs. Music being personal I decided I would play the song that had the most meaning to me. So I fast forwarded to my favorite CCR song "Put a Candle in the Window". After it finished she asked me what does it mean. Why would you put a candle in the window?
So I explained that in the days before electricity and cars it took days to travel and there was a risk of getting lost in the pitch black. So a wife would burn a candle in the window of their home, a light that in the pitch black that night produced at that time, could be seen for miles. It helped assure that your loved one could find their way home and return to you. Nowadays placing a candle in the window was symbolic of these times and showed that you loved someone not with you and longed for their return.
I didn't tell her that for me the meaning was even deeper. I didn't tell her that I felt like she was my soulmate. That the sappy, hopeless romantic inside me already felt like she was my candle. That she was home to me and now that I had seen her light I would never lose my way home. Her light to me was so bright that not even death would separate us for long (a sobering thought for a Marine that was just a couple of weeks from deployment but an oddly comforting one). Yes, I had that old traveling bone and would be off to see the world.
So deployment day arrived and I stoically said good bye, secretly hoping this wasn't the last time I would see her. Hoping I wouldn't have to test out that whole death theory and worried that absence would make her heart go wander as it does for a lot of people (there's a reason the strippers change in Jacksonville every time one deployment returns and another leaves). It had happened to me before. I'd be gone for as little as a month and I'd return to a girlfriend who had found someone else.
About 5 months later I get injured (a funny story for another day) and get medivaced to Germany. In the days before cell phones, email etc we were limited to letters. She had written me almost every day and I had written as often as I had a chance. My parents were notified and they let her know where I was and why communication had stopped. A couple weeks later and 3 screws and a pin in my ankle heavier, I was med flighted back to the states. With a 3 day lay over at Walter Reed which was only an hour drive away from her. To this day the sex we had on the bathroom floor of my hospital room (because the door had a lock on it) is probably the most memorable.
Months later, back at Lejeune, when I finally had clearance to leave I drove up for a visit. As we were hanging out, one of her girlfriends tells me "Did you know this girl put a candle in her window every single night while you were away? You must be special". The feeling that came over me was belittling. I may not be special but at that moment I felt like the luckiest man on the planet and still do to this day. She hadn't done it so she could tell me about it. She hadn't done it to make me feel good or because I had asked her to or even hinted at it. She had listened to my explanation of the meaning and truly longed for my return. And if it hadn't been for that friend I would have never known.
This and a myriad of other reasons is why she will always be my Naer (that's Hebrew for candle).
We had been dating a couple of years and I was stationed at Lejeune. While listening to the radio in her dorm room on one of my visits "Bad Moon Rising" rang out over the airwaves. As I started singing along she asked "You like CCR too"? Since I own every album they've ever released and was raised on CCR, Dr Hook and Beach Music you could say I'm a fan. The poetry in their lyrics has always touched me.
The next time we were in the car I threw in a CCR tape. "Cotton Fields" was the first song up and she asked me what band this was. It was then I realized she had only heard the common radio songs. Music being personal I decided I would play the song that had the most meaning to me. So I fast forwarded to my favorite CCR song "Put a Candle in the Window". After it finished she asked me what does it mean. Why would you put a candle in the window?
So I explained that in the days before electricity and cars it took days to travel and there was a risk of getting lost in the pitch black. So a wife would burn a candle in the window of their home, a light that in the pitch black that night produced at that time, could be seen for miles. It helped assure that your loved one could find their way home and return to you. Nowadays placing a candle in the window was symbolic of these times and showed that you loved someone not with you and longed for their return.
I didn't tell her that for me the meaning was even deeper. I didn't tell her that I felt like she was my soulmate. That the sappy, hopeless romantic inside me already felt like she was my candle. That she was home to me and now that I had seen her light I would never lose my way home. Her light to me was so bright that not even death would separate us for long (a sobering thought for a Marine that was just a couple of weeks from deployment but an oddly comforting one). Yes, I had that old traveling bone and would be off to see the world.
So deployment day arrived and I stoically said good bye, secretly hoping this wasn't the last time I would see her. Hoping I wouldn't have to test out that whole death theory and worried that absence would make her heart go wander as it does for a lot of people (there's a reason the strippers change in Jacksonville every time one deployment returns and another leaves). It had happened to me before. I'd be gone for as little as a month and I'd return to a girlfriend who had found someone else.
About 5 months later I get injured (a funny story for another day) and get medivaced to Germany. In the days before cell phones, email etc we were limited to letters. She had written me almost every day and I had written as often as I had a chance. My parents were notified and they let her know where I was and why communication had stopped. A couple weeks later and 3 screws and a pin in my ankle heavier, I was med flighted back to the states. With a 3 day lay over at Walter Reed which was only an hour drive away from her. To this day the sex we had on the bathroom floor of my hospital room (because the door had a lock on it) is probably the most memorable.
Months later, back at Lejeune, when I finally had clearance to leave I drove up for a visit. As we were hanging out, one of her girlfriends tells me "Did you know this girl put a candle in her window every single night while you were away? You must be special". The feeling that came over me was belittling. I may not be special but at that moment I felt like the luckiest man on the planet and still do to this day. She hadn't done it so she could tell me about it. She hadn't done it to make me feel good or because I had asked her to or even hinted at it. She had listened to my explanation of the meaning and truly longed for my return. And if it hadn't been for that friend I would have never known.
This and a myriad of other reasons is why she will always be my Naer (that's Hebrew for candle).
