Skip to main content

(old post)

Friday, February 16, 2007

Halloween

I am not sure of the exact appeal to Halloween. Perhaps it is the pagan in me, longing to come out. The girl who used to burn black candles and listen to eerie music. Really, the only religions that make even the slightest bit of sense to me are taoism and wicca, but I digress. Perhaps halloween is as exciting as it is because of the anonymity of costumes, the idea we can each metamorphise into another being. We grew up in a small town, atop a mountain, so the trick or treating was sparse and difficult. As young teenagers, my friends and I would traipse around the center of the mountain, hunting out the best goodies (full sized candybars) and I would stand by and disapprovingly watch as they "tricked" the less than generous houses. Back then, parents were trusting enough to send their strangely clad children out into the dark to knock on strangers doors. We would all heed the rules about no wrapperless candy, knowing that evil disguised itself as razor blades in 3 Musketeer Bars. As a parent, my joy comes from the photo ops with my children....cute little cherubic faces peering out from nylon and stuffing, equal mix of glee and fear in their eyes as we walk up to the houses with hanging skeletons and luminescent jack o'lanterns. I love the horror movies they play for the last two weeks of the month, and have to wonder why we as a society love to be scared the way we do. Although I suppose that the fear we feel when watching halloween or Psycho or Pet Semetary is nowhere close to the fear we feel when at war, or when republicans are in office, but again I digress.
This year, my oldest daughter is unsure of what she wants to be. It started out as a cowgirl, then switched to a bat, and now it is wavering between a storybook character or a fairy. I have tried to tell her of the handmade costumes of my youth...my mother actually dressed me as Michael Jackson and Ben Franklin, but kids these days assume all costumes should come wrapped in plastic and match 20 other kids in their classes. There is palpable excitement in the air this week at my house. Our pumpkins are eager for their slaughter... the scarecrow grins through the dark, and the glow in the dark spider is happily awaiting the impending day on his web. And this year... I get to be the woman all the kids will long to see....for I, my friends, have Full Sized Candybars.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Musings of a former chubby girl trying to make right

 I’m going to be honest. I take a weight loss drug. These days, we are hearing constantly about Ozempic, as if it’s some cure all catchall miracle- and don’t get me wrong, these drugs can do miraculous things but there are a lot of misconceptions, as there are with so many other miracles. In 2016, I wrote several blog posts about my attempts at exercising and losing weight, so I figured I would do a follow up now that I’ve lost 103 pounds. I would also like to point out that I will be the first person to tell you to love yourself as you are, and that we are all beautiful. This is a personal journey for me, and not in any way indicative of how I feel anyone else should approach their health or their weight.  Fat people and poor people tend to get a lot of blame hurled at them, with people who have never been fat or poor finding a way to diminish the human experiences of others by placing blame. Fat and poor people must be lazy, they’re sponging off the healthcare system, they m...

We are damned if we stay silent, and damned if we speak.

When I was nineteen years old, only a year into adulthood, and only hesitantly an adult, a man sexually assaulted me. We had met in our apartment complex one night, at the community pool. He was good looking, a military man, cocky and confident, and I was going through the end of my first relationship away from my small hometown. I invited him into my home. I kissed him. I let him into my bedroom. That was where my permission ended. When I told him no, he proceeded to try to shove his genitalia up the leg of my shorts, and when I began to cry and told him to stop or I would scream, he told me I was a tease. And I felt guilt. I am going to say that again- I felt GUILT. As a girl, I had been preconditioned to believe that I could feel bad for getting a guy "worked up", and I didn't kick him out. I slept on the floor next to my bed, while he slept in my bed, and I woke to him trying to do the same thing, only to my face. That time, I was done. Typing these words out makes ...

Field of Dreams

A tiny little boy in his Yankee cap, perched on the battered wood in the dugout waves to me, and I realize he is my boy. He has the flushed cheeks of an Irishman, and his hat is a bit askew. He has the nonchalance of a real ball player, and for just a moment, I am left breathless. A boy who only yesterday was struggling with his first steps, is now the beginnings of a tiny man, and I am a surreptitious observer behind a fence. I watch him joke with his friends, his effervescent grin spreading light throughout the dugout, his foot on the bench only slightly too small for the cleat it inhabits. I want to tell him I love him, but it will embarrass him, so I turn my head to damper the urge. There are a thousand boys in the fields tonight. Some reluctantly, there to satisfy their father's need for vicariousness. Aging dads, with rounded paunches creeping over their belts, their caps hiding thinning hair and grey are holding clipboards and calling for the Mikeys, the Lukes, the Nicks to ...