The Last Whites: A Labor Day Candle Ritual for the Turn to Fall
On the Sunday before Labor Day, Claire stands in front of her closet holding a white linen shirt, turning it over in her hands the way you turn over a decision you have basically already made. She is not going to wear it again until next June, not because anyone told her not to, exactly, but because some old, half-remembered rule is still humming quietly in the back of her mind: no white after Labor Day. Two streets over, someone is hosing the last of the sand out of a car trunk. The community pool, open since Memorial Day, will lock its gate tomorrow evening and not reopen it until school lets out again. Whatever the equinox or the thermometer might say about it, most of the country has already agreed that summer's real closing bell rings this particular weekend, somewhere between one long Sunday and the Monday everyone gets to skip work for. Templum built this week's candle around that exact kind of Sunday, the one that closes a season without much fuss, except for the smal...
