How I Fell in Love with Halloween

Somewhere along the way while we’re growing up, we inevitably land on a favorite time of year – a favorite season, or even a favorite month. I think the earliest favorites end up revolving around the anticipation of an upcoming birthday – hence, why some of us, even as adults, continue to embrace the “birthday month” philosophy.

It brings a childlike excitement – maybe around the suspense of opening a gift you’ve asked for – but I think it probably has more to do with the feeling of the time of year, the way the light hits or even distinct smells in the air that lead up to the one day you will be celebrated. A text. A phone call. A DM. It feels really good.

My first favorite time of year was Christmas. My birthday is December 23rd, and contrary to everyone’s speculation that my birthdays must have been crummy, landing only two days before Christmas – my birthdays were in fact, the best.

My mom always threw me a party, well before the chaos of Christmas. She never used Christmas paper to wrap my birthday gifts. She never gave me a gift that was “for both.” She never made me feel like my birthday was one more item on her crazy checklist. She was a teacher, and eventually, a mom of four.

One day, we/you – become parents. I think this is when we get another favorite time of year. Our first born, Maxwell – another Christmas birthday – added to the joy and excitement I already felt for Christmastime. I took everything my mom taught me about “How to Have a Christmas Baby” and ensured Max always looked forward to his birthday and never felt like an add-on.

Then, we/you have another baby. This is where I got another favorite time of year. Magnus – arriving two weeks late and like a bat out of hell – right before Halloween.

Growing up, I liked the fall. The Pacific Northwest often had warm, late summers as the school year began – but the mornings, cool and foggy with dew drops resting on top of the blades of grass in the front yard, was my earliest acknowledgement that a new day held such sparkle and magic. The dew looked like possibility to me and, subconsciously, was filed away under “Reasons I like Fall.”

But Halloween? I mean, I guess? We trick-or-treated and always made a visit to my Uncle Pete and Aunt Clara’s house. They lived in one of those neighborhoods where no one even knocked on the front door because it never closed on Halloween. The doorbell didn’t even have a chance to ring. They would just stand there like in the middle of Grand Central Station with the biggest mixing bowls you’ve ever seen being drained of adequately-sized candies – like a whirlpool going down the drain when the plugs been pulled on the bathwater. Dump another bag in. Drain. Rinse. Repeat.

Dressed as Glenda the Good Witch, I had no idea that one day when I was 30, Halloween would end up being neck-and-neck with Christmas as my favorite time of year.

Magnus, almost immediately, embraced October like a National month-long Holiday. Growing up in New York City, it could easily be mistaken as one.

Nobody does Halloween like New York. The Upper East Side, in particular. Mayor Bloomberg’s mansion with staff, security and a queue of strollers, scooters and trick-or-treaters ranging in age from toddler to teenager was a must-visit because of the spectacle in and of its frenzied-self but also because of the full-size candy bars. With the exception of one peculiarly-lean year.

I think Magnus wanted to be the Mayor of Halloween.

Magnus didn’t pronounce the first letter of several words when he was little. But he never failed to give credit – and sometimes critique – the Halloween decorations in his neighborhood. To him, there was a level we were trying to reach here. He wanted his neighborhood to be “cary” and “pooky” and he would get “so cited” when a building exceeded the ‘scary’ and ‘spooky’ factor he expected from his community. When you’re a little boy with October as your birthday month, there’s an upspoken rule combined with Magnus’ vision: if every brownstone, bodega and bagel shop and every building participates in decorating – Halloween will be the most magical, cariest and pookiest holiday – in the best city in the world.

I think Magnus should be the mayor of New York.

It took us an hour to get anywhere in October. In and out of the stroller when he was little, always wanting a closer look. On and off the scooter once he turned two – pressing his juicy cheeks in between the black, wrought-iron gates and fences for an up-close-and-personal assessment of how a 360-degree circulating head on top of a ghostly woman in a rocking chair, wearing a stained hospital gown and discarded Dearfoams, worked.

So “cweepy!”

He admired the commitment of the five and six story brownstones who suspended mannequins disguised as mummies from every window. Our necks would get stiff, standing there, staring up at the masterpiece. Magnus was often in a rush to be somewhere – even if we had nowhere to be. But not at Halloween.

He wondered where one home stored their spider in the off-season. Judging by it’s scale, it must have been a single brownstone wide by two stories high. At the time, we lived in shared-floor duplex in a converted brownstone so in Magnus’ childlike eyes, we weren’t much different. Why didn’t we have a spider Halloween decoration like this in the bin under Mom’s bed?

Our family didn’t have any October birthdays before Magnus. My siblings were all April. But because of Magnus’ ecstatic joy for the month – everyone seemed to love Halloween more now.

My mom visited New York for Magnus’ very first Halloween. He was five days old and it had somehow already snowed. We took our time and took in the sites and it was the very first time I loved Halloween the way I did that year. Max was Thor. We went to Doc Watson’s after touring the neighborhood and the Village parade was on the TV.

As Magnus got older, he wanted to split his Halloween between trick-or-treating, and passing out the candy on his stoop. (Uncle Pete would have understood.) Our first home in NY was on the 4th floor of a Lexington and 78th Street building with a Starbucks and a Mama Gyro on the street level so it wasn’t conducive to handing out candy like the marvel at the Mayor’s place two avenues over. Especially given the fact that one Halloween, the kids – in costumes and ready to roll – and I descended the final steps of our stairway only to be greeted by a man pressed up against our door, facing us, and actively mistaking our building’s entrance for a public bathroom. I yelled at him through the glass that this wasn’t a bathroom and Starbucks was right next door.

He was drunk. I wanted to be.

We pushed open the door, I scooped up Magnus, Max hopped over the pee and we merged into the festive foot traffic and went on our way. Josh always says the sea of people in New York City is a delicate ballet of orchestrated chaos. Watching someone pee in our doorway didn’t stop us. We didn’t miss a beat. Especially Magnus. This was his favorite day of the year. That Halloween happened to be one of the best.

We didn’t know our last Halloween in New York was our last Halloween in New York. Isn’t that the way things usually go?

Moving to Texas forced us all to reframe how and what we think about favorite times of year – birthday months included. Like my fond memories of my mom working so hard to keep my birthday separate from Christmas, the chance for a snowy birthday or a white Christmas, the smell of wrapping paper, noble fir trees and sugar cookies. Or my early association of foggy mornings and dewy grass with the anticipation for possibilities and a new school year – or the December blast of icy, urban air opening an apartment door to slippery sidewalks to get Max to and from school – so excited it was his birthday month, too. Or the pendulum swing to fall in New York. The sounds of school street fairs. Crunchy leaves. Nuts 4 Nuts. Central Park turning her vivid green page to a sepia-toned one. The glow while walking the reservoir. Needing a jacket after Monday night tennis. I remember walking the Park as each day came and went where Magnus wasn’t here yet. Each day getting closer and closer to Halloween.

Unknowingly inching closer to a new favorite time of year that made sense given I already loved fall – but did not make sense given “Halloween.” If only Glenda the Good Witch knew.

But in Texas I don’t have the same likelihood of a snowy birthday or a white Christmas, or the ever-present scent of noble fir trees. In Texas we don’t have foggy, dewy mornings at the start of an early-August school year. We can get a blast of icy air but it’s not urban and it’s not from opening an apartment door to a slippery sidewalk to get Max to and from school. There aren’t sounds of a school street fair around the corner – and I have yet to see a Nuts 4 Nuts cart. Luckily, the leaves do get crunchy here and they do fall. But unlike our lives in New York, now we’re responsible for raking. (A trade-off I’m not complaining about. Josh, however, has a love-hate with the deciduous trees over our swimming pool and is convinced they’re taking him to an early grave.)

I doubt I’ll ever need a jacket after Fall tennis here, though.

But there are so many ways to add to our favorite months when some of our historically associated ones change. Some things change inevitably even when your location doesn’t. In a fantasy world, Magnus still has Ghostbusters themed birthdays and we’re getting stiff necks from staring up at Halloween decorations dangling from Upper East Side buildings until my dying day – and he would still leave off his letters at the beginning of words… In a perfect world, I’m still standing there in arctic conditions, with Luc whining at my hip waiting for Max to burst through the gigantic, idyllic, bright red double doors of PS 290, spilling onto a blocked off side street and the NYPD officer is at the intersection waving us all on by name, smiling and wishing us “Happy Holidays” before break.

Luc died. Magnus is a freshman. Max just started Grad School.

In some ways, everything has changed. But our birthdays have not. And how we associate our birthdays with our favorite times of year may evolve – but the miracle is, new associations don’t have to replace or override the historical ones. They’re not old memories – they’re beautiful memories we should keep fresh, but remembering the original associations as *part of our whole story and not definitively the *entire story is both comforting – and humbling.

Change is hard. Rewiring and reframing something that is already built is a lot of work and can take a lot of time. And people don’t like it, myself included – sometimes. But I think it’s necessary to grow. Whether you’ve had a big family move or your kids are getting older, change is in the air.

In my opinion, and probably the next Mayor’s (of Halloween and New York) the Upper East Side will always be the best. Don Filippo’s on Lex will always have the best Halloween pie waiting on the counter for us, Jose will always have candy for the trick-or-treaters right on the counter – and Maria will always hand me the best glass of weird, red wine in the city simply because she took such good care of my family and me all those years when either I was too tired, or Josh worked so late.

For the past four falls here in Texas, October and Halloween have looked for us like nothing I could have imagined. Magnus has made elaborate Halloween costumes the past three years. Not of the cary or pooky varietal of his cweepy-obsessed youth, but productions that are mechanical and engineered and sometimes months in the making. He has a big group of friends he trick-or-treats with. See? He wouldn’t be touring the neighborhood with me anymore, anyway.

Is he handing out candy like he did from his stoop when he was little? Nope. Now I’m the one standing at the door with the biggest mixing bowl I’ve ever seen, praying for Grand Central Station levels of foot traffic and receiving the most adorable parade of little kids from families in the neighborhood. This is my mayor moment. I’m going to be the house with the full-size candy bars.

There is one neighborhood here in particular that goes all-out on yard and driveway decorations – and one stand-out house who happens to be our first friends in Texas and now just like family.

Mr. Craig decorates his house and driveway like his life depends on it. Skeletons at least half of a brownstone wide by two stories high. He doesn’t store these things in a bin under his bed but in a storage unit! He dangles the same, life-sized mannequins disguised as the cariest creatures from his tree. He has fog machines and a light show in sync with pooky music.

He even puts up a faux, black, wrought-iron fence around his yard – which becomes a makeshift cemetery, like clockwork, every October 1st.

Mr. Craig is right on time. By NYC standards. And by Magnus’ standards. It is afterall, his favorite time of the year.

What I wouldn’t give to see Magnus crouch down and press his (no longer juicy) cheeks against the bars for a closer look at Mr. Craig’s masterpiece.

Sometimes I feel a little sad that this time of year doesn’t look or feel the way it used to. I guess that’s the plight of motherhood and memories. It’s all so temporary but the memories last forever. We have to remember to continue making new ones especially when our former memory-maker isn’t our backdrop anymore. Our present situations have so much to offer us. Not just as aid to help us move on, but to also help us grow and evolve. And meet new people, live new experiences, and add in new memories to help reframe our favorite times of year.

I wonder if Mr. Craig knows he’s got what it takes to thrive in the competitive Upper East Side Halloween world? I also wonder if Mr. Craig knows just how many gaps he’s filled in for me.

He’s helped rebuild and reframe one of my favorite times of year, unknowingly – and with uncanny detail and resemblance to a huge part our lives. Mr. Craig didn’t know we existed. And he didn’t know we were moving to Texas. He didn’t know what traditions we were leaving behind. Our change, and this encounter – feels anything but chance.

It’s August 27th and I got an email from Magnus at 8:11 with the subject line: IMPORTANT.

He’s reminding me we were going to go to Spirit Halloween today after school.

Turns out, Spirit takes up residency in vacated Macy’s with the same reliability and unshakeable commitment as abandoned Duane Reades.

Turns out, some things never do change.

I replied:

Just you an’ me, kid. Braum’s? Then Spirit?

I’m excited! It’s our favorite time of year together – your birthday and fall and halloween!!

Mom

He replied shortly:

Which I believe is equivalent to “Ok!” or “Cool!” But more likely “bet.”

Just because he pronounces all of his letters and words correctly now, doesn’t mean he speaks that way. We’re changing and evolving together, and 1,000% adding on new memories while reframing and rebuilding – and absolutely LOVING this time of year.