2 halloween parties later.... 1 mac n cheese filled crock pot ... 1 parade of a roiling chaos of 40 pre-schoolers across a 6 lane road... 7 princesses, 3 spidermans, 1 panda, 1 zebra, 1 white lion, 1 robin hood, 1 hawaiian cat princess, 2 dinosaurs, 3 army outfits (scary). 2 blocks up and down in the rain... the sadness of lone old ladies answering the door with badly suppressed excitement and near tears for the one minute of kids jostling and screeching at the door, kids who forget to say thank you... Kids suddenly catching on to the magic of the whole thing - you get to run up to strange people's houses... you get to see inside... they are all kind and give you presents. Kids out at night! Everyone indulgent! Moomin flashed into a wide-eyed understanding and began waving his candy bucket, waving his sword, leaping like a gazelle after the throng of slightly older kids. "Let's go to the next house! Come on!"
Jo's daughter Elizabeth was very funny, getting into the proper post-trick-or-treat gloating spirit with me. We dumped out her candy and sorted it by type, taking turns to write down the inventory. I realized she did not know all the types of candy - how strange! Rook and I knew them all quite intimately. I think I gave her an incredulous look when she did not know what a Krackle was, or a Now n Later. She went around charging people and the funniest bit was when she instructed 4 year old Iz in how to make a credit card. "You put your first name and the last name and the year..." As if Iz didn't have a vat of her own candy! I had it in mind to make her do a statistical analysis of her loot, but the party got chaotic. I had some wine and mooned around wishing dimly that I had a piano.
Moomin came in the room horrified as I picked out the first few chords of that chopin prelude. "STOP, mama, that is too scary."
In class today the myths prof was giving possibly his most boring lecture ever, but there was a good bit about how rituals and holidays always refer back to a golden age. I think he said something about how people always think that the holiday or the ritual USED TO BE BETTER.
This made me drift off into thinking about memoirs where people wax poetic about their glorious childhood memories of spending a nickel in the candy store - of reading the sunday funnies on the floor in 1932 - of spending all Saturday in the movie theater watching cartoons and newsreels. Meanwhile their elders freaking about their trashy activities.
My generation now has the chance to wax poetic about the glory of Saturday morning cartoons. This glory no longer exists, as kids have videos and access to all-day cartoon channels. I have certainly heard my generation go on about how great Halloween used to be and now it can't be that way because people are paranoid and don't let their kids out. (Remember the whole weirdness in the 80s about taking your candy to be x-rayed?! Check urban legends snopes page for a fascinating monograph on the subject...) This is why I like Redwood City - people DO let their kids out. There seems to be a truly unholy trend in many places - taking your kids to the mall and let them trick or treat there. As if some random mall store employee is more trustworthy or accountable than your own neighbors...
I feel a little false nostalgia for a generation or so back... for some TrixieBelden-ish old neighbor lady inviting the gang inside for hot chocolate and freshly baked cookies... bobbing for apples? playing blind mans bluff? (buff?) This sort of waffly false nostalgia quickly leads me to the land of the 5 little peppers, the little brown house, and Laura Ingalls' first party as a teenager where she freaks out about how to eat an orange. "Oh, Ma, we each had a whole orange!" I have never tried bobbing for apples, but it seems quite disgusting and unpleasant. cold water on the face, and other people's spitty, half-bitten apples. Ew.
I also thought (not for the first or last time) of my current nostalgia for the happy modem handshake noise. (I just looked for an online sound file of this noise, and did not find it. I will hook up old computer and record the noise, which is curiously lovely. Could compose a song with it perhaps...) Oh the tense and exciting anticipation of the connection, the BBS or later the gophering and mudding pleasures that awaited! The thrilling net news and magic email! I am all powerful, I am magic, I will hack into the Pentagon! (Screw the web. Text, text, text. That is all I need.) When the modem finally did its successful handshake... joy. Like being at the symphony and hearing the orchestra tuning up, the chaotic notes resolving into a triumphant A.
And when it didn't... that dull repetitive beepy noise interspersed with static, as if the modem was dissolving into disappointed, confused sobs. Busy signals were particularly poignant, evoking moments of frustrated long distance love in the days before call waiting was common. Anyway, my point is, suddenly in class I began to imagine myself at 80 years old, hearing the happy modem handshake noise for the first time in decades, and weeping with joyous nostalgia.
I'm sure somebody is laughing at me by now. Nevertheless I am moved to tears by this thought.
Back to Halloween and rituals - I was made very, very happy by seeing all the kids dressed up. Their excitement was renewing to the spirit in a way I didn't expect. They were excited without knowing what it was all about. I also don't know what it is all about, but it seems to partly be about (if you are not just completely cynical about rampant consumerism) participating in a weird event where you aren't sure what is going on, but older people do seem sure of the ways things are supposed to be done: there are supposed to be pumpkins, jack o lanterns, witches, ghosts and skeletons; any other costumes are also acceptable; all sorts of strange songs and customs and foods. So the magic is actually that something particularly meaningless is being transmitted AS IF IT WERE MEANINGFUL - a shared moment of cultural insanity.
Plus, they were just really cute in their costumes so that all the grownups were tiptoeing around grinning and saying "Awwwww".