Beyond Boo

You can tell a lot about kids by the way they approach your door on Halloween.

Do they stay back or step forward? Do they say, "trick or treat"? Do they look you in the eye? Do they hide their head? Do they reach into the bowl? Or wait for you to give them candy? Do they say thank you? Do they smile?

Olive stands at the front of the pack and keeps trying to weasel more candy than her allotted amount. She holds her position on the porch instead of making room for her peers. She runs ahead of the group with our six-year-old neighbor, only a few steps behind him, as they bound up the next driveway, or cut through the yard, the garden, on a bee-line for candy.

Another friend, also three, stands at the back, never reaches her hand in the bowl unless directed, eyes down cast, shoulders slightly hunched, a quiet, "Thank you."

Elias, with a whole flock of costumed kids behind him waiting for their turn at the door, asks: "Have you added an addition to your house?"

"Now's not the time Bud."

At another house, after some costume confusion with his "ghost" outfit where folks thought he might be a bat, or a raven or a wizard, he steps right up to the woman at the door and says, "Trick or treat. I'm a ghost-slash-raven-slash-bat-slash-wizard."

She smiles. "Well then you get extra candy due to being so creative."

We have Olive in tears after one house, where an older lady who hands out pre-packed bags of candy drops an orange one in Olive's cloth pumpkin and she says, "I want a purple one too!"

When she steps off the porch, I squat down in front of her, "Olive you just say thank you. You don't ask for more. You say thank you and you step aside to make room for other kids."

Nick follows up with some words of his own, and we soon have a crying princess in our arms.

Towards the end of our loop, we stop at a friends house who says, "Please just take one, I'm getting low on candy."

Elias clutches two candy bars in his hand. "Elias, did you hear Danielle? She said one."

He doesn't let go, so I pry open his fist, "One."

And as if I have just told him green is now red, he says, "But I always take two."

I catch Danielle's eyes and roll mine, she smiles as I say:  "Not when someone say take one. You take one."

Back at our own house, where we hand out candy from our yard, as we gather around a fire and drink adult beverages, I find myself observing the various approaches to candy-taking.

"Take a handful, we still have a lot left," I say to a young robot who looks at me unsure, his fingers still gripping one bar. "Its OK."

I think maybe, like me, his mom coached him differently until she says, "Here, I'll take a handful for you." She clutches as many peppermint patties and recess peanut butter cups as she can and drops them into his bag.

Then this un-costumed young Mom pulls another bag from her chest and says, "Trick or treat? Me too?"

"Sure," I say.

Part of me wants to judge her, shame her, but another kinder part thinks maybe she never got to be a kid. Maybe she's reliving her own lost childhood through her son.

And isn't that what Halloween is really all about? Dressing up as someone we are not or long to be or could never imagine? Pretending for a few hours that we are someone or something else?

I miss the days of making costumes from scratch and getting homemade treats from my neighbors. Advertising and razorblades distorted the Halloween of my youth. But we still get to carve faces into pumpkins, roast the seeds, and on the 31st of October walk the streets in disguise, ringing bells and knocking.

Olive came home from preschool on Wednesday the 30th with a 101 fever. As I put her to bed that night I thought about the possibility of her being sick for Halloween. Its not really a Holiday we can postpone, go door to door on November 1st or 2nd.

Luckily, she woke up fever-free and full of her usual zip, though we both stayed home from school to be safe.  "Mommy is it time to go trick or treating now?" she asked me at eleven that morning. (And every hour after.)

"No not yet. You still have a long time to wait."

"But I've been waiting and waiting and waiting for a long loooong time."

"That's life Babe. Waiting. And learning to be patient."

Waiting and wondering.

Learning and living as best we can.

Everyday we wear masks, whether we realize it or not, as we dress up as the person we want the world to see. We make believe we are "OK"  even when we feel broken inside. Even when we hurt. Even when we want to crawl into a cave and die we don't. We zip ourselves into our Super Hero clothes so we can keep stepping forward, keep breathing, carry on.

This world isn't easy.

Its not Happily Ever After.

But it's the difficult times that make us, that transform us, that give us the will to defeat the beasts and goblins who dare to suppress us.

We are all survivors, each and every one, and when we greet each other at the door we need to remember to look into the other's eyes, past the draperies that cloak us, to the child inside who just wants to taste a little sugar.

 

 

Comments

[Mom and Dad]

Beautiful Christy!!

[Becka]

So poignant! My super hero costume feels too heavy to wear today, and reading this post made it feel a little lighter- nice to know there are others feeling the same as me!

[Greta]

I love how you capture the whole of Halloween with kids. It's exhausting as a parent! And then when adults play it up with a haunted house or something spooky for the kids to enjoy, you appreciate that effort because it relishes the moment.

[cheryl childers]

Just when I thought surely you couldn't top your writing... Painfully honest and moving and beautiful.