Sweet
“Once in a young lifetime one should be allowed to have as much sweetness as one can possibly want and hold. ”
― Judith Olney
Holding Sweetness
I'm not always the biggest fan of Halloween week. I love Halloween Day, but the week, or weeks, leading up to Halloween have left me a little worse for the wear. Bones, skulls, masks, blood, gore- not my thing. The haunted houses, the creepy hay rides, the spiders dangling from the stores all start to get on my nerves, and I find myself wandering into the much more appealing Christmas aisle, which is just starting to appear in most stores. My Halloween anxiety is nothing a little gingerbread house can't cure!
About a day or two before Trick-or-Treat, I'll dress the place up with pumpkins, candy corn and some friendly ghosts. I even have a few bats flying around my belfry (okay, they're Webkins bats and they're hanging with orange ribbon, but they are a little scary.) We visit the pumpkin patch and eat butter dripped corn before navigating the corn maze. I say "we" but I opt out of the corn maze myself. It scares me.
Did I say candy corn? I do buy candy corn. Because I really love candy corn.
This year, Jonathan, my 17-year old son visited a "haunted prison" attraction. While nervous at first, and still swearing that he will never again step foot in a haunted house, I think he enjoyed the experience with friends, the few and the brave. Abby, my 13-year old daughter, was an actress in a local haunted house. Decked out in a straight jacket and horror make-up, she loved every minute.
And then there is Sam. Sam, who until this year, could not walk through the aisle of Target because of "the creepy things that talked." Sam, who has dressed up as a pirate, a magician, and Superman. No "Scream" masks, no phantoms, no ninjas. It's been the saving grace of my Halloween season every year.
This year, Sam said an unexpected thing.
"Mom, I want something scary in the yard."
"Really?"
"Like a gravestone with an arm sticking out of it."
That didn't sound very Caspar-the-Friendly-Ghost to me, but I promised to see what I could do. On my next trip to the Halloween aisle, I found two sturdy Styrofoam gravestones. No arms. One was adorned with a skull, complete with blinky red eyes, and one was engraved with the words "Out to Lunch." Winner.
And the costumes? Jono went to a party with bunny ears. Abby wore a recycled dance costume (pirate) to Trick-or-Treat with friends. But Sam? What was a good cross between not-to-scary and cool? And then we found it. The Spider. To be clear, it's a soft, fluffy spider with cozy arms and a furry head. Quite possibly the cutest spider I've ever seen, but don't tell Sam. He's a spider with tombstones in his yard. It's Halloween. His bunny brother took him Trick-or-Treating to some cool houses, and he weighed in with 4.5 pounds of sugar-filled-chocolate-wonderful candy.
Scary Gravestone, Cuddly Spider
I watched my pirate girl, who was born the day after Halloween 14 years ago, run to greet her friends. (There will be cake tomorrow after this candy-fest tonight. And did I mention the candy corn?) I watched a giant bunny take a cuddly spider to a special Trick-or-Treat excursion before going to a party himself. And I watched the spider check out the scary scene in the front yard before he left.
Sweet. All the way around.
This won't last.
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