
Sunday, October 30, 2016
Halloween
Back in my youth in Iowa, seventy five years ago, Halloween was a moment of great excitement that always began ritualistically with a drive out of town to the farms so we could buy a pumpkin, looking for the perfect one, among the piles lining the roadway as we passed farm after farm. There were six children in my family, but the older two had graduated from carving pumpkins. Every one of us had strongly held aesthetic notions of what constituted a good pumpkin face--the size and shape of the mouth, the teeth (requiring some very special carving and not for sissies). We sat in the kitchen to work on our pumpkins, overseen by the kitchen help, who were constantly and verbally vigilant as we wielded knives that were too big for our hands. After the candles had been installed the four were set on the front porch and the entire family went out to inspect. Then I grew up and moved East for graduate school, having long since abdicated my role as a participant in Halloween. In Cambridge we lived among students; the only carved pumpkins we saw were in store windows. I took to loathing Halloween as a cheap commercial trick. Time went by, and my memories of Halloween with my own small children blurred into a vast swirl of costumes, carved pumpkins, walking the streets with my costumed charges, and the many, many responsibilities, their nervousness at the competition from neighbors pumpkins, costumes, etc. somehow blotted out any positive memories. Flash forward to Hull Massachusetts and out house on E Street. My husband positively loved Halloween, had all kinds of false teeth fangs, capes, masks, and as it turns out so did my older daughter. The two of them carved pumpkins, got bowls of candy, worked on costumes, and then came the night. It was an extravaganza. This little down was bursting with children, it was safe to walk down our street, no sidewalks, no cars, children marched along, with their parents trailing discreetly behind like the Secret Service for the presidential family. It turned me into a lovable old coot when I beheld these very young children in their pride of costume climbing our porch stairs to meet up with my husband and my daughter acting their parts, the parents staying behind down on the street in the wings so to speak. All ages, scarcely speaking to early teens (one boy stepping into the living room said unexpectedly: "you have some nice art here"). Now we are in a condo in Sarasota Florida where no one under fifty five can live and no child comes near the building. But it was great fun while it lasted.
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