I forget this every year—in October, there are places where it is no longer safe to walk. If we want to go to our friend Peter’s house, we can’t go up the street and around the corner as we usually do. If we need to get to daycare, we have to turn and walk in the exact opposite direction first, before U-turning around the block. And Ezzy’s house? Forget it. That street is riddled with danger.
The Halloween decorations are out again, and some of them are scarier than others. Some houses have cheerful pumpkins. Others have black cats. Then there are the skeletons, the witches hanging from trees, the bloody severed body parts. On Ezzy’s street, there is a demonic baby with red eyes crawling on the rooftop. That’s why we can’t go over to Ezzy’s until November.
Every year, I forget how much terror these decorations create for my children. Sometimes we can protect ourselves by crossing the street. Sometimes they close their eyes and I hold their hands until we pass. Sometimes riding a bike really fast helps. But there are some houses, some days, where we can’t pass by at all.
I love Halloween. Sure, I feel weird about my kids getting a lot of candy, and worry about things that might be even more creepy than the demonic baby. Still, it seems like a generous thing, to make your house look sparkly and spooky, to show a brave face to tiny trick-or-treaters, to come up with creative ways to celebrate, six feet apart. One of our neighbors has dozens—many dozens—of pumpkins, skeletons that are dressed in witch costumes, a giant statue with a pumpkin head, purple and orange lights around their yard. Another creates an elaborate structure—some years a castle, others a dungeon, and hangs dummies from the trees. (I confess that this part makes me nervous—I’m worried someone will get in a car accident, thinking that there is actually a person hanging in the elms.) And there’s a family near the elementary school that every day in October—every day!—re-positions a pair of skeletons into a new scene.
My kids love those skeletons. They love seeing the creative things that the family comes up with. It’s a gift to the neighborhood, all the decorations, even the scary ones.
It’s a gift to me, too, because it reminds me that even during the rest of the year, there are houses I cross the street to avoid, places that bring back memories, whether they be skeletons or something more like a blow-up candy corn. Sometimes there’s a specific reason—the man there had once shouted at you to get out of a tree, or there is a large, unfriendly dog. Other times it’s just a feeling: do not linger here. Other times, houses give off a friendly vibe, whether or not you know who lives within.
Neighborhoods are maps of these feelings, and the longer you’re there, the more they layer over each other. There was that couple who lived in the house with the wisteria and bougainvillea since it was built in the 50s, the large family of caretakers that moved in to help them, and now, the retired officer who had to repour the foundation to make everything level again. There’s the other house that was blue, and then was a pale brown, and now is white clapboard with succulents in front. With each iteration, the houses draw me in, push me away, invite me to step a little closer to the fence. There is the sadness of friends’ houses that are now filled with strangers. And then there is the welcome of houses that used to look like empty haunts, homes that are now filled with friends.
*
Top image by Flickr user Vivian D Nguyen under Creative Commons license