Time Brings Calm, Slobby or Swank, Butterfingers, and Gratitude

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I do not live on a trick-or-treating road. For 24 years I’ve lived in this house. For 24 years, nary a Halloween trick-or-treater. It’s a sad story, sugar-free and non-spooky. Most of all, it’s devoid of the delight of those children, many of whom knock on doors by themselves and address adults on their own, all in the name of such a crucial goal.

This leads me to wonder — is future success built on trick-or-treating?

I treasure those nocturnal fairies and knights, skeletons and frogs. I could eat them up like a Kit Kat, though Butterfinger I’d swallow whole. And sometimes it feels like I do with children. I love them to tears and want three hundred of them running around being goofy in my house, though instead I have mostly silence.

It can be like that in the later years. Quiet. Where the flap of the trees’ leaves is a blare.

Each Halloween for the past five years I’ve commuted half an hour to my cousin’s house to trick-or-treat with her. Years ago, we waited on the street curb for her kids to deliver their threat schtick to each homeowner. (“Trick or treat” is a threat, you know.) But now we are only mandated to trail her youngest child by enough distance to render him nearly on his own. I’ll take what I can get.

This year for Halloween, I bought a small witch’s hat that wobbles a bit perched atop a headband. I admit, it’s utterly corny, but in the later years, you can opt for corny, cool, swanky, slobby, indifference, or best costume on the street. Life is completely up to you at this point. I’m finding there are perks to this period in life.

I love Halloween. I always had larger-than-life dreams of throwing a huge scary-house party on this holiday. I would rent a huge tent and set it up on the section of my yard down near the road. Anyone could stop by and there’d be all manner of freaky experience to spook my attendees. There’d be food, drink, and creepy sounds projecting from speakers. There’d be black and orange décor and, oh dear, those giant terrifying Halloween figures for sale gracing the big box stores here in the US. There’d be laughter from adults and curious fear from the kids. I’d become famous in my neighborhood.

But I never did it. Too much work. Yet, still, I imagine how it would be. As you get older, you play out your past dreams as if they’re old pals instead of the anxious urge they used to be. Now I can enjoy the what-ifs with equanimous pleasure rather than the self-defeatism of youth.

Since Halloween is partly centered on kids, I think of those years trick-or-treating with my sons. We traveled to an adjacent neighborhood to wander about with our friends to gather the proper boatload of candy expected in America. Then, of course, when all was said and done, and my sons had chosen a couple of candies per day for weeks from their enormous bowls of sucrose harvest, I’d dump the remaining surplus in the trash, American style.

This leads me to wonder — is Halloween simply an annual donation to Mars Inc.?

I still marvel at the balance between my kids and me. One of us valued Kit Kat above all. Another revered Skittles. And the last, who will remain nameless, treasured Butterfinger. My husband had no bias toward anything in those bowls, which over time technically reduced the donation to Mars Inc.

Holidays are a drumbeat. They conjure the past in a way our daily lives don’t often do. We’re too busy living life — a good thing — and this rarely requires the part of the treasure trove of our memory that holds these special days which beat at regular intervals over our lifespan. Each time we hear that beat, we see those special times with misty eyes and a yearning gratitude.

Halloween is the beat that calls childhood up from the trove of my history. There is pure glee on this day, especially at night when, for a rare few hours, as a kid you get to roam the streets in the dark, bang on doors, demand candy or else, and gaze with ecstasy at the scene disguised as a gremlin or superhero. If you’re a parent, you gaze with adoration looking on from the sidewalk. It’s also a time when, over a few short hours, five years’ worth of candy comes into your possession legally, with cultural support, and condoned by your parents.

This week I’ll trek down to my cousin’s neighborhood because my sons are men now and write software at work or spend time with friends — long ago having grown out of their little gremlin costumes and moved on from Halloween.

I’ll wear my green wig and green and black striped stockings, as usual. I have my new mini witch’s hat which I know will take the world by storm, or at least elicit a comment from my beloved cousin. We’ll hang far back from the action as instructed, and likely not pay much attention to the candy harvesting, but instead catch each other up on our lives.

My cousin’s three sons call me Aunt Stephanie, something that makes my heart sing every time I hear it. I feel deep gratitude for this bonding, as I do for the many beautiful moments of my life, even though the brain is apt to focus on the negative sometimes. A brain will be a brain unless we actively steer it in a better direction. I know that, and I practice it as often as I notice.

There will be plenty to notice and process this October 31st as I dawdle along a suburban neighborhood street with family I love. I’ll note the vulnerable things my cousin and I share and the unconditional support we give each other. I’ll note the humorous costumes flapping off the little ones running along the sidewalk, crazed and on a sugar high. I’ll note the giant Lego display some man always sets up in his driveway for all of us to gawk at. I’ll note my deep happiness, which comes for me on Halloween, among the kids and the memories, among the love and the festivities. And, let’s hope among a few Butterfingers.

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Have a spooky week, all. :-)