This year I am in India and I am missing my favorite holiday – Halloween.
It is nearing the end of October. The leaves should be turning different colors, or have settled into the brown of fall. The weather in the north should start to get nippy and jackets have made at least an appearance. In the south, the weather is just a little colder nothing to worry about but the rains usually come with the change in seasons.
When I was younger, fall was a season of school and football. A bridge to winter and the holidays that came with it and the snow. It was a season that was usually fourth on my list of favorite seasons, right after winter and right after winter.
There was only one date to look forward to in all of fall – Halloween. It would take weeks to figure out what costume we were going to go as. We would harass my parents into helping with the costumes and then, my brother and I, would spend time planning a route https://isverigeapotek.com/. As we got older, the route planning was more involved, adding friends, merging groups with others, splitting off, and looking for the treasure houses that gave away full candy bars rather than the worst offenders (handfuls of candy corn, nutritious treats, and pencils).
When we got too old (in our teen-aged minds) to go out for candy, our time was spent going to costume parties thrown at friends houses. There was still the build-up to Halloween as we staked out and planned our costumes. We would then spend the party socializing, making mayhem and living up to the shenanigans of youth.
College life led to the drought of Halloween as College Football took precedence. Many years went by without thinking of my favorite holiday except to think of it as a regret that I was not able to celebrate it properly.
After the kids came, my wife and I spent years doing what I did in my youth except for our kids. Dressing them up and going out with them. One of us (the winner in Roshambo or rock-paper-scissors) would end up getting to stay at home and pass out candy. Seeing all the kids with excitement on their faces as they breathlessly got out “Trick or Treat”; the happiness on their faces when we would pass out the full candy bars.
Time marches on and now that the kids are in their teens I miss the Halloween of my youth and even of their youth. We would sit with other parents at candy stations in the neighborhood and reminisce of times gone. Still catching up in the excitement of the younger kids as they come running in to get candy as we offer their parents an adult beverage to tide them over til they get home.
Candy, Costumes, the pageantry, the closeness of friends and neighbors these are things I miss on Halloween.