Halloween

A tiny velvet pumpkin, quilted ghosts, daytime television

I’m nestled at my desk in the dark front room of our house, lit by a pink mushroom lamp I bought for $2, a coffee mug of water, Annie curled up in the swivel chair beside me, and Price watching football through the French doors, in the library. My red-rimmed bowl of candy sits full on the buffet by the front door, Kit’s velvet pumpkin costume in the laundry basket, our matching scratchy sweaters folded and stacked back in my bedroom bookshelf, the clock ticking down to November.

We had a sweet day today, me and Kit. We woke up to a dark room, the sound of thunder and rain on the roof. I pulled her in bed with us while the sky was still pitch black, and she slept so hard, Price said he kept waking up to feel her chest, feel it move up and down, up and down. We spent most of our Halloween on the floor…back and forth between her nursery, a selection of Halloween books sprawled around us, little teddy bears named Pookie and her hair brush, straw pumpkins and Annie’s stuffed animals, and then the library, where her playmat is put together every morning like a puzzle and her bookshelf cabinet of toys, where we’re discovering a love for daytime television, one I had as a child, sick days home from school. As I wait for ten o’clock, when Hoda and Jenna come on, all week I’ve thought about how similar watching and loving the Today show is to my now nearly two years listening to the Toast podcast every single day. This attachment to people we’ll never meet, stories that don’t really matter to our daily lives. Both feel like such a comforting constant, comforting storytelling and humor and noise.

Today, Kit and I read The Little Ghost Who Was a Quilt twice, probably our sixth or seventh time total since I bought it this past Saturday. It is by far her favorite book so far, as she sits with her back straight, rapt. We read Horton Hears a Boo, which I bought last October, wondering who this baby would be, if she would enjoy it. I tried new voices for each little character, and Kit just watched my face, smiling at the really high pitched ones.

My mom left work early to go “trick-or-treating” with me…we dressed Kit up in her little pumpkin suit with an orange beret and matching slippers, and we drove to see Dad at the flower shop, then to Grandma and Grandpa’s, where Grandma had the prettiest yellow mum outside her front door, all her lights on, ready for a little pumpkin to visit. Then a stop around the corner to see her auntie, and then we settled in for the night with a warm bottle, a warm Twix bar from Kit’s little tight hands while taking pictures, and me and Price in our matching sweaters I wish I had ordered a size up all those years ago, not taking into account how I’d like things to fit after becoming a mother, I guess.

I sat in a rocker with Kit bouncing in my lap, feeling a tad overstimulated and very warm, watching for sweet little costumes, wishing for a line of them at our steps. After a few minutes, I changed into a pair of sweatpants, twisted my hair into a bun. Spiderman and his friends came, then the sound of dried oak leaves on the street, the relief of a breeze. My family went to the university football game down the street, where my brother coaches special teams, and we heard the boom of the announcer as the game got going, laughed remembering how we, for five years of Gabe playing football, would sit right under that very speaker we were hearing, laughed that they, probably, still are.

I watched as a little pumpkin and her family entered another street, not choosing ours, all dark but for our house, and felt so disappointed, so very sorry for myself. And then I thought…for what? Upset over a child not choosing my house for candy? Not seeing two new parents in matching sweaters, a baby in their laps, golden porchlight and a bowl of expensive candy, and knowing what to interpret it as?

Quite honestly, I don’t really know either. What to interpret it as, I mean. I never loved Halloween until our first autumn married, and still I’m not sure why then. Maybe it was the quaintness of living minutes from a Trader Joes and their cardboard vats of tiny pumpkins, or living in a true neighborhood with seasonal traditions and getting “boo-ed” by someone down the street, or, frankly, hating our lives outside of our home, our jobs and our bosses, and finding such comfort in watching Hocus Pocus with those pumpkin sugar cookies in the oven, something sweet and nostalgic to look forward to. I remember that Halloween was on a Sunday. I started the weekend with getting a manicure and going to the nice grocery store for candy, going out to eat with Price’s sisters and their now husbands on Friday night, watching Twitches on the couch on Halloween weekend and a Pioneer Woman soup at night while Price sat on the stairs by the front door. We went to sleep that night rating our favorite costumes, and I wish I could remember which one won.

I haven’t been able to truly capture that feeling again...the year after, I planned an event at the inn, and four people came. And I, for whatever reason, was on Weight Watchers and didn’t even eat a piece of candy. Then last year, we were all gathered at my grandma’s house, preparing for our Jeremy’s funeral, Halloween the very last thing on our minds, and I left Price at home to fend for himself amidst the tiny fairies and football players and dinosaurs.

I think, too, Halloween feels like the beginning of the most wonderful time of the year…the holidays, the days of family recipes and group pictures, pretty dresses and house shoes to go sit at your dining table, reds and maroons and browns and chartreuse greens, twinkly lights on timers. This time of year feels like all the books tucked away in shelves and baskets in Kit’s nursery…quaint, precious, tender, warm, lovely. And tonight, a warm night in October, I wanted to remember it as those things, too.

We, again, had only four trick-or-treaters this year, turning our porchlights off and pulling our blinds closed at seven. We put Kit back in her little sweat suit with jack-o-lanterns and carried her into the kitchen for a supper of squash puree, and I heated up leftovers for us. Afterwards, I cleaned the kitchen while listening to Toast-a-Ween, giggling at Messy Chessy and taking tiny bites of a Reese’s pumpkin (the superior Reese’s). Then I joined Price and the girls back on the floor of the library, watching as Annie ran past baby, making her laugh so hard, she had to have been peeing her little pants. Kit stayed up nearly thirty minutes past her bedtime, just laughing and crawling and happy, and as I bathed her in the kitchen sink, I thought about how I didn’t want this day to end, her first Halloween. Despite an empty porch and full bowl of candy. Despite the fact she will have no memory of today. I will.

Just because it felt quaint, warm, lovely, reading her those books and pushing her and Annie in the stroller through orange leaves and another year in our pumpkin sweaters and the sound of her laugh, the little breathy squeal, as bedtime descended.