It's Almost Here...

Tomorrow is the designated trick-or-treat day for the kids at the seminary, which means I'll have to hurry home from my doctor's appointment to help Adam hand out candy.

It also means Adam will be buying said candy from the store tomorrow— bags and bags of it. OMFG HALLOWEEN CANDY YUMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!

Seriously, folks, Halloween is all about the sugar. So many delectable sweets, so little time!

When I was little, Halloween was one of my favorite holidays; I loved choosing a costume, preparing for the big day, dressing up, getting free candy, and seeing all my friends look so different. Going to school was always awesome on Halloween— Power Rangers and black cats roamed the halls, and witches and doctors taught us math and science as we snacked on mini Snickers bars.

Of course, grown-ups were always trying to spoil the fun. My parents were usually pretty cool about it, and although they did ask to glance over my candy every year before I ate it, they never confiscated anything. (By the way, did you know that Halloween candy poisoning is an urban legend? I was interested to learn that the only recorded cases of poisoning through Halloween candy were intentional poisonings— like the dad who sprinkled poison in his son's Pixie Stix so he could collect on a life insurance plan he'd taken out in the boy's name.)

Some of my friends weren't so lucky. In elementary school, we all pitied the Jehovah's Witness kids, who had to leave the room and do math worksheets while the rest of us ate homemade cupcakes and played trivia games. In middle school, it was the evangelical kids (or the kids whose parents were extreme right-wing Catholics) who got sympathetic looks, since their parents banned the celebration of Halloween under the guise of "it's the devil's work!"

Now that I'm a grown-up, Halloween is definitely still fun, and I get to celebrate it however I want! We're going to go to the infamous Halloween parade in the village (we hear there might be drag queens there, and some of you may recall that my husband has a deep affection for drag queens— he says it "really takes balls to wear a tight dress and heels like that") and we're going to the campus Halloween party, too. Our costumes? A cow (Adam) and a milkmaid (me)!

As I write this, part of me looks forward in time— past this Halloween to Thanksgiving (my mother-in-law and one of my sisters-in-law are coming to visit us) and Christmas (we're going back to Ohio to visit with family members from the 24th of December until the 3rd of January). And an even smaller, quieter part of me looks even further into the future, to a time when we have a little ghost or alligator or princess to take around the neighborhood, when my sisters and I can take our kids out together and spend time arguing about which of us let her child dress inappropriately or unseasonably this year. (I'm looking at you, Sarah! :P)

Holidays are fun, not just because of what you do during them, but because of who is there with you, and because it gives you a kind of window into both your past and your future— you can remember old childhood traditions and you can anticipate continuing those traditions with other people down the line. I just love the feeling of simultaneously being both young— with so much of my future ahead of me— and mature— with so many great memories of the past to remember.