In our house the season of festivities begins in August: we have my husband’s birthday, then our wedding anniversary, then Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, my birthday, and now our daughter’s birthday in February. By mid-February there are no more celebrations and I get depressed because the holiday half of the year is over, until the next thing I know it’s started all over again.

It’s started all over again. Actually we’re in the crazy midst of it.

I’ve never gotten into Halloween, but it’s so much fun with a kid. C had a great time. The preschool that shares our building had trick-or-treating last Wednesday, so she came to church to help me hand out candy to the kids. So by last night she knew the drill: doorbell rings, kids yell trick or treat, drop a piece of candy in the bag. She doesn’t know to be greedy; she wants to give all the candy away. When we went trick-or-treating ourselves after dinner, the candy actually seemed superfluous; it was enough for her to say, “Too-tee-teet!” as the neighbors opened their doors. Shouldn’t it always be that way?

We walked along the sidewalk, flashlight tucked under my arm, unneeded—the street lamps were bright enough, creating circles of light we’d walk in and out of. But it wasn’t until later, when she was tucked in to her bed, and I in mine, that I really saw the shadow we cast. Tall Mother, hand in hand with a squat little ladybug with antennae askew. I gasped into the dark, because I have a toddler who went trick-or-treating and wasn’t scared of strangers’ houses and said thank you and took large bites of chocolate and how did she get so big?

But the shadow also made me sad somehow, like I felt when her father and I took her to the park to see the airplanes take off earlier that day. C loves the airplanes. They take off right overhead and she cranes her neck to see them and it is exhilarating. In her mind they could never be used as missiles. The powerful roar of the engine overhead could not possibly be followed by a crash and explosion. Someday she will learn that they can and it can.

That Someday is a long way away, but I know it will come, and somehow I can see an imprint of that day in the shadow of us, walking from house to house in the twilight. I can’t explain why I see all that, there in the outline of her and me, but I do. All of a sudden my daughter is Scout, walking in her Halloween costume as the autumn wind picks up, and she is none the wiser, but her grown-up voice-over knows how the world really is, and she says, “Thus began our longest journey together.” And I know that there are way too many Bob Ewells out there, and I pray for enough Boo Radleys.


To Kill a Mockingbird