Halloween At Last

It's my favorite holiday during my favorite time of year; leaves smelling of tannin shush shush around your feet, it isn't so dad-blamed hot, and my favorite color of orange is exploding in heavy pumpkins and the insides of squashes.

But, and it took me years to realize, it was the only holiday that my father didn't tear to pieces while  others he chewed up with his petulant bullying.  Any holiday, religious or not, was game for a loud and long demonstration of why he had to put up with you people.  The 4th of July, potato salad flew while my Mom cried; Christmas, for heaven's sake--you'd think that the apex of holidays for his religion would have soldered his mouth shut, but no.  I was a whore, my mother was a whore, goddammit this is Jesus' birthday, Jesus cleaned out the temple of moneychangers you lousy bitches  this is righteous anger from God while my Mom and brother cried, the volume alone terrifying.  Thanksgiving, my three year old brother helped stir the orange Jello and blammo, you're making him a woman, I remember the sound of the spoon clattering against the white glass bowl as my brother's face changed.  Thunder and hellfire, brimstone and death threats.  I learned what the word decapitation meant way too early, no wonder I slept with a night light until I was 21 and out of the house.

Halloween was the odd man, in that my father would buy the costumes at Western Auto on his way home from work.  The first one he got me was of Hot Stuff, a cartoon-based red devil, he seemed happy with his choice.

"What on earth ?" asked my mother.  Not one that a girl would usually choose, but to complain was to ignite a running fire.  Next year was Donald Duck.  Then Zorro.

Nonetheless, he would hide and leave answering the door to my mother, and the crowds of kids with their parents were probably the saving grace which put the brakes on his performance.  No arguments, not one broken dish or torn up sweater or smashed glasses.  It was freeing, to be out with your friends, going from house to house for treats, coming home with loot to examine and classify, and all of it was like advancing through a nighttime paradise.

I liked being something different than what I was, for the undercurrent of hatred for women unless they were mummified nuns permeated our childhoods more than I could appreciate.  I just thought that he hated me and adored my brother and it was my fault that he didn't like me.  Putting on a plastic mask and playing at being something else, devil or duck, was a small magic.

There was a year when we lived out where weasels ran and foxes stole eggs, way out in undeveloped Clarence, New York.  It was punctuated with dairy farms for the most part, wheat and corn fields, and cricks of clear water.  An old farmhouse owned by the Wohlers on Gunville Road stood unpainted and unelectrified, heated by a pot belly stove. To make a bit of Halloween for me, my father took me there, where Mrs. Wohlers had made orange frosted cupcakes from the wood cooking stove.  I remember sitting on his lap, and Mr. Wohlers bringing out his concertina which scared me, for it was loud, noisy, and frighteningly happy, the sort of thing to be avoided at all costs.  I began crying, embarrassing my father and scooting us home, with a couple of cupcakes wrapped in paper that had an odd, smoky flavor.   I wished I had been able to learn more about them, but they were a separate world and it was hard enough to negotiate the one I existed in.

We eventually moved to Tonawanda, New York, away from all the angry neighbors who had enough of us, where there were sidewalks, corner stores, custard stands, a Kresge's five and dime, street lights, and close houses.  The neighborhood had a few kids and we would strategize what streets we would approach and when.  Beggar's Night would take in our own street and Ferndale Avenue, on Halloween we expanded the radius to include Delaware Road, and decided to stay off of Knoche Road, for it was haunted.  

It was before plastic shopping bags, so we used the brown paper grocery bags as we ran across lawns and hoped the bottom would hold.  People handed out full size candy bars, which were a nickel each at the time, bubble gum, apples, small bags of popcorn, homemade cookies that would get mashed up by the apples, and coins.  Strangest thing ever handed out was orange juice popsicles, which were gratefully accepted after deciding that they weren't poisoned.  

Arranging groups of bounty according to similarities would take up the remaining night.  How many Oh Henrys?  Baby Ruths?  Clark Bars?  Chinese Bubblegum?  I would be gladly left alone, to regale the evening that happened without a what about me inferno as he continued to be sober, quiet, and reading passages from the missal.  I didn't have to talk to anybody till the next morning for school, for it was a time before parents checked candy for tampering.

I still enjoy Halloween as the most fun of holidays, for there are no feelings of loss or of memories best left in the cellar.  Children still are sticky happy with fun-size (how much fun can you have with something that small?) candies or the lord knows Now and Laters or Sour anythings.  I don't care for the horror now added, the bloodied plastic corpses or mangled limbs, but that comes from the real pronouncements my father would make of what he would do if we pushed him too far.  Some of the things he said would get him arrested these days.  Take it easy on your neighbors, you have no idea what some are going through within the alleged framework of family.

The sun is on the downward side of grey sky, headed for an hour earlier sunset as the earth still spins at the same speed, but with the axis tilting the Northern Hemisphere away as far as it can go come December, shortening our daylight. It's the reason this country flips hours in the summer. The use of electricity is decreased when the hour of light is placed at the end of day, and people are said to enjoy the longer summer evenings. About 40 countries use this switching of clocks to make the most of daylight when the lengthening occurs, which makes economical sense but frankly, I never get used to it.

Sleep well then, with innocence, for you are.  The dark is a blessing that stops the troubles of day as we sleep, suspending them on a string between dreams and morning bells.  Slide through the layers of nocturnal dormancy, while the subconscious bubbles to the surface like an amphibian taking breath.  Sleep on the waves of transitional slumber, your coracle taking you to answers, questions, night, day, echo, and contradiction.  Good night, my dear heart.