The brisk winds have started to cool our valley, the leaves have turned, most have fallen, and the last days of October have dwindled to this final day. The day of All Hallows Eve. For my money this ranks just behind Christmas for holiday fun.
Fall is that time of year when the season’s transition from summer to fall, with winter looming, tends to make all of us a bit nostalgic. The snap in the air sharpens our senses, the end of the growing season calls to mind our own finite mortality. Keep in mind that this holiday of Halloween began as a celebration of the dead — the eve of two days on the Christian Calendar; All Saint’s Day followed by All Soul’s Day. In Mexico it is a three day celebration — which to me sounds like fun.
Halloween marks the calendar year as we leaf through photo albums or collections. The images are unmistakable. Family lined up outside the house among scattered leaves, all the children adorned in the costumes of their favorite superhero, or cartoon or movie character. The pictures are a milestone.
Every year it was an exciting time to be a child wandering the neighborhood, ringing doorbells and shouting “Trick or Treat”.
Then there was the loot … Milk Duds, Milky Ways, Hershey Bars, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Mallo Cups, Kit Kats, Krackels, Clark Bars, Fifth Avenues, Charleston Chews, Mike and Ikes, Baby Ruths, Snickers, Necco Wafers, Twizzlers, Nestle Crunch, Butter Fingers …
… Stomach Aches.
Once home we endured the candy inspection to insure that all the candy was “safe” and that none of our neighbors had slipped in anything dangerous. All the years of our inspections never turned up anything, although there were a few Krackel bars that my mother deemed to be “suspicious.” She needed to open those and “sample” them, just to be safe.
I loved Halloween so much that I was the dorky high school senior adorned in a costume and making the rounds. After all who doesn’t like to get dressed up for free candy? Having confessed that, I can safely say that I am not the oldest person to have ever gone trick or treating. In the College Heights neighborhood where I grew up, because it bordered campus, we saw college students making the rounds every year.
But Halloween is special because of the moments, the memories and images. I vaguely remember some of my costumes, but recently a close friend was cleaning out his parents’ attic and unearthed his childhood Halloween masks. It was like looking at anthropological artifacts.
For my kids it was like looking at the remnants of some primitive culture. They were understandably unimpressed with the Halloween mask technology of my childhood. They didn’t even recognize the favorites: Casper the friendly Ghost, Planet of the Apes, Woody Woodpecker, Popeye and the witch mask. There was a time when we thought those masks were so cool.
If only my kids could have walked in our shoes wearing those plastic masks and feeling their breath’s condensation on the inside of the small mouth and nose holes. They have it so easy now.
Last Sunday as we walked through downtown State College for the Halloween parade, everyone wore a smile and a rosy glow from the autumn chill. Today’s costumes are so much better and a whole lot cooler than what we wore as kids. There was even a group of Superheroes riding Segways.
As the parade made its way to the turf of Memorial Field I saw my own children under those lights. They were so happy doing something so simple. It is the simple joys and simple smiles of your children that make being a parent worth the tough times and the tears.
This is one of those times, picking and carving pumpkins and then the night of Halloween when they go door-to-door. Up and down the street when I was a kid I heard the same sounds I hear on my street as an adult. Through the dark of late evening I hear the voices, the giggling and the sounds of groups of kids scurrying as quickly as they can from house to house; all to accrue a vast cache of goodies.
Hearing those same sounds makes me, for just a moment, long for the days when I walked as a child and my mother and father helped us round up our candy. It makes me long for a day just a few years ago when I got home from a tough road loss only to be cheered up when my wife forced me to take my kids trick or treating.
In the smiles, in the high-pitched cries of “Trick or Treat” I lost the bad of my day and lived in the happy moment. Tonight I will do it again and for one night I will be a kid again. How cool is that?
