BOO!!!

Soooo . . . Halloween.  Not a fan.  I realize we’ve already established this in some . . . actually ALL . . . previous posts about Halloween, but it’s the last day of October AGAIN, and I just wanted to clarify the obvious.  I officially hate Halloween.

I know.  I’m a party pooper.  Trust me, I’m perfectly okay with that title.  I’ve never been all that good at parties, especially Halloween ones.  I don’t like dressing up – spending money on clothes I’ll never wear again just ticks me off.  And the candy . . . the candy makes me want to hand out bags of fresh brussel sprouts to trick-or-treaters.  Seriously people, how many calories and fat grams and artificial colors and flavors and preservatives do our children need in a single twenty-four hour time period?  Shall we discuss the decorations and costumes next?  Because those are the things that really put me over the edge. 

As we’ve already established, I’m all about the pumpkins and mums and scarecrows and little girls wearing ladybug wings, but why does Party City have bloody limbs sitting on tables when you walk in their front door?  I apologize for my inability to find the thrill in a severed head, but I simply do not find such things scary or funny or festive or spooky.  I find them disturbing. Gravestones in my front yard?  No thanks.  Spider webs all over my bushes?  I pay a pest control service to make sure that doesn’t happen.  Ten year-old boys running around with foot-long plastic knives in their hands?  Have you seen the news recently?  Do we really need to encourage the young men of our country to carry weapons?  Twelve year-old girls in flapper outfits?  Ever read the definition of a flapper?  They are described as young women who drank, smoked, wore excessive make-up, and treated sex in a casual manner.  Pretty sure I don’t want my daughter in a flapper costume any time in the next, oh, fifty years.

I know Halloween is supposed to be fun, and my children will participate in it tonight with all the others.  There are ghost figurines on my kitchen counter and a “Boo Y’all!” linen towel in my powder room.  We’ve carved our pumpkin and roasted our pumpkin seeds.  We are meeting wonderful friends tonight for trick-or-treating and Charlie and Libby will eat far too much sugar before they go to bed way too late.  But let’s just get one thing straight . . . I. Hate. Halloween. 

Still, there are lessons in most things, even (especially?) in the things we like the least.  And sure enough, the holiday I never look forward to provided one for me this year.

She told me months ago what her costume would be.  I dismissed it.  Nodded my head, smiled knowingly, maybe even chuckled under my breath as I thought, you’ve got to be kidding. She mentioned it again, several times in fact, as the weeks of October flew by.  I’m sure my reaction was always about the same. 

“We’ll see.”

“Sounds interesting.”

“You might change your mind.”

“There are lots of options.”

Strange how I continue to doubt her, when she’s proven over and over the type of person she is.  Decisive.  Confident.  Strong.  Independent.  Sure.

Not bad qualities, when used in the right ways.  Yet I push them aside as if they aren’t important enough to recognize.  As though I can’t see the good in them.  As though I would change her if I could. As if the character traits that make her exactly who God meant her to be aren’t worthy of acknowledging . . . of celebrating even.  

I compliment her when she’s kind.  I praise her when she’s thoughtful.  I encourage her to be sweet and caring and honest and helpful and loving.  And she is these things . . . sometimes.  And she will continue to be these things . . . sometimes. 

But what my daughter has always been, and what I truly hope she always will be, is decisive . . . confident . . . strong . . . independent . . . sure.

We walked in Party City, past the blood covered headless creature, and she immediately went to the wall of costumes, seeking the only one she wanted.  And I did what I’ve vowed time and time again not to do.  I indulged my own wants and needs at her expense. 

I spent a full five minutes trying to change my daughter’s mind.  I pointed out other costumes, the ones I wanted her to choose for Halloween.  I reminded her that she had never been a witch or a Native American or a doctor or an astronaut.  I forgot the fact that Libby has never been interested in the smocked dresses and big bows and gentle spirit I've always wanted for her, and I tried to persuade her to do . . . to be . . . what would make me happy.  Yes, I stood there in Party City and ignored everything that makes my daughter who she is in order to satisfy the mess in my heart.  I dismissed the character traits Libby already possesses, and which will serve her well in the future, and instead worried about what her current choices say about me.    

It took a full five minutes for me to realize my mistake.  A full five minutes for me to comprehend the error of my ways.  A full five minutes for me to understand that I was actually helping my daughter become a person who doubts her own decision making skills, instead of one who knows what she wants and goes after it, regardless of what others might think.

She walked out of the store with a huge grin on her face, and she spent the rest of the afternoon performing hilarious shows in our backyard in her black morph suit.  Yep.  Libby . . . the black morph. 

Not what I expected.  Not what I wanted.  But what she chose. 

When my daughter wears her black morph suit for Halloween tonight, I won’t be able to see her beautiful blond hair.  I won’t be able to see her big blue eyes.  But I will be able to see her spirit, and I will be grateful for who she is.  Decisive . . . confident . . . strong . . . independent . . . sure.

Happy Halloween!!!

You all know Ebenezer Scrooge, right?  Well, come about the middle of October, that’s me.  I’m him.  Basically, we’re kindred spirits, only with a different holiday pissing us off.

I.  Hate.  Halloween.

There.  I said it.  Or wrote it, actually, but I’d be happy to announce it with a loud booming voice to anyone willing to listen.  For years, I tried to deny my true feelings about October 31^st, but I’m all about the love yourself as you are thing these days and what I love about myself is that I HATE HALLOWEEN.

As a child, I liked Halloween.  I mean, I liked chocolate.  A LOT.  Therefore, I liked Halloween.  When the gathering free chocolate part of Halloween faded, however, and the holiday became strictly about dressing up, my inner Scrooge began to develop. 

In college, there were Halloween socials.  Really?  That’s what you want to do to try and meet cute boys – put on a costume and face paint and a wig and be all “It’s so nice to meet you but let me offer you a quick disclaimer and let you know I’m only dressed up as Dolly Parton and when I take off this costume I don’t look quite so Dolly and by the way who exactly are you supposed to be and before this goes any further, are those your real eyebrows?” 

Really?

Once I became a parent, the Scrooge in me disappeared for a few years.  When my kids were young, I looked forward to celebrating Halloween with them each fall.  Halloween meant reading books about pumpkins and parties and trick-or-treating.  It meant putting gourds in a pretty bowl on the dining room table as a centerpiece.  It meant filling a vase with candy corn and sticking a candle in the middle of it to put on the kitchen counter.  It meant taking a family trip to the pumpkin patch and carving Jack-o-lanterns on the deck while pumpkin seeds roasted in the oven and dressing my toddlers in matching costumes to take pictures by the mums on our front porch.  

Now, I’m the parent of a seven and a nine year old, and you can just call me Ebenezer. 

My kids don’t want me to read Pumpkin Soup to them anymore.  They don’t care about gourds, they want to eat the candy corn on the kitchen counter for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and they think a jack-o-lantern can only be carved from the biggest, most expensive pumpkin in the patch.  Now, before we’ve even flipped the calendar from September to October, the first thing I hear every morning is, “Mom, we have to go get our costumes today because if we don’t get them today they will all be completely gone and there won’t be any left and we won’t get what we want and Halloween will be ruined and no one will give us candy because we won’t have costumes so can we please go costume shopping right this very minute because I’m dying to put on some cheap polyester and see how amazing I look?”

Could the ghost of Halloween past please appear and take me back to 2008, because my kids were the cutest little Mickey and Minnie Mouse you’ve ever seen that year, and not only were they absolutely adorable, they were perfectly content with one lollipop and a Hershey bar in their trick-or-treat bags.

I took my kids costume shopping early this month, because I certainly didn’t want their lack of the perfect costume to be my fault, and what I need to know is . . .

What in the name of normal has happened to Halloween?

Everywhere I looked, I saw blood and guts and gore and chainsaws.  There were freaky masks and headless creatures and hairy spiders the size of my refrigerator.  There were warts and claws and fangs and amputations.  And the icing on the cake . . . the best decoration of them all . . . well, it was at the very front of the store.  No way you could miss it.  It was a little girl, wearing a dress, who started to move when you got close to her.  She had a disturbing stance and ruthless eyes, and, I kid you not, the child was eating a brain.  A BRAIN people. 

Really?

Of course, my children wanted to buy it.  They thought it would be great to have a little girl munching on a brain on our front porch this Halloween.  To replace the mums, no doubt.  And I have exactly one thing to say about that. 

Bah humbug. 

The day was a normal one and for that, I was grateful. The week had started off with a bang that goes by the name of "Halloween," so I was happy for a typical Friday filled with only the mundane of life as a stay at home wife and mother of two. There was laundry to fold, toilets to clean, floors to vacuum, errands to run. I sent the kids off to school with a quick kiss and my morning catch phrases.

"Have a great day. Be your best selves. I love you."

Then I took a deep breath, gave myself a pat on the back for refusing to succumb to the pressure of two children begging for Halloween candy for breakfast, and turned to face the chores that would fill the coming hours of the day, thankful for the temporary quiet of an empty house.

I thought about my children many times throughout the day. I pictured their sweet faces, wondered how their day was going, considered things I'd like to do with them over the next few weeks. I even missed them for a moment or two as I went about the process of checking off items on my to-do list. Yet, there were other things on my mind as well, things that had nothing to do with my children.

The afternoon was as ordinary as the morning. The kids smiled as they hopped in the car after school and began answering my usual array of questions about their day. We got home and our routine unfolded the way it always does. Snacks, homework, reading, playtime, showers, dinner, bedtime. I talked to my children. I smiled at them. I read to them. I let them have dessert and brought their pajamas down and combed their wet hair and even put toothpaste on their toothbrushes, just to be helpful. I hugged them, I think. And when I turned out their lights and left their bedrooms, I was sure to send them off to dreamland with my evening catch phrases.

"Say your prayers. Sleep tight. I love you."

It was a good day. A normal day. When I entered my own bedroom a couple hours after leaving my children's, I felt content . . . fulfilled. I believed I had accomplished things of importance to myself and my family as I had done all the things a mother was supposed to do. I kept a safe, clean, organized home for my children. I prepared meals for them. I talked to them, helped them, reminded them, drove them. I played with them. I loved them. I hugged them, I think. It was a good day.

My daughter loves sweets as much as I do. That might seem hard to believe if you know me, but, lest we forget, she does have half my genes and on my side of the family a love of sweets runs deep. Real deep. My daughter doesn't simply have a sweet tooth. She has a mouth full of them. She asks for a treat after every single meal, every single day. I'm not sure if she thinks I'll slip up one day and allow her to have dessert after breakfast, lunch, and dinner, or if she just believes her consistency will eventually wear me down, but either way, the child is nothing short of relentless.
My kids came home with obscene amounts of candy on Halloween night. I knew we reached a rite of passage as Charlie and Libby discovered the ultimate goal of trick-or-treating is quantity. Their bags were literally overflowing with every kind of junk in the book after sprinting through our entire neighborhood on October 31st.

I allowed them to bask in their sugary abundance for a day or two. Then, I did the good mom thing and forced them to choose thirty pieces of candy they wanted to keep and set aside the rest for an organization that would ship it to American troops overseas. The kids actually got into the giving once they started. They were quite concerned with what the troops would really want to have, and they put a great deal more thought into creating an even mix of deliciousness for the soldiers than to which pieces of candy they would save for their own enjoyment.

And so when I began to crawl into bed that Friday night, less than a week after Halloween, I was satisfied. It had been a good day, a normal day. All was well in my world.

Then, I picked up my pillow. And I saw what was underneath it. And my heart shattered into a million pieces as love and pride and gratitude and shame consumed my every cell.

A pack of peanut M&M's.  My favorite candy.  I knew exactly who had left it there for me.  And all I could think was . . . I hugged her today . . . didn't I?

I should be a big fan of Halloween. I love chocolate. I adore chocolate. I NEED chocolate. That fact alone should be enough to make me love Halloween. I mean, how cool is it that every year on the last day of October, you can knock on someone’s door you don’t even know and they will open it, smile, and hand you a free Hershey bar. That’s just good living in my opinion. Of course, sometimes they hand you the cheap stuff like Tootsie Rolls and Blow Pops, but that’s not a huge problem because there’s probably someone in your family who likes that junk. You can just pass it along to them. Or trade it for their chocolate.

My real problem with Halloween has to do with the costumes. And the decorations. And the staying up late on a school night to go running around the neighborhood begging for dessert. I don’t need a bloody, mangled rubber hand in my house. Not at Halloween and not ever. I don’t care for plastic skeleton heads hanging from windows and I definitely don’t like fake witches with warty faces playing spooky music. I’m a pumpkin and mum kind of girl. Maybe a hay bale or two on the front porch with some cute scarecrows smiling out at the world, happy to be enjoying the crisp fall weather and the smell of burning leaves in the air. Instead, there are inflatable spiders the size of my car sitting in the yard across the street.

My children love Halloween. God has a sense of humor like that, doesn’t he? My kids will pore over the catalogs that start arriving in the mail the day after school starts, searching for the perfect costumes and the best decorations for our house. Their top pick in the decorations department this year? A bag of rats. Not one rat people. An entire bag. Of rats. They actually asked me to shell out good money to purchase this particular decoration. It’s the middle of October and I’m still holding out for the bag of rats “to go on sale.” Because then I’m going to buy them. Wink, wink.

Last year, we hosted a Halloween party I had absolutely no intention of hosting. My kids began talking about the party we were going to have the moment October rolled around. I kept listening and nodding my head, telling them what great ideas they had and then quickly changing the subject. When October 20th arrived and my children had made a guest list, created handmade invitations, and planned both the party menu and entertainment, I figured there was no way out of it. I played along with their fun and we hosted a gaggle of kids in costumes for a fabulous little soirée in our backyard. There was pizza and candy and even a haunted trail. There were no inflatable spiders.

This year, my eight-year-old son decided to break tradition when it came to his Halloween costume. In the past, he has allowed me to persuade him to wear what I wanted him to wear, usually something that turned him and his little sister into a matching pair. They have been Minnie and Mickey Mouse, a cowboy and cowgirl. You get the drift. This year, my son was determined to have a scary costume. And by scary, he meant completely and totally inappropriate for a child.

I asked around for advice on the costume dilemma and my friends had some stellar ideas.

“Show your son three costumes you approve of and let him choose the one he likes best.”

“Explain to your son that you don’t want his costume to be so scary he frightens his little sister and any other small children he might run into while trick-or-treating.”

“Tell your son you tried to order the scary costume he wanted but, what a bummer, it was sold out.”

That last one was my personal favorite. It was a win, win – he didn’t get the scary costume and it wasn’t my fault.

I think my real problem with Halloween is that it exposes my children to the fact that there is a dark side to this world we live in. It might not come in the form of ghosts and goblins, but evil does exist. I realize scary costumes don’t automatically inform children about crime and rape and murder, but costumes that include fake blood and sharp accessories, and which have names like grim reaper, evil phantom, gothic vampire, crypt master, psycho clown, and wicked werewolf bring up terms I’m not ready to discuss with my eight year old. And how do you explain the fact that we teach our kids not to eat any candy they get while trick-or-treating until after we have inspected every piece to make sure it’s “safe.” One of my strongest memories of Halloween involves my parents teaching me this same rule. It was how I learned there were people in the world who might intentionally want to hurt children. That’s a big lesson in the life of a child. A necessary lesson, no doubt, but one that is life-changing.

Our family will celebrate Halloween on October 31st along with everyone else. We have made our annual trek to the local pumpkin patch in search of the perfect pumpkins, one for each child, and there was a great deal of photography involved in the outing. We will carve our pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns on Halloween Eve while the seeds roast in the oven. Orange and black decorations sit out around our house and the kids’ costumes are hanging in their closets ready for a big night of trick-or-treating. I was able to talk my son out of his first choice costume with honesty. I told him I didn’t think it was appropriate for an eight year old and he had to choose something else. He was mad at first. I even got the ol’ “I’m not going to dress up as anything” line for a few days, complete with a very smug look. Eventually, my son came around. It might have had something to do with the fact that I told him children without costumes wouldn’t be trick-or-treating on my watch, but either way, we went online and found a costume my son loved. He’s going to be a warlock. I have absolutely no idea what a warlock is and, frankly, I don’t think my son does either. Basically, the costume looks like a wizard from Harry Potter, which is okay with me. There is no blood, no suggestion of death. I suppose a warlock is some sort of human like creature who performs magic spells.

You know . . . I wouldn’t mind being a warlock myself. I could perform all kinds of amazing magic spells. I could make the scary costumes and decorations disappear. I could turn the lollipops and gumballs into Butterfingers and Milky Ways. I could make the blow up spiders vanish into thin air.

Most importantly, I could make my son’s innocence last just a little bit longer.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!