Halloween
I am afraid I am failing at mentioning the word blind often enough to be attracting search engines to my blog when people look for information about blindness. Oh well, as I have said before, blindness really does not play such a big part in my life.
Thursday night was Halloween and although we did nothing to decorate, our lights were on and the candy bowl was full to over flowing. In our neighborhood, trick-or-treat takes place between 5:00 and 7:00 pm. No early birds or stragglers allowed. I will admit that I am a bit nervous about being the one to answer the door, especially when I am home alone. Once, many years ago, probably 46 years to be exact, someone who new I could not recognize them pretended to threaten me and thought it was funny. Trust me, I was not amused. That practical joke has lived through all these years and still causes me to be a little frightened when I open that door to Halloween strangers.
However, this is a positive piece so away with the negative.
When I opened the door to the first group of laughing happy children, all the Halloweens of my past came flooding in. I was reminded of how these traditions tie the generations together.
I remembered the neighborhood we lived in when I was growing up. We lived in a small three block neighborhood surrounded completely by forest. Actually there was a golf course on one side but it was still pretty wooded. On Halloween we only begged for candy in our little neighborhood. No parents went with their kids because no one ever worried about being safe. Because people could count exactly how many kids would come to their door, there were some pretty nice hand outs. We had a couple of houses that really decorated and the same family always had a party after trick-or-treat. The last street against the woods only had 3 houses and we were never brave enough to go there. Now I wonder if they had candy and felt badly that no kids visited. My mom made our costumes and we had some great ones.
Before long I was taking my own kids trick-or-treating. I remember pushing them in the stroller and just taking them next door, to show their silly costumes to the neighbors. They were too little to even eat candy. As they got older we were still big on making costumes. I think, secretly, they wished for store bought costumes. Then there came that year when they were really too big to go and even their baby sister was too old to accompany. I think they always went at least one year after they should have stayed home.
Next came trick-or treating with our granddaughter. I remember years when she was accompanied by 6 adults. We all trailed behind like her servants. I think she got to have store bought costumes. Now even she is too old.
I wonder if we will continue the tradition and go out with great grand children. I hope so.
Some things never change. I think we are giving out the same candy although the bars are smaller. Now we don’t always recognize the costumes because we are not up to date on the latest movie heroes. I can’t imagine living somewhere where no kids come to your door on the 31st of October or what ever night gets designated as trick-or treat for that year.