we are barely hanging onto things around here. and by things, I mean childhood holiday traditions and by we, I mean me. for her last official year as trick-or-treater, ava went old school slash classic halloween witch (though I believe in my heart of hearts she was really just channeling lydia). alternately, ezra ditched trick-or-treating altogether. I pretended not to care. for the record, I am no good at pretending not to care.
I could not even get him to carve the small pumpkin he'd picked out at the farm weeks ago. though he did at least manage to scrape his pocket knife across the bottom of it and call it a mouth. since the thing already had two rotten spots on it that looked like eyes, it was promptly pronounced a carved jack 'o' lantern. okay. he will never admit it but he loved that rotten little pumpkin thing. the more it rotted, the more he loved it. and so did I.
halloween 2017, I'll take it. melancholy and all. last year's halloween was an absolute disaster. this year, we lowered our expectations, kept to ourselves. and, it worked. this year, we celebrated what felt like the last of the last. who knows what next year holds? wait, don't answer that.
(halloweens past: 2016//2015//2014//2013//2011//2010//2009//2005)
"Melancholy and all" I hear this.
ReplyDeleteTimes are changing and it's hard pretending not to care.
x.
I know you know where I'm coming from-- parenting teenagers is so much harder than I thought it'd be. and not exactly for the more obvious reasons, but because you know your time with them is always changing, that they're on the cusp of moving on and out. all of it, steeped in so much bittersweet.
DeleteYes, to all of it!
ReplyDeleteExactly. This year was better than last year here... but next year we might be living somewhere else completely and who knows if Halloween excitement will stick around. Sigh. I have a clunky Typepad Halloween photo album tradition (it's amazing how much clunkier it feels to use Typepad for photo albums these days vs. when I started) and I have them from 2005-now. It is a jolt to see how much the girls have grown through those Halloween albums.
ReplyDeleteI just keep thinking, 'how are we already here? to this place where they are so grown?' and I sound like one big fat cliche but I can't help it.
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