Looking for Halloween

    It is once again that time of year when nature sighs in resignation before taking a dramatic exit from the fall season’s stage. The fallen leaves crusted in bright crayon colors appear to be fighting sleep as they dance in the twilight wind to the reticent music of another Halloween night.

    When I was a child there wasn’t much variety in store bought costumes, so parents had the task of transforming their children into certain characters and heroes such as Roy Rogers or Popeye the Sailor Man. When my neighborhood friends and I became too old for kiddy costumes, we would arm ourselves with a can of Dad’s shaving crème and a roll of toilet tissue to prey mischievously on those dark and deserving homes that had their lights turned off. This signaled  the devious nature within my age group since we imagined that those people disliked kids and were deceptively sitting quietly in the darkness, as if no one was home. We rarely considered that the owners of those dark dwellings could have simply just been out for the night;  instead we justified our behavior with an executed wrath of streaming toilet paper. The rationalization was that those selfish and absent owners were obligated to have been home on Halloween. Our unsuspecting prey had been given through our proposal what we thought to be a reasonable choice of options—“trick or treat”? Although now that I think about it, maybe it should have instead been “treat or trick”—either way,  it seemed a fair proposition since we never contemplated morality anyway!

    I remember when my little girl became old enough to go trick or treating and was aflame with delight and anticipation in becoming a fairy princess. Her special adornment was a wand with pink and blue streamers that she slept with the night before Halloween. I sensed that she might have for the first time realized her pointed ability to transform herself and become anyone she wanted to be. Now that she had grown up and moved away from home, I was left reminiscing and reflecting on  Halloweens past as I dusted off that same old plastic orange jack-o-lantern with a light bulb inside. I might suddenly be compensating for the darkness of my daughter’s absence, as I began turning on every known light throughout my house, inside and out. After taking the plastic pumpkin with its trailing extension cord quite a distance from the house and into the yard, I proceeded to walk down the steep driveway to see if it was visible from a distance. I was hoping to lure the “trick or treaters” up my long driveway to a bountiful stash of candy, bought yearly with much anticipation. There was nothing left to do but wait as I nervously looked at the clock while pacing and glancing outside and down the lonely driveway; whose leaves were the only visitors.

    As I started to reason and wonder how long those little ghosts and goblins would be out on a school night, my wife called to me from the bedroom with those dreaded and revisited words from years past, “You can bring in the jack-o-lantern now--we’re not going to get anyone this year”.  Actually we didn’t get anyone from the previous year either, or the year before that—but who’s counting. As I then went out and with resignation brought in the orange pumpkin, I took one more desperate glance down the long driveway and began to imagine and visualize through the mist and darkness--a skeleton, vampire and a zombie; skipping, laughing and holding hands as they sashayed to the door where they suddenly and in unison chimed in, “Trick or Treat”! After filling their sacks with candy, I then imagined their overflowing treat bags swinging wildly while they went screaming and laughing down the driveway as if being chased into the darkness.

    With sobering resignation, I clicked off the last of the many lights and slipped into those same pajamas worn the night my daughter transformed into a fairy princess;  whose magical wand with pink and blue streamers could actually make a little one’s dreams come true. While picking through a bounty of candy and treats before bedtime, I contemplate and will wait once more for a fall day that represents the end of a season and a past tucked away inside a dream;  where the excitement of a child warms an old man’s heart.