I just love Halloween. As my adult years go by, I think about the family traditions that I took for granted as a child myself. I fell in love with and married a man who has little to no care for the major Holidays as they are exploited. He tolerates and seems to enjoy Halloween a little bit and Thanksgiving a bit more than that. I am grateful for this. I am a mother now. Each year I find myself thinking harder and longer about the things that I did with my mom and sister for Halloween. From decorations and the mixed tape of eerily comforting spooktacular tunes that played year after year, the countless times I hadn’t slathered quite enough butter on my hands for the searing candy concoction used to make popcorn balls not to burn me, pumpkin carving not just to have the wicked glow of a jack-o-lantern on the porch but for the warm and satisfying crunch of the toasted pumpkin seeds, to the apple monsters that they were both always better at making spooky than I was, the time spent and memories created around that antique claw-footed table with those ladies were incredible and I wouldn’t trade them for the world. I think about how it would be cruel of me to deprive my children of those same kinds of memories. We do a lot of things together all year round that will be memorable for them throughout their lives, I know this, but Halloween is my favorite. It was always the least stressful of all the holidays in our house because we all enjoyed it the same. There was no rush to prepare the food. It wasn’t all done for hosting purposes. Our mother enjoyed these things too and it was just the three of us.
This year these thoughts are particularly difficult for me. The three of us ladies have had some very unexpected and trying things happen and come up over the course of 2018. All of us have had urgent health and or lifestyle happenings. Unfortunately we are pretty spread out geographically speaking. This is hard because through the past few years I feel like the three of us have come to be nearly as close on a day to day basis as we were around that table during the month of October all those childhood years.
I had to honor these thoughts this Halloween. My youngest is still a little too young for many of the traditions, in my opinion, however, I did encourage his help when it came to decorating the patio, he was able to stick his fingers into the pumpkin guts and enjoy the ghoulish glow of the finished products. We had our own monster mash dance party in the living room. I even tried to help him create his own apple monster. When I turned my head, he took a big bite out of his apple. . . So there went that. =] The three of us had a lot of fun making paper towel and lollipop ghosts with spooky faces. I would have loved to make caramel apples, I never learned how to do that part without mom’s help. The boys are both still a little too young for popcorn balls unfortunately. I’m not even sure either one of them could eat one if I made them on my own.
I shared these projects via pictures and phone calls with both my mother and my sister, it isn’t quite the same as doing all these things together. Maybe one day all three generations can get together to create Halloween like we did growing up. That would be the most amazing experience I could as for my children and beautiful niece to have.
Our Halloween 2018
