Okay *deep breath* it’s been two years, so I guess I can talk about it.
Halloween 2020.
A cruel joke in the year of Covid. The year of Zoom. The year of virtual school, work, shopping and family gatherings. For our family, like most, it was a year of setbacks and change and continuing global crises. Of learning on the fly. The only good thing, besides daytime pajamas, was the tiny little addition we were expecting.
Our baby girl arrived in September of that forsaken year and her seven year-old brother was thrilled for about fifteen minutes. A newborn baby is, for a seven year old boy, boring at best and annoying the rest.
Obviously, Halloween was going to be different. With Covid running rampant, trick or treating was more or less cancelled,
as were parties and gatherings and anything to do with real life living, breathing people. Still, I wanted my son to have some sort of Halloween experience.
I took him to get a costume. We ended up with this
half Jawa, half grim reaper type thing that under normal circumstances I never
would have bought. We bought our own bags of candy. We got pumpkins and watched movies and had a fire out back and the leaves were flying around and I
was thinking, Well, maybe this won’t be so bad.
After some scrambling, we caught wind of a community
farmer’s market a few miles up the road in the county. They were having some kind of
costumer/candy party scheduled for around seven that morning. Yes, morning, but again,
we were desperate, and so we packed up the car with the brand baby, stroller, along
with our pint-sized grim reaper and decided we’d make the best out of it.
When I think of a farmer’s market, tents, fruit stands, some
old guys in overalls and maybe a little country band comes to mind. Or maybe
I’d been watching too many Curious George reruns. Either way, what we found was
not that.
Tables scattered along a path. A few local businesses. Insurance. Realtors. It
was maybe forty degrees and oh yeah, it was seven in the morning.
Out of the van, my kid ripped off his mask and surveyed
the scene. I set a hand on our little jawa's shoulder
as he shrugged, deflated, his little Jack o' lantern bucket empty as sea shell.
The baby in place, we trudged on, stopping to sniff some
homemade candles. And we made the best of it. My kid collected maybe four
pieces of candy (although one was a cough drop), before the baby had had enough and we packed it up and
headed home.
We tried. We played spooky Halloween music. We carved pumpkins at the dinner table. We even ordered pizza and planned to have a fire with a giant sack of candy. I let him fill that bucket until it spilled. I thought it was going to be okay. Not the best Halloween in history, but with enough junk food and candy and activities to get us through it.
Then came that magical time of a fall afternoon, when the sun was slipping down and the air was cool and crisp. It was that time we'd normally be getting ready to set off for trick or treating. But we weren't, we were in the dining room, where the table was covered with newspaper and pumpkin guts and how many times can you listen to Monster Mash and Thriller when you knew that was it? It was all too forced. And then the baby started to cry. She was wailing away and Mom had to rock her and it was like something just kind of cracked. I glanced down at my son and his eyes full of tears.
And I couldn’t blame him.
Here was a seven year-old kid who’d taken everything the
world could throw at him like a champ. He’d adjusted on the fly, absorbing closures
and cancellations and life-changing events and readjustments by the week. The world. School. Home. His family. He hadn’t been in a classroom since March. We’d added a family member. We were always packed in the house on top of
each other. Now no Halloween? It was too much.
We’d marveled at how well he’d been doing. We made jokes
about how easily these kids navigated the computer. He’d come accustomed to
meeting people through pixels and internet speeds. Now he’d lost Halloween. This
wasn’t fair.
Hell, I was crying with him.
But now here we are again. We're ready and willing and we’ve just spent a small fortune on
a Darth Vader costume. And yes, we went trick or treating last year but that
2020 Halloween will take five or six more trick or treats to get over. So bring it. Rain or shine we’re
getting out and knocking on some doors.
Trick or Treat.
