"Anything that triggers good memories can't be all
bad."
---Adam West
Summer is over, it's not Thanksgiving or the Christmas
season yet, so it's hardly the time to get all maudlin and wax poetic about
good times gone by, kids who have grown up and moved on, and absent friends. Or
is it?
Halloween isn't a big deal at our house beyond handing out
candy and keeping an eye on my own kids at the same time. No decorations and
we're so over the pumpkin carving. I think the year my oldest wound up in the
ER for stitches took the fun out of it. Then, out of nowhere, this very
different kind of Halloween happened at our house.
For years, I walked my kids around the neighborhood for
trick or treating. First Andy, then George, then Devin around and around the
same couple of streets. Guaranteed something memorable would always happen.
There's a big tree near my house, and I used to tell Andy to look behind it because there were
extra treats. It was dark and spooky, and he fell for it every time, while I
laughed like a fool. That will come up in a therapy session someday. Then there
was the year George was three years old, and he got so freaked out by some jerk
who thought it was funny to hide in the bushes and jump out at little kids that
I had to bring him home, screaming all the way. The Spiderman costume did not
go to waste though; he wore it every day after school for a year.
When I tried to get George to fall for the "treat tree
trick" it worked once. The next year he said, "Ya, what am I, stupid?
You did that last year." Devin started her Halloween trick-or-treating
early, at ten days old. I still had to haul her brothers around, so I packed
her up in a bunny sleeper and showed her off to the neighbors. Through the years she was a dead zombie
cheerleader, a vampire girl, and a fairy-princess-butterfly-Tinkerbelle which
just meant she put on every sparkly thing from the dress up box because she
couldn't make up her mind on what to be. Halloween was never complete without a
stop at the home of a friend's parents. They would ooh and ahhh over the kids
and tell me what good mother I was, which in those days of herding young
children was better than candy.
Fast forward to this year. It's about to get dark on
Halloween. I look around, and there are no kids in my house. Obviously, I knew
where the boys were, but I'd forgotten that Devin had plans with a friend. It
was the first year in over two decades that I hadn't cut up a sweatshirt to
look like a little lamb or painted blood on someone's face with my lipstick. Apparently,
as far as Halloween went, I was obsolete.
It reminded me of when my father used to say, "That's
it, everyone in the car, we're going for a ride." We'd hop in, and while
we usually got an ice cream out of it, there was always the narration that went
along with the journey to nowhere. Frank liked to show us where everything
"didn't used to be." The drive-in didn't used to be on the Lynnway;
it was a factory once. The mall wasn't
always indoors you know, those walls and that roof didn't used to be there;
they enclosed it back in the 70s. On and on, with the parade of places that
didn't exist anymore.
It's supposed to happen this way though, this moving on and
changing. We'd all die of boredom if it didn't. The costume of camo pants and a
GI Joe shirt has been replaced with an official USAF Airman Battle Uniform. The
girl is an actual cheerleader so there's no need for a dress up box anymore.
Andy would never fall for the tree trick; he's much wiser now.
Like all those places my father dragged us to, Halloween
"didn't used to be" what it is now. Thanksgiving will be different as
well since George cannot come home for it. Christmas? Who knows? I'm going to
have to find a way to weave the old memories into the new normal. I'll get
right on that as soon as I hit the store and buy some 50% off candy since I
can't steal it from the kids anymore. And so it goes…
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