Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

 Someone asked me once When do you stop mourning the previous Halloween and start looking forward to the next one? That's always been a hard question for me to answer, as I am always looking back or looking ahead, depending on the situation.  I often see what was, and what will be again, simultaneously.  But today, I went for a walk. Probably my first full walk since Christmas time. That last walk, the remnants were still there. Though it was a different holiday entirely, I still met some rotting pumpkins, and some dead leaves clinging to their brittle branches. Then two back to back winter storms came in February, burying us in two feet of snow both times. I don't know that I've ever felt more like I was in alternate reality, or farther away from Halloween. Today was different, though.  When Easter comes, you hear all this talk of spring, and new beginnings, and that sort of thing.  And I guess it never really hit me how that can apply to Halloween as well. Wal...

  My inner child's insistence at embracing Christmas has proven fruitful this year.  I will never love another holiday like I love Halloween. I never have, even as a child waiting for Santa Claus. It's a nice feeling, but never the same.  After plans to take pictures at a nearby farm fell through this afternoon, I decide to go for a walk instead. A short one, as it gets dark early now, and somehow I don't feel nearly as safe as I did when I wandered the neighborhood after dark in October. It's funny how you can feel like you're in a spooky movie, but still feel safer, more at home, than on the most benign of days.  I snap a picture of the landscape before me; a part of the neighborhood that I remember taking a few pictures of in October, and suddenly I feel so far away from those days.   I remember looking at this same stretch of street, longing to get lost, to find the portal that would trap me in a time loop where October never had to end. And yet...it ended. ...

 I went for another walk tonight. The sky was so gray and gloomy, it was absolutely perfect. These are the moments I live for, the moments I have to soak up before they're all gone. As I walked, I felt fully immersed in the October atmosphere. Once again as if I were in a movie or Halloween special. It's one of those evenings where you can just feel it.  But there is such a strange melancholy to this, the final countdown to Halloween.  October, for me, is life in its truest form. The time everyone and everything stops hiding. Decorations and costumes are more like windows to the soul. What you dress up as, how you decorate...it all feels like a reflection of what's just beyond the surface. The parts of us we hide, but wish we didn't have to.  It's strange how fleeting it is. I walk tonight, and it feels like a celebration, but also a painful goodbye.  I look around at all of the decorations I see, and know they won't be here soon. Some of them will disappear imm...