Eat, Drink and be Scary - A Memory of Halloween

The stars lay scattered about Sirius's lair, tossed playfully upon the sky only to lie forgotten. Children cut through the trees across a vacant lot, the burn of branch, a tickle of cobweb, one eye weeps where an eye patch binds. It's soon discarded with a snuffling of nose and the raise of a toy pirate sword. Crying is for wimps.

It's Halloween, or will be soon. Trick or Treating has been cancelled due to an impending storm and high winds off of the Great Lake. The houses stand, some decorated with orange and black, others with only the discard of leaves. This home was built right after the first Great War, when men left and women waited, everything they knew dissolved in fire and smoke as soldiers carried the pride and hope of peace in the form of a flag and women wept at home, tears hitting the ground like ice, to be swept away like broken glass. I have a sense of them in this house even now, for those that came back and those that did not, not for pride or peace, but simply to regain that love and that faith they left behind. It's here in this house, it's here outside, in the echo of children who were never born.

Even if there are no kids knocking at the door of this 100 year old home, there will be a childhood tradition on the table, a dinner of hot dogs, some carrot sticks and orange jello, what Mom served us every single year before we went trick or treating. Then we'd suit up as quickly as firemen, eager to be out the door, out into the night where the cool Fall breeze shivered and stirred the grass where the leaves had long since fallen.

I always paired off with Big Bro. In the late 60's, in a very small town, children weren't much at risk from adults. We were given strict instructions though as far as how far we could roam, being told to turn back for home when we got to Louisiana Street. We didn't carry a store bought plastic pumpkin to hold our candy but rather, a thick pillow case.  Do you have any idea how much candy you can get in a pillow case?  The limitation therein only our parents rules and Newton's Second Law.

But the trick or treating wasn't just about the candy. It was being out, after dark, by ourselves, just kids, with scores of other kids, flashlights in hand. Out in front of us, two whole blocks, dozens of houses, the darkness slung low with lights, the night blowing cool and full of promise.

One year I was a ghost.  That year a lot of kids were ghosts, the lumber mill having laid off a bunch of men, and money for costumes was sorely lacking. An old sheet, a couple of holes cut for eyes and you were a ghost. Pity the poor kid who was the pink ghost, he was going to get flattened like a pancake next time the boys played dodge ball. Other years, the costumes were as wide as our imagination and bigger than all our fears.

In our garb, we hovered over places of play, breathing sugar fueled dreams like air, ashen figures gliding through the night on silent feet. To each porch that had a light on we'd go, candy bag in hand.  The houses weren't decorated up the way they are now, but on the porch would often be a lone jack o lantern, eyes shining from a candle or some fake cobwebs along the porch (those aren't fake! ack ack ack, get it out of my hair!) We'd pass each other wondering just who was that superhero, who was that under the Casper mask? We scurried along, hands waving, quick steps in time to the chatter of chilled breath, the blocks of a post war suburb stretching out, the dim lights of small town America.

As ghosts, cowboys, baseball players and Superman, we covered ground, drawing in deep breaths of it all, unutterably aware of how brief this night would be. I think even as kids we know that too soon we'd have to put this other life, this other identify away, as we melted anonymously back into our regular life, with wistful longing and the taste of sweetness on our lips.

Up ahead, in the blackness, Louisiana Street, where we were under instructions to come home upon reaching.. We circled back and forth, other kids from the block gathering. Walking back and forth along the curb of the streets end as if at a wake for a perfectly tangible body. It did not go unnoticed, the other children coming from its murky depths, none maimed in any way we saw. Why did our Mom and the neighbor kids Mom's tell us to turn back when we got here? It looked safe enough. We held our candy bags, already bulging, but still with room left, and looked at it, in a sugar laden swoon of agonized longing.

It will never be this way again, it's just ONE street, we told ourselves. So we advanced, trudging up the steps to that first house, looking over our shoulders as if we could already see our Mom scolding us. We hit about six more houses, with other kids from our street, before as a group we agreed to go back. We swear each other to secret, the words not spoken but carved into stone upon which lies a nameless and forgotten effigy, those secrets of childhood we bear with us always.

There up ahead, the lights of our house. Home! We cross the empty lot where a new house was going in, following a faint path were dozens of small feet had worn the rotting leaves down to the soil. We clicked off the flashlight, whispering there in the dark about Great Pumpkins and Ghosts, where overhead, Chestnut trees thinned against the skies.

The wind had blown the clouds away, leaving a bright starry night, imaginary bat wings beating in the trees, a black cat crossing the road under the silver echo of the stars. Smoke hangs on the air suspended, the ash of burnt leaves that once rattled on the ground like tin.  I stretch out my hand into the last expanse of darkness, as if to clutch a star, to save a sweet fragment of the night to tuck into the book of that day.

Too soon it would be time to go in, the night rushing past all too quickly, stolen moments of sweetness there in the dark. As children we live in the moment, not realizing that in recollection, we see how quickly it all went past, and holding a sweet piece of time with blurred eyes, you knew you had lost part of that, the innocence and the wonder, forever, even if memory remains.

Back home, we pour our bounty out onto the floor, Mom picking through it to throw out anything that was wasn't completely wrapped, and grabbing the Sugar Daddies like they were live wires, convinced that caramel was going to tear out what few fillings we had. We didn't mention the extra houses we went to.

When I went to Dad's last month, I took a walk along that street, and realized why it was probably off limits. It was a short cut to a highway, the traffic, wider than our street, historically faster and busier. Our Mom was just trying to protect us without actually tagging along with us, when all but the smallest of kids were trick or treating alone.

She had to worry, it was dark after all, we were hardly isolated, but we were alone. We probably didn't even look back as we ran out. But if we had, we would have seen her standing there, evanescent and forlorn, even as she put a smile on her face and waved, so we'd venture forth with hope, not fear.

There weren't many more Halloweens with her there. Too soon we lost her. Too soon we were adults living on our own and learning that too much sugar can make you fat, and that roses often draw blood. Too soon we'd understand the night's promise of unease, the dangers that lurk in the shadows, finalities that go beyond a grave. But she let us live with our innocence as long as she could, while preparing us to be fighters and risk takers.

Tonight, the wind howls and the house stirs, shadows gathering in the basement, a dark pine forever trying an ancient latch on the window of the room in which I sleep. I smile at a taste of sweetness on my lips, a stolen moment of childhood nibbled before bed. Around me are homes, some dark and cold, nary a pumpkin in the yard, the doors shuttered against laughter. There are always those that look at childhood dreams like viewing something through glass, behind which is only vacuum, from which no sound emits and which, too soon, fades to where they simply live anchored, until they simply cease to exist.

For me, I'll keep the child within, these nights of exploration and magic, where my super hero costume is untarnished by time, where there is only laughter and sweetness here in a house that's become a home. As I drift off to sleep, I can almost hear the sound of children's feet, rushing up towards the next house, not an actual sound mind you, but something in the air which the sound of the running feet faded into. The sound of innocence, so easily lost, yet remembered there in the shadow of a chestnut tree that stands its watch in silence, gallant and forlorn.