When I was very young, sometimes the changing of the seasons would take me by surprise.
I didn’t quite have the rhythm of things down yet. As I got older, I learned the habits of everyone and everything around me relating to Halloween. I knew which neighbors decorated first. I knew when the leaves would start changing. I knew when things would start appearing in stores. To this day I have it pretty much down to a science, and you might argue that if I’d put half the effort into anything else that I have into Halloween, I’d be some sort of highly successful corporate executive, or something.
But that’s not me.
Anyway, one day, when I was about six years old, I went for a walk around the neighborhood with my grandfather. This was a fairly regular thing we did, when he lived with us, but it was always a fun time. My grandfather encouraged my imagination and inquisitive side like no one else. There was always something new to discover, even if we’d walked the same path a hundred times. And on this day, when we got to the end of the street, where we’d usually turn around go back in the direction we’d come from, I spotted the first signs of Halloween in my neighborhood that year.
About twenty little ghosts, made of leaf bag material, were hanging from a tree in a neighbor’s yard, just close enough to touch.
I was absolutely enchanted. I referred to them, for some reason, as “spookies”, and begged my grandfather to let me take one, arguing that the people who inhabited the house would never know, since there were so many. I tried to decide which one of the “spookies” I would adopt as my own. Some had orange bow ties, and some had black. Some had vampire fangs, some had their tongues hanging out, and of course, some had that traditional ghostly “Ooooh” face. My grandfather, of course, didn’t let me take any of them. After much protesting on my part, we headed home, where I continued to talk about nothing but the “spookies” (I think I even cried because I wanted one so badly!) until my mother had an idea.
I didn’t think much of her fiddling around with a paper towel, a lollipop, a rubber band, and a black marker, until she suddenly handed me a little ghost made from a lollipop.
I was so happy to have my own version of the “spookies” I’d seen earlier in the day. I carried this little guy around for the rest of the day, and kept him near the alarm clock in my room, probably near the witch cupcake pick from my kindergarten class party, until he became sticky one day, probably from temperature changes and the like, and had to be disposed of. I never did forget him, though. (The one pictured above is one I stole from a delivery driver at work a few years back, after a customer gave him a handful!) I always wished he could’ve hung around longer.
This year, an artist friend of mine on Instagram, Stephanie AKA ‘leatherandjade’, created a faux lollipop that reminded me so much of that day in my youth that I had to have him.
Sometimes I think I am the luckiest person in the world, to be able to see such reflections of the things that helped shape me into the person I am today, in new things that I discover in my spooky travels. I look at this lollipop ghost and suddenly I am six years old again, reaching for a “spooky” on an unknown neighbor’s tree, to after have my needs satiated by my mother’s sudden burst of creativity.
I may not have been able to steal a ghost that day, but I took with me a memory that will always stay inside my Halloween heart.
Stay spooky, my friends.
Comments
Post a Comment