As I sat down to write this entry, I happened to notice that it was exactly one year ago today, for 31 Days of Halloween 2012, that I’d written about the same thing. While Halloween isn’t officially here until Thursday, Trick-or-Treating here took place yesterday, on a Sunday afternoon, and in broad daylight. This is still weird to me, and I can only equate it with doing Christmas morning presents on December 21. It will never feel right.
On Saturday night, while my wife played downstairs with Little Finley, Addie and I set-up shop in the kitchen for some pumpkin carving action. Unlike the past few years, in which I purchased some fancy stencils from Zombie Pumpkins, the little one and I went old-school – free-handing our creations without drawing an outline on the pumpkins, nor using a stencil or pattern of any kind. Actually, I did use a photograph as a reference for one pumpkin, as I wanted to do one like the one seen in the opening to John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN.
So yesterday, the “big event” arrived – three hours of neighborhood Trick-or-Treating. With Addie once again rockin’ her Fall Fairy Costume (that I’d written about this past summer) and Finn as Little Snow White, my wife hit the streets with them in a Spider Witch costume that she hasn’t worn since Halloween of 1997… our first Halloween together, and a night I took her to an industrial rock show: SISTER MACHINE GUN, PRONG and HANZEL und GRETYL at Chicago’s Vic Theatre. I was pulling the wagon, and even Addie’s American Girl Bitty Baby took part in the action.
As the little ones made their way through the neighborhood this year, what finally hit me is that while this new-school trick-or-treating feels weird to me as a Dad, it will never feel weird for the girls. Unless we were to move (doubtful), they’ll never know it any other way. And, while we did what should’ve been the “Grand Finale” four days early, it’s not like there won’t be Halloween events for the rest of the week, all capped-off by indoor trick-or-treating at the Mall on Halloween proper. Maybe it’s not what I remember, but it’s something. Maybe next year I’ll actually dress up. Addie asked me what I was going to be for Halloween, and I didn’t have a good reason for saying, “just Daddy.”
