It is definitely pre-winter (Note to Mopie: ‘pre-winter’ means ‘that time in autumn that is more winter than summer, but is still also not totally winter’ and not ‘certainly the most frigid cold weather we could possibly endure’).
Our town schedule Trick or Treat hours last night from 4 until 7, which is just stupid, because man, I work until 5:30. By the time that I get home and feed the child and help her get dressed, it is 6 pm, which leaves exactly 59 minutes of Trick or Treating in the dark.
Three days with a child and already this has turned into a Mommy Blog. But you should have seen the crazy coordination required to just get the child home. You see, she goes home with a friend to the friend’s babysitter for about two hours after school, then gets picked up by the friend’s mom and brought back to their house for another forty-five minutes until I pick her up. Except that when Esteban tried to pick her up there, in hopes of getting her fed and costumed, she wasn’t there. No one was there. And then I had the whole pit of my stomach turn into charcoal and a furtive fist raised to the sky while the soundtrack of ‘Not Without My Niece Slash GodChild’ played melodramatically in the background. However, Esteban found her at the babysitter’s house, and learned that we’ll never really be sure if she’s going to be there or with the friend’s mom because everyone is confused on the schedule and my god, how the hell does anyone have children with this madness? My Type A personality cannot handle all of this confusion. I want to quit my job and be a stay-at-home mom and I only have her for a week! She didn’t even come from my magic place, so how the hell does anyone with spawn actually have a career? It boggles my mind.
I ended up rushing out of work, cellphone in hand and learned that Esteban had located the child and was on the way to pick her up. I told him that I would pick up dinner (McDonald’s, because it was the fastest. No wonder the nation is in a nutritional epidemic. Look at how easily I slip off her organic foods diet. Do not judge. I have no practice at this parenting thing.) and he grimly replied OK and we almost did that hands clasped and Break! thing that you see in movies involving Steve McQueen driving motorcycles out of Russia. And then I snapped at the McDonald’s employee because she wasn’t exactly fast with the Chicken McNugget Happy Meal and my god lady, can’t you see that we’re burning Trick or Treat minutes here? Can’t you see that?
I arrived home about five minutes after Esteban and Abby. The front door was blocked by kids in costumes. ‘Where’s the candy?’ Esteban hissed over their heads, surriptiously dropping something into their bags to lackluster ‘Thank you’s. ‘In the kitchen.’ I replied, juggling my purse, a Diet Coke and three bags of marginal fast food. ‘What are you giving out?’ Esteban shrugged. ‘Zingers and Ho Ho’s.’ You have to admire the man’s ingenuity. Good thing Mo and I had gotten the munchies last week after Meh Race.
Abby dutifully ate her dinner in her witch costume and then we realized that we didn’t have an actual Trick or Treat bag for her. Or if it was sent along, we didn’t know where it was. I was horrified because as a child, one of my absolute tenets was that a non-sanctioned candy bag was completely tacky. I wouldn’t have been caught dead with a pillow case, much preferring a plastic pumpkin or a 25 cent printed vinyl bag with smiling ghouls on it. While we were exceptionally poor while I was growing up, there was no reason to have such visible proof close at hand. (See the where the label-consciousness started?) So when Esteban handed Abby a paper grocery bag, for a second, a little part of me died inside. But the kid carried it around daintily, like it was a Balenciaga bag or something, and for a minute, I wanted to be like Abby when I grew up.
We walked up and down our street. About half the houses had their porch lights on, but Abby still filled up her bag. I’m not friendly with our neighbors, but it felt very much like a community, walking up to their doors and wishing them a Happy Halloween. It was unseasonably warm last night. I remember wearing my snowmobile suit under my costume one year, and wet snow falling into my treat bucket, crinkling the candy wrappers, but I was walking around wearing a cardigan over a t-shirt and moccasins without socks.
I had a million things to do in front of the computer, but for a moment, I was able to relax and live in the now, watching Abby prance from door to door with her treat bag, watch the smiles of my neighbors, the sweet little old ladies with the snow white hair, the hipsters with the tattoos and Fluevog shoes, each and every one returned my ‘Happy Halloween!’ with warmth. I admired the decorations, the orange luminaries, the Pottery Barn garden lights, and the glimpses of lives that one can spot from the front walk. Was mine the only house that didn’t originally have a hardwood floor? Apparently so. We don’t have sidewalks on our street, so we stamped over fallen leaves, pressed in silhouette against wet black pavement. We’d kick them with our feet and be rewarded with a bloom of musty aromatics. One group of neighbors was eating crackers out by a bonfire and wasn’t letting the teenagers with no costume have any candy, but called Abby ‘sweetheart’. We walked with a flashlight in hand because I was worried about Abby’s dark costume being spotted by approaching cars, but really, I didn’t have to worry. The teenagers that live behind Wood Chopping Guy had a strobe light set up and were blasting Rob Zombie, pretending to be the undead and dancing in this creepy boneless goth way that even I had to admit was a little unnerving. Abby didn’t want to pass them and called them ‘freaky zombie dancers’ which made me laugh, the way she said it, as though she couldn’t believe anyone would put so much time and effort into scary the shit out of little kids. I appreciated the unexpected ‘Living Dead Girl’ though. The canopy of trees and the porch lights illuminating Cape Cods and white Craftsmans transformed my street into the quintessential American neighborhood from any time in any place. For a moment, I was really happy to be a part of this slice of Green Bay. For a moment, maybe the first time in my life, I felt the permanence.
We ended up with 142 pieces of candy in the hour that we walked the neighborhood. During that same hour, Esteban gave out all seven bags of our candy. I searched through the few old maids for any of my favorites, but they were all gone.
‘Oh, bummer, all the good ones are gone.’
‘What are you looking for?’
‘The peanut butter cups.’
‘There are a few in the kitchen that I saved for you.’
Love that man. Love him. Also, you’ve never seen adorable until you watch him bending down to tuck the child in at night. I swear, it totally makes me want to go out and get us a baby! Well, not really. Maybe a seven-year-old. Or maybe just a dog.
After Abby went to bed, I worked on my story until my eyes were going crossed, and then went to bed. I have no idea how to end the story, so it’s probably going to have a stereotypical Weetabix non-ending because I’m not going to have any time to finish it before class on Wednesday. Tonight, I’m going to the symphony with Pie. Normally, I would eschew such time management indulgences, but tonight’s performance includes favorite piece of classical music: Mozart’s Requiem In D Minor. I’m talking a classical music orgasm. I tear up thinking about how beautiful that piece of music is, about how it may have killed me with loveliness had Mozart lived long enough to finish it, wondering which themes he had hinted at in the first movements that would be repeated later, embellished, made whole rather than marred by his student’s clumsy hand.
Stupid syphilis.
Regardless, I am so stoked that I’m totally going to have to restrain myself from doing the Rock and Roll Devil Sign during the Confutatis. Maybe we need a new classical music hand signal. Furious air violin is really hard to do in the orchestra row seating.
