Trick or Treat

I love Halloween. As a kid, I mainly loved the candy. As an adult, I love seeing the little kids in their costumes. Our two year old neighbor was a pumpkin and seemed confused by the whole concept. Our three year old neighbor was Snow White and was spouting lines from the movie (according to her mom, earlier in the day she reenacted an entire scene by herself). We also had a Paris Hilton, a Beyonce, a princess, a flapper, a baby, and a couple of unidentifiable animals, among others. There are very few boys in our neighborhood (people have joked that there's something in the water) -- I actually think we only had one boy trick-or-treater, who was dressed as a sheriff from the wild west, and I didn't recognize him as a neighborhood kid. I usually wear a costume to hand out candy but skipped it this year. We also normally do a couple of jack-o-lanterns but didn't do that either.

P also really gets into it. For the past couple of years, he has set up a fake graveyard in front of the house and covered the front porch in cobwebs. He hangs a fake bloody arm out of the mail slot (which I jiggled when two of our six year old neighbors were on their way up the porch -- one seemed startled, the other not so much so, but I heard them ask another girl after she got candy later in the evening whether the arm moved when she was there :) P also plays creepy Halloween music very loudly (he sets speakers up on the porch so you can hear from down the street). Evidently this was too much for some of the smallest kids, as P saw one family approach the porch, hear the music (or see the arm), and turn around and walk away.

Halloween is definitely something I am looking forward to enjoying with our future kids, whenever they may come. There's just something about the unadultered joy in a kid's eyes when they shovel fistfuls of candy into a plastic pumpkin, a grocery bag, or, if they follow my parents' tradition, a pillowcase. I had been feeling pretty emotionally wretched for the past few days, but am definitely feeling a bit of a renewed sense of purpose today. I am starting to feel more positive, which makes it easier to look forward to trying again.