2018 November 6: Tricks and Treats

I loved Halloween as a kid. The dressing up for school parades, the running around for (what seemed like) hours, trailing the rumors of full size candy bars all through the neighborhood, our costumes covered by winter coats (I grew up in one of the suburbs of Chicago). The inherent subversive nature of it all was what really made Halloween such delirious fun: for one beautiful evening, the doors to a world outside after dark were flung wide open! The streets would darken, my brother and his friends invariably would tear off and leave me - but it didn't matter, because we knew almost every kid in the neighborhood and so I would find my pals and wander around with them, concocting plans about trying to return to a place that had the best offerings without being called out for repeats, eating candy all the while. 

treats

When our kids were born, then, you can imagine how excited I was for Halloween. Not only for the candy, but for the costumes! The pumpkin patches! The leaves crunching under our feet! Babies and my favorite season is always a winning combination.  Just look at these cuties (our lil pun'kin when she was 7 months old and our adorbs Harry Potter at 8 months) in their mama-knitted hats:

 

As they got a little older, I was totally down with the whole month of October, culminating in dressing up and going trick or treating with our besties and their kids, pulling a wagon for the tired feeted ones and having a couple of drinks on the go. Trick or treating: it's not just for kids any more.

Fast forward to 2013 and the first Halloween since my diagnosis. I was in rough shape that October: since April, I had undergone two major surgeries, acquired a wound infection that led to me having to wear a "wound-vac" (which, just like it sounds like it is, is a small vacuum that sucks all the goo out of your open and packed incision. Not only was it uncomfortable and somewhat loud, but I also had to wear it 24/7, which made getting out and about a bit of a juggle - especially on the days I also had to wear my take-home chemo pack of 5-FU...), survived a major surgical error that had led to the transection of my inferior vena cava and a host of circulatory and blood issues associated with that, and taken 10 rounds of FOLFOX - a pretty strong chemo cocktail.  Walking was a challenge on many a day.  But I was determined to trick or treat with the family! 

And so I did.

We went to my mom's neighborhood, which was small and had houses close together. We held hands and ventured out into the still and starry night. And it was the most magical Halloween in my recent memory. Because I was out there, and I had been so afraid that I wouldn't be. Our babies were joyful. My husband lavished me with assistance and love. We didn't stay out very long - but it was long enough to prove a point to myself. That life continued, and I was being swept along with it, living despite my fears and my pains and my anxiety and my disease. It was a turning point for me, a joyous treat of a turning point. The recognition that I was going to keep living until I died began to take root. That sounds so obvious, doesn't it? Of course you're going to live until you die. But it's pretty profound a realization. A decision, really! Not to just sit passively and wait until the boatman arrives, but instead to venture out and explore. To, in the words of Paul Simon, "Continue to continue." The body that had so shocked and disappointed me by harboring the ultimate criminal - cancer - it had so many capabilities and so much stamina and energy to offer, and I was just at the very beginning of finding that out. I'm still discovering it. 

All in all, 2013 was a truly magical Halloween, an evening full of treats.

2013: Kitty cat and Ninja Turtle

tricks

Sigh. This year, our family also enjoyed plenty of treats - but also experienced one really nasty, heartbreaking trick. 

First of all, we decided to dress up as a family this year, possibly for the first time ever. Why not, right? Now that we have a 7th grader and a 4th grader, we know that the days of dressing up soon will come to a close. So we have to make the most of the opportunities that remain! After a surprisingly brief discussion, we all agreed that it would be awesome to be "the Peanuts gang dressed up for Halloween." This turned out to be laughably difficult to explain, because most people who asked would hear the answer and assume that we were dressing up as Peanuts gang characters. They didn't realize that our characters were ALSO dressing up to mimic the costumes they wore on "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown".  Choosing characters was easy and argument free: I had to be Lucy (dressed as a witch), Nick wanted to be Pigpen (dressed as a very dirty ghost), MJ would be Charlie Brown in his ghost gone wrong costume ("I gotta rock..."), and Finn would be Snoopy as the WW1 Flying Ace. Here we are, all ready for the Great Pumpkin to appear:

Each kid invited several friends over and I invited their parents too, and so we made a little party of it. Everyone scarfed down some sandwiches and popcorn and fruits and veggies (so they wouldn't be eating 10 lbs of candy on an empty stomach, fingers crossed) and then the kids were off, with a number of parents in tow. My O2 had been low that day and I woke up not feeling great, so I stayed back at the house along with several of the other moms and manned the door, by which I mean I drank a cocktail and chatted. At one point, the boys showed up for a quick break (and some decided to leave their first batches of candy so their bags wouldn't be so heavy!) and were off again into the very chilly but glowing night. Our neighborhood, it must be noted, appears to have been designed with the maximum amount of candy gathering in mind. There are lots of green spaces with houses galore, small lots, tons of families, and many indulgent people in charge of administering treats. Full size candy bars are not unheard of, and neither are homes that offer parents a cocktail or snack. The place just runs rampant with kids. It's truly trick or treat dreamland. 

It was as the boys were returning home that the trick happened. Just a few blocks from our house, my sweet Snoopy was with 4 boys and two dads...when suddenly, some punk middle schooler in a Guy Fawkes mask ran up and yanked his pillow case full of sweets right out of his hands and ran away! That's right! SOMEONE STOLE HIS TREATS. One of Finn's friends and one of the dads gave chase, but the boy got away.  

A few minutes later, several boys arrived, out of breath, with the terrible news. And then in walked my sweet baby boy...looking the saddest and most dejected it is possible to look. His Snoopy nose was smeared, his giant dark lashes filled with tears. I'd made his costume, and so he dragged himself in the door in footie pajamas. Is there anything more awful? And oh! his heart - oh, friends. From across the room, I could see that his heart clearly was dashed to pieces. I scooped him up and snuggled him, sharing his sadness and his shock and his dismay. My own heart broke as I held him, my kiddo who absolutely loves Halloween and had been so full of anticipation, excitement and zest for the evening at hand. We cuddled and cried for a few minutes; I dragged him onto my lap and rocked him in my arms, although he was all bony not-so-little-boy arms and legs. I could feel his distress seeping into me.

And at that moment, I realized what a gift it was, to be sitting there holding him. That first post-diagnosis Halloween, when I had just begun to dip a toe in to the world of the truly living again - half a decade had passed since that trembly, hesitant, magical evening. And here again was another kind of magic. A magic gift of parenting. Of being right there, right then. And I was very aware suddenly that how we moved through this small tragedy was really quite important. Because it wasn't about the candy, of course. It was about losing faith in humanity, about coping with unexpected and awful things that happen for no reason at all. In some ways, I mused later, it was like finding out I had cancer (you'll find that everything is an allegory to having cancer if you think about it long enough, and some of us tend to think about everything FAR more than long enough).

I wiped my eyes and wiped his, too, and we began to chat. We agreed that it was a terrible thing that had happened, that sometimes terrible things do happen, and that we sincerely hoped that this act would result in the thief acquiring terrible candy karma for the rest of his days, and perhaps he would even break a tooth on a particularly hard sweet that very night. (In my defense, I was still dressed up as Lucy -  I had to stay in character, right?) And then we looked around at the room and saw the most marvelous event taking place: all seven of the kids in our living room were busily taking handfuls of their candy stash and making a giant pile of candy in front of Finn. My daughter's friend Ruthie asked what Finn's favorite candy was, and then went through her bag and found every last Kit Kat she had and added it to his growing mountain of sweets. His new friend Dylan looked over his candy, grabbed several big handfuls and contributed to Finn's new treat pile. Then he looked over his remaining stash, hesitated about 1/100th of a second, found the FULL SIZE Snickers he had been given, and presented it to Finn with a huge smile. 

The friendship and caring in that room made me cry again, I'll admit it. These kids were so generous and loving. Parents weren't asking them to do this - they just did it, and they did it with grins so wide that you couldn't help but feel cheered. Even Finn was smiling as we leaned into each other.

My friend Lisa came over and looked Finn in the eye. "That was really a shitty thing that happened." But she said it with a British accent, so she sounded posh and dignified. Finn nodded seriously, and threw in his own two cents. "The kid who did this is a motherf***er." Lisa and I both nodded and tried not to laugh. I should have reprimanded him, I suppose, but he really nailed it so well that I didn't have the heart. And it really was a swear-worthy moment. I have no idea how he learned that filth, of course, but I guess even the elementary school playground has its seedy underbelly. 

Before I was ready to unwind his spaghetti limbs and let my baby boy go, we talked a bit more. Terrible things happen,  we agreed, and we don't know why. But terrible things happen to pretty much everyone. It's not the event that matters - it's how we react to it, what we decide to take away from that experience, that makes it important. Yes, a punk stole your candy (and, I sniffed to myself, your innocence!); there are bad people in the world. But look at the community of people who immediately came together to lift you up and help you heal. What an amazing thing it is, to love and be loved! Our time here on Earth is fleeting, and we alone get to define the experience. How brave and courageous and life-affirming it is to choose love, to choose letting go, to choose faith in humanity and ourselves, to choose the light even when things feel darkest.