Tuesday, October 31, 1995: Caitlin
(6) is an Egyptian princess for Halloween. Drew (4) is a house. Sarah (2) is a pirate. Everyone is
very cute.
Saturday, Oct. 31, 1998: This year Caitlin (9) is a soccer player,
Drew (7) a witch, and Sarah (5) a vampire. Spence (2),
tiger-face make up all wiped off, just falls asleep. Sarah is a bit possessive about her
candy. Drew shares cheerfully. Caitlin comes back all
loaded down, and starts yelling at the mere prospect of encroachment. I pilfer anyway, but not as much as Spence,
who keeps emerging with someone else's suckers.
Saturday, October 30, 1999: By mid day anticipation is rising, and we enjoy a kind of Halloween
countdown. Sharon makes Sarah (6) a superb
bat costume. Caitlin (10) reprises last
night’s zombie ensemble. Drew (8) simplifies, making herself a witch out of a simple hat and cape.
I carve out everyone’s pumpkin designs.
Caitlin goes trick-or-treating with Amber Garn. I take 2-4
down 8th south, through Sage Creek Circle, to the trailers and out
to South Main. Spence (3) is nearly
terrified by a life-sized vampire at the Lucas place. He also has a fit every time someone
rings a doorbell.
Tuesday, October 31, 2000: The kids dress up for school. Sarah (7) is Bill Nye, and Caitlin (11) is a hippy. Drew (9) is a garbage bag. After school it’s rainy and cold. Drew decides to be a vampire, since the
public apparently just didn’t understand that garbage bag thing. As usual we lose Caitlin (up to Amber’s),
though this year she actually wanted to stay with the rest of us. Drew and Sarah go across town to join Heather
and Ethan Wolz.
Matty’s (2) nose is
running, and he’s wayward and distractable anyway. So it’s just Spencer the bat (4) and me, out pounding the pavement. We have a very nice time. As usual, I’m struck by his sensitivity,
articulateness, sweetness. We walk a
bit, drive some, walk a bit more. I
notice how, unlike conditions that prevailed during my (our) own childhood,
it’s completely scattershot around here. We have neighbours, to be sure, but there’s
not much sense of a neighbourhood or community.
“Spence, do you
want to go to the Wolfgramms'?” “Well, I want to
stay in the car now. But you can
go.” Drew and Sarah appear to have had a
grand time. I get the camera out, and Drew gives me a great
interview about all of Sarah’s many boyfriends, or in other words, boys that
she prefers to play, sit and eat with, and that seem to want to spend great
amounts of time with her.
Now everyone is
back. They compare their gross
candy. We watch Laughton's The Night of
the Hunter. What a great family
cinema session! All are transfixed together,
spooked, chilled, saved by Lillian Gish.
Just as good as any book-based storytime.
Wednesday, October 31, 2001: Caitlin’s surfer dude costume looks suspiciously like
Caitlin (12) always looks. Drew (10) is upset, as
she seems to be every year. She and Sydney R. were
going to be co-nerds, and then yesterday Sydney announced that she was going to
be a scarecrow instead. So Drew feels
discouraged and abandoned and self-conscious.
Then Sarah (8) steps on her nerd glasses and breaks them. Sorrows!
After school I pick up the
Brooksiders. Drew won’t talk, but it
sounds like things went pretty well.
Everyone wanted to try out Sarah’s costume, so she’s happy. We managed to get Spencer (5) to go, so that’s good enough. At home we pause, refresh our costumes, make
up the boys, and then head downtown.
Throngs! In some ways we have
public-spirited businesses appreciating the fellow citizens that patronize
them. But I also sense arms twisted, and
notice that the candy is of a rather poor quality. Of course these greedy, grabby kids don’t
deserve too much more or better. All
this doesn’t apply to me or mine.
We all walk up
and then down together. Drew always goes up ahead, then sort of
waits for us. The girls help the
boys. Matt (3)
seems a bit overwhelmed. People put
treats in his bag and he sort of stands there, wondering why. There are a lot of people around here that we know, or that Sharon
knows. I guess we belong here, more or less. I notice that when women
see each other for the first time in awhile, they say things like, “oh, you’ve
got another baby!” Best part: the girls
and I walk home through the crisp October air and the vivid fall colours.
Drew is
preparing to be bummed because no one’s going trick or treating with her
(since, as usual, she didn’t bother to arrange anything). Then Caitlin’s friends call to say that
they’ve got some extra tickets for the haunted house they’re going to, and
Caitlin actually invites her sisters, and everyone feels very happy. The girls take the boys out to collect some candy, and then, with Sharon with them, leave me with the little ones and go off together. At home we have a nice time. Claire (6 months) drops off early, and the boys go
happily to bed. I look through their candy, naturally. Much
later the travelers come back, very happy, full of detailed accounts of their
adventures, enjoying each other.
Friday, October 31, 2003: Caitlin (14) and I do some errands. She reads two Lemony Snicket books in a
matter of minutes. The ward has a trunk
or treat, organized by the new primary presidency. Claire (2), the clown! We also have a handsome vampire and
policeman.
The big girls
strike off by themselves. Drew (12) is
dressed in a nun outfit that she paid $13 for.
Sometimes it’s fun to spend your money.
Sarah (10) is a mad scientist. Caitlin
doesn’t doesn’t deign. They all go of
with neighbour Sadie to get some candy and toilet paper people. Later they come back to watch a movie. I show them Night of the Living Dead. Suddenly they’re not so sophisticated and
superior. C & S fall asleep, while
Drew talks and reasons her way out of her anxiety.
Friday, October 29, 2004: We watch Tashlin/Lewis's The Disorderly
Orderly for family cinema. Caitlin (15) laughs,
generously and easily. She has it within
her, and often without her, to be a good pal.
There’s in and out viewing with this film—what is Sarah (11) mad at now?—but
overall we have out and out rejoicing.
Drew (13) is a great
looking pirate. She goes to a swim party
that is attended by two people. She
comes back and wants, as usual, a movie.
We try Kolchak, the Night Stalker, of ancient family memory. To me it looks pretty threadbare. Sarah is unmoved, and looks on scornfully. Sophisticated Drew argues with the screen and
hides under her blanket. You never know how things will strike you.
Saturday, October 30, 2004: Utah, or no trick-or-treat on Sunday. We do some yard cleaning. Mum teases Sarah about last night’s
movie. “I didn’t scream. I gasped.”
Sharon, Catilin and Sarah go to Springville’s last football game,
through which their perfect season gives way to defeat and epic poor
sportsmanship.
Sunday, October 31, 2004: Caitlin and Drew go and get their temple-baptismal
recommends. Then they improvise
scatological lyrics to the tune of Search, Ponder and Pray.
Monday, October 31, 2005: Sarah (12) is sick. I tell her about Patrick (the very recently deceased cat). She wells and withdraws. For the rest of the day she mourns, quite markedly, with dignity and with deep feeling. I didn't do that very well, did I?
Spence (9) took a really
excellent costume to school. He and Mum
thought hard about and worked hard over it.
They cut a curtain in half, put in a hole for the head, added armour and
accoutrements. Voila! a Crusader.
Cool! There he is, combining
fancy and history and engagement and intelligence. And all they could do is ask if he was a girl. Spence isn’t exactly happy about that, nor is
he exactly unhappy.
I get
home. We’ve got a new cat! Given the happy and sad of Patrick’s tenure,
here’s not much Dadly denying to be done.
It's Rita, as in the meter maid. She’s
a tiny black pointy-chinned creature, hiding there under the couch.
Halloween night
is pretty quiet. Sarah is still under
the weather, but she goes to Kelsey’s house to plunder a bit. The crusader, the fairy and Batman join the
ward trunk or treat in Artistic Circle, and then seem satisfied with that. The bigs go to the Lifferths, and they come
back.
Claire (4) jumps up
to the back of the couch. Then what happened, exactly? Did she fall,
or jump, or both? There are no big crashes—nothing to speak of, really. But where she’d
been tearing around with her customary verve and abandon, she now stops and
grows suddenly small. She holds her left
arm. “Take me to bed,” she wails, if a
wail can be so tiny. New parent
over-reactions have been succeeded by the calm perspective of the elderly. In other words, this’ll be fine. But that is a broken arm if ever I've seen one.
Monday,
October 30, 2006: Sharon works hard on Matt’s (8) costume, and gets it done. It’s triumphantly good. And, despite the fact that it doesn’t have
that store bought sheen, he’s sweetly and sincerely grateful about it all. The Star Wars costume that your mother actually made is somehow
just a little less morally suspect.
Wednesday,
October 31, 2007: We put costumes together for school. Matt (9) is happily Luigi. He looks good, darn it. Claire’s (6) idea of wearing plush princess
clothes with her vampire makeup is quite brilliant. Spence (11) notices
that pirates actually dress kind of flamboyantly, and that the (excellent)
ensemble that Sharon has put together for him is completely made up of girls’ clothes.
Caitlin (18, at BYU) calls me with that bleary, I want you to know that I
just woke up voice. Can I meet you at
noon? I have something I need to tell
you. That fills me with anxiety, which I
repress until the time comes. It turns
out that she had to tell me that she’d coloured her hair. Rascal.
Sharon, Drew (16) and Sarah (14) go over to set up a spook alley at
the church. Drew is cheerful about
it. Sarah is offended that she has to
fold some service into her plans. Drew has on some ridiculous
running shorts from DI/1976, with tights underneath, and high heeled leather
boots. It’s a complete botch job. She looks rather stunning. For the second time in two weeks Sarah has
opted for a gothic/emo get up. Again I
ask, is she being drawn that way? She
looks superb too.
I freshen the kids’ moustaches and whiskers and undead make
up. Claire puts her own blood on. They have fun over at the church. I feel put off, surprisingly. Freeloladers!
Who are these strangers who third helping’d their way through all of our
refreshments?
I take the youngsters over to the Memorial Park
church, and then to go up and down in the
Brookside subdivision. We hop out. A little girl is happy to see Claire. She
shares her feelings with her parents.
“Which one was she?” they ask “The vampire
without any teeth.” At the next dismount
Claire jumps out just as Spencer (11) steps on her cape. Yank!
Back at home we watch Topper
Returns. All are charmed. It was nice to watch the boys enjoying this. No nightmares either.
Drew comes back. !,
again. She’s dressed as a boy, of the
gangster variety. She tries out a bunch
of shambling walks and gestures for us.
We kind of stare. It’s that
Twelfth Night, earthquake-y effect, not nearly so implausible in the
flesh. No wonder Orsino was
troubled! It’s the eyebrows, she calmly
tells us. Sarah comes back too. She’s still mad.
Kids abed, big people watch Del Toro's regretable Mimic. Those black people, says Drew. Singing, and swearing, and sacrificing
themselves.
(And she was going to be a cowboy...)
(And she was going to be a cowboy...)
Thursday, October 30, 2008:
Sharon goes to the chiropractor.
Apparently he adjusted her uterus, which is something you don’t hear
about everyday.
Friday, October 31, 2008:
Brookside has a Halloween costume procession.
What a strange, apostate practice this is, inexplicable, removed from
any cultural, historical or religion root.
Pretty fun, though. You get a
sense of the kids’ home lives from the way they present themselves. I guess that’s cultural, economic and
spiritual substance, or at least disclosure, after all.
Lots of nice little Brooksiders get big smiles and wave
brightly. “Hello Mrs. Duncan!” A little guy flings his plastic cutlass and
bounces it off his mother’s head, thirty feet away. Matt (10) and Claire (7) look good, and happy. Spence (12) joins us, a bit perturbed. Christopher and Alan and Jay were riding him
about not wearing a costume, even though they knew that he was wearing one.
We went downtown for main street trick or treat. More socio-economics. Very nice weather. Kids liked it. Me too.
Back at home, Spence and Matt are battling. The latter too careless, the former too nag
and nitpicky. Trunk or Treat. Freeloaders, like last year, but I feel more
calm about it. Spencer goes up to Alan’s
for a party. Sarah (15) goes to
Kelsey’s. Matt goes with Celeborn. Claire is off with Peyton M.. Drew (17) is feeling a bit poorly. We watch Phantom of the Paradise, just like brother Scott and I did, so many years ago.
Everyone comes back. Spence complains that
they kept saying they were going to watch Journey to the…, and with 3D glasses,
but that they never actually got around to it.
He also observes that Matt, and especially the confident Celeborn, spend
so much time blabbing about the subtexts and exposition for their narrative
games, that they don’t ever actually play.
Drew thinks Claire is a weenie.
But she allows, as we hear those three interacting, that she’s pretty
darned good at standing up to pushy big people. Now Drew goes to Mary R.'s house to watch an alleged horror
movie about killer bees.
Sarah gets back, also a little disappointed. It seems that the climax of their spookfest
was a celebration of God’s intervention in men’s affairs. Now Drew returns. Her report is that she told Mary not to
rent that killer bee movie, begged her not to, and that she did anyway, and
that all regretted it. Je me souviens. All these social hopes, and they’re so often
to usually to always dashed.
Vanity. And probably not that
great a tragedy.
