Halloween was never a big favorite of mine.
I don’t remember much about trick-or-treating, and in half a century or so of being an adult, I can recall exactly one Halloween party I attended. It was 1985 and I was living in St. Louis. Most of the people at the party were watching Game Six of the World Series — the Don Denkinger game — and I was in another room flirting with a hottie who had come as Bo Peep and was not my date.
I had a much worse costume. The party was kind of a last-minute thing and the best I could do was stop by a store that sold scrubs to doctors and nurses. Luckily for me I had reached the end of six months of dieting and I looked great. I was 35 then, and while I felt old, I cannot believe how young I was then compared to now.
My daughter is a lot more into the holiday than I was. The picture at the beginning of this piece was taken this weekend in Tunisia, with five of her six kids in costume. Only Albanie, who has a mild eye infection, wasn’t in the picture.
The irony of this is that Halloween is Albanie’s birthday.
As for the others, I must be getting old. I have no idea what some of their costumes are supposed to be. I know Malachi, the oldest of six, is supposed to be a plague doctor because Pauline mentioned it in her weekly letter.
Both of my children are wonderful people and high achievers, but I have to give Pauline extra credit because in addition to her high-level job (chief consular officer for two African countries), she is doing a wonderful job helping to raise six children.
The thing that absolutely blows me away is the way she handles things that would drive other parents crazy. Her older daughter, our first grandchild, decided last year that she wanted to go by a different name than she had been given at birth. So with no fuss and Pauline’s blessing, Madison (who many of you may remember as the Amazing Baby from 2008) became Artemis. Arti for short.
Since they’re in Africa, the American kids don’t do the traditional door-to-door trick or treating. They have picked up the more recent habit of trunk or treating, which apparently works quite well as far as them getting plenty of goodies.
Still, better Halloweens that I remember having.
Heck, where I live nobody goes door to door for candy. The youngest “kids” here are past 50.
We’re bigger on the next holiday on the calendar — Veterans Day.