My Lava Lamp

Six years ago, I asked for a lava lamp for Christmas. Darling Husband, ever willing to accommodate my fancies, bought me my hearts desire, the blue one with purple blobs.

It was interesting for a short while but not practical. Then our lives became stressful due to health issues and we had to make our bedroom on the first floor in our family room. I brought down the lava lamp and we used it for a night light. What a wonderful stress reliever that turned out to be. Worries kept us up or woke us up at night and we could slowly push them away by watching the languid movement of purple blobs, up and down the lamp. They bumped and passed each other. Sometimes they coalesced into bigger blobs. Early in the evening, as the wax which made up the bobs warmed up, strands would stretch like tentacles from top to bottom. Always different and always the same.

Health issues resolved, bedroom was moved back upstairs, but the lava lamp now had a place in our lives much greater than either of us imagined. Even now, my husband turns it on most nights and will notice if we forget to turn it on. We are on our third bulb, ratcheted down to a 25 watt to save money. It still works the same. The blobs go up, the blobs go down, pretty purple in a sea of bright blue. Worries rise and worries fall, and we go back to sleep.