passions and soapboxes

It is almost Halloween which happens to be my favorite holiday. When I was a kid I couldn’t wait for this day. I spent all year planning my costume. They were all handmade because I don’t think they had the pre-made boxed costumes yet. We also got full sized candy bars, caramel apples and popcorn balls. You knew your neighbors and trusted them. When I became a Mom I was so excited that I could share this experience with my kids. We would plan the decorations and shop for costumes a month in advance. I also made my kids costumes even though I don’t sew…. glue gun baby! I can stitch a seam with my glue gun that would make Heidi Klum proud. Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan, ladybug, evil tooth fairy or murdered prom queen. If I couldn’t glue it then we bought it in thrift stores. You would be amazed what you can get for $5.00 at a thrift store.

We had props and fog machines, 5 of them with timers to use in the yard. We recycled our spider webbing every year so there was plenty of that. Ghouls and giant spiders, head ripping corpses and singing brides, we had it all. And it certainly doesn’t hurt if your husband is an award wining sound editor. When you are greeted by a 7 ft. ghoul with a bloody beating heart in its hand and the beating sound is coming from the heart, lets just say impressive. He would also record voices and split the tracks out to different parts of the yard. Of course there was the usual bone breaking, screaming, howling, crunching, creaky sounds too. All the kids looked forward to coming to our house for Halloween every year. It was much too intense for the smaller kids so I would meet them at the curb to give them candy. But when they got old enough they would come up the walk and look at me with the biggest smile and tell me trick or treat with such pride that they finally made it. I realized that it had become a rite of passage for these kids. It was a lot of work to get it all up by the time trick or treating started and then take it all down at the end of the night. But it was so worth the effort.

Now my kids are grown and have their own homes to decorate and it really is too much work for just ’73 and I to do it alone, so we stopped. Most of the neighborhood kids were teenagers and I didn’t think anyone would miss it. But then they started asking me what we were going to do this year and the looks on their faces when I told them that we were not doing it was so sad. I miss it, especially the excitement of the family working together to create the best Halloween ever. This is just one of those things you give up when you get older and your kids are grown, I guess. I still love Halloween but now it makes me a little melancholy because that time in our lives is over and I wish it were different.