Cleaning Up From Halloween

I am gathering up our Halloween things, and among all the school project crafts that I’ve saved for decor, one of my favorites is M’s drawing of a mean witch. I love that it’s something that she did on her own, taping together standard paper so that her medium could contain her vision. I love seeing her concept of evil as a preschooler, with the bloodshot eyes and scribbled mouth. I love that she accidentally made a sort of anarchy symbol on the witch’s dress. And I especially love that she labeled it as a new writer first with the words “I ma men” when she did the drawing. I remember pulling it out on a later Halloween and she blinked at it, because she could have sworn that she’d written, “I am mean,” but clearly she’d misspelled a little. So she re-wrote it, “I am mean,” and that year she was satisfied. Then at another Halloween she felt the need to clarify further: “I am a very mean witch.” Okay, I’d said to her. We get it. She’s clearly a mean witch. Stop writing on my keepsake!

This was the first Halloween that M didn’t dress up. People are actually pretty enthusiastic about their costumes at her high school, but M wasn’t into it. If I’d ask, she’d roll her eyes and say that she was busy doing homework. Okay. She kept saying that Halloween isn’t fun, and I said that a great costume makes Halloween fun, but. . . no luck. She did pose for a picture with J and hand out candy before going to hang out at a friend’s house, at least. She asked to be picked up fairly early so that she could study. I guess a parent could do worse.

J, who loved being Rosie the Riveter last year, contented herself with putting on her tiger pajamas and drawing some whiskers on her face. She was, however, particularly proud of her kitty cat jack-o-lantern, which she carved herself.

There was a bit of drama involved when she couldn’t choose between two groups of friends for the trick-or-treating part. She ended up doing the first half of her evening with one set of friends and the second half with another set. That meant that I had to pick her up mid-trick-or-treat to scoot her from one neighborhood to the other. We had a few tense minutes when we thought we couldn’t locate her second set of friends. The girls’ weren’t answering their texts or even phone calls, and there was a teensy bit of fear that we’d cut the evening short and were never going to catch up with anyone. Then, luckily, we caught them. Phew. Even after all that, J wanted to bop back to her first friends for candy trading, and I was like: we’re done. Halloween is officially over.

It’s a bummer when Halloween’s on a school night, isn’t it? But now that the girls are older, they don’t usually get to bed until 9:30 or 10, anyway, so everyone was perky in the morning.

On to Thanksgiving! We’ll be hosting again. M said recently that Thanksgiving is her favorite holiday of the year, and J told me that she loves hosting Thanksgiving. So that’s fun.