Day, the First

Tis Now the Very Witching Time of Night

And so, we begin our month-long study, our Day By Day, with a joke, a witch and a yard full of Styrofoam tombstones.

The witch in question sits on a porch and the children must navigate the front yard cemetery to reach her and her plastic pumpkin full of treats.  

The joke is the price they must pay for said treats.

“Daddy,” Little Bean is whispering in my ear, “the joke, the one about the dog, what is that one? Hurry!”

I know exactly the one. I’m a dad after all. I was born for this moment.

She steps up to the witch and in a loud voice for all the children to hear, she says, “What’s the dog’s favorite part of the house.”

“Why I don’t know,” says the witch.

“The roof!” A punch line well told by a seven-year-old. Perfect mastery of a dad joke. Candy attained. Witch impressed. My daughter and her cadre of friends move on into the night.

The children wander like knights through the dark, entering realms of goblins, vampires and ghouls. They hold their treat bags in front of them, like swords, like the pounds of sugar are a shield. They are fairies and hobos that lay claim to the Day of the Dead and yell “Trick or treat” like it’s a hex - literally children of the night.

On this day when the boundaries between the dead and the living are thin as tissue paper, I'm lost in a haze of dry ice fog and melancholy; of memories of the souls who will be remembered in the days ahead and of the fortunes foretold in the divinations of the little kids wandering the neighborhood dressed as madmen and warriors and superheroes.

There is a direct line here, between jack-o'-lanterns made of carved turnips and carried by children to scare away the witches, and the flimsy Batman masks I wore as a child when I roamed the street, and the Descendants green and black wig Little Bean wears. The children proclaim their place as keepers of tradition, holy prophets of the streets and collectors of all that is sweet.

I'm grateful to Halloween as the herald of this month's 30 days of reflections. It feels appropriate to begin at the beginning and that's what this day asks – start with life, collapse into dust and then return to life.

In the Book of Wisdom, the part of the Bible traditionally used during the commemoration of All Souls' Day, there's a line that goes something like this, “In the memory of virtue there is immortality.”

In the contest of virtue, no witch or zombie can break them. The children smile through the smoke and mirrors, unaware that with every piece of candy, with every skip and song, all the skeletons clap their bony hands and the lost souls are found and the air crackles with immortality.

We are all lost, we are all found, we tremble in the night and find comfort in the light, where the glow of the orange, flickering Halloween lights reflect off the shiny candy wrappers and set the children’s eyes on fire.