Halloween

Despite having been sick all weekend, the children opted to go to school. This was a good thing because it kept them occupied instead of trying to go out trick-or-treating at 9:30 in the morning. After she returned from school and after a nap, Helena and I spent a quiet half-hour carving a jack o’lantern. Then we shot off to collect Daniel.

Daniel found Halloween quite as stressful as I feared. He had hysterics several times before we even managed to leave the house and once out of the house, vacillated between wanting to knock on people’s doors, and worrying whether they would be home and whether they might have a dog. He ran screaming down the street when one woman opened her door having overheard us discussing in the street whether her very placid, friendly dog would run out. She sat on the step, offered the candy and told us that her dog had just died. Daniel was only barely placated but managed to snatch candy before running away again. The whole thing was so fraught that we didn’t manage to get even one picture of himself as a detective. He did look pretty snazzy, but it’s hard to photograph a child who is running away, screeching that his mother is ruining everything and collapsing on the sidewalk in tears while his overwhelmed mother tries to decide whether to comfort him or yell back. (I didn’t yell. Not much anyway. Although I did threaten to cancel Halloween next year and for the rest of our lives if Daniel didn’t at least try to take a deep breath. Probably not winning Mommy of the Year for that one.)

Then he did a remarkable thing. He decided to go home. He went home, took off his costume and happily handed out candy to the hundreds of people who came by. It was the wisest thing he could have done. When Helena and I returned from sitting with our neighbors (note blue lollipop which seems to have permanently stuck itself to her tongue), we sat on the steps together and doled out the remains of what I had thought a huge amount of candy. Not huge enough. We ran out and Daniel had to be dissuaded from continuing to sit on the steps and yelling “NO MORE CANDY!”

I tried to get into the Halloween spirit by sporting a Hallowig I knit and a pair of false eyelashes. Actually, I ended up looking a bit like a drag queen. I want to say that I didn’t really look like this, that instead I looked fabu, but in fact, I probably did look quite this weird. Still, when queried at supper as to whether they’d had fun, they both said yes. Whew.

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