For the first time this year, I had two children who didn’t want to celebrate Halloween with me. Last year Nathan and I were moving my Mom out of the house she had sold and into her new apartment and so my sister Monica took Polly trick or treating. This year Polly wanted to go to a friend’s house to pass out candy and Nathan wanted to go with his girlfriend to help her take her little brothers trick or treating. I had always heard how fast it would go, those years with the little kids, and to cherish those moments while they lasted, but I don’t believe it really hit home until this year when I knew they would rather be with their friends. So I let them go.  I stayed home with the puppy Maggie and the cats. Alex had to work so we had the whole house to ourselves. I baked an apple rhubarb crisp. Maggie waited for me to drop peels as I worked on the apples, the way way she waits when I peel potatoes. We played fetch in the backyard in the dark, with nothing but the back porch light to go by. I thought of my kids over the years in their different costumes. Nathan was a clown, Barney,a clown again, Batman, a skeleton, Superman, Darth Maul, Zorro, Darth Vader, Scream, Leatherface and an assortment of masks that could only be described as yucky, or scary. Polly was Pooh Bear, A Bunny, a Princess and then came years of different variations of the princess theme. She was a ballerina princess, an ice skater princess, a fairy princess, a Glinda the good witch princess. Every year a princess, and I let her just go with it. Alex would wail,”A princess again?” and I would just shake my head at him to be silent. Then one year she announced she wanted to be a cheerleader. A dead cheerleader. That was a fun year because I got to go back to the way I wore my makeup in the 80s when I created her face. Most of those years Alex was unable to go with me to take the kids trick or treating because he had to work. Two of those years I was unable to go because I had to work, and for a baker, Halloween spells the beginning of the hell that is the holiday season. The first time Alex took the kids trick or treating while I was working I cried while I loaded sweets in and out of the oven. By my third year at that job I said to my supervisor before Halloween, “I’ll be in late Halloween night!” and she wasn’t even bothered by that.

Two groups of kids in costume were all that showed up at our door. When Nathan came home he said that there weren’t many kids out in the neighborhood he was in and predicted that Halloween as he used to know it would be dead within three years. Polly had a good time passing out candy, but she seemed to miss having some to eat ,because she wanted to go to the store to buy some. No one wanted apple rhubarb crisp. Maybe next year I’ll have made a friend or two and I’ll have someone to hang out with.