Fear - Not Loathing

Fear - Not Loathing

This Halloween, we had our own fears. Money took a big bite out of Treats (candy) this year. Not only treats were cut, but also the inventiveness and number of our decorations. That was all depressing to me. We didn’t have as much to see. We didn’t have as much candy to give out. But, even with these fears, the lights stayed on and we did what we could. As I age, I stay perpetually afraid this will be the last year we’re able to do Halloween and Christmas as we have. Seriously, I worry about that. But, more importantly, I’m worried about the kids, what they make of the world, and the growing ranks of adult-children who are making a mess of our world. The chronological children are trying to stay afloat amidst the impossibility of our broken ideas and behaviors.

This, then, is my annual Halloween Report. It’s my barometer of the status of youth (and, to a lesser degree, adults) as revealed in the a single observed holiday. Last night, we saw lots of princesses. What was that about? We even asked two teenage girls (dressed as princesses) about what girls in general were thinking when dressing up as princesses this year? Were there popular movie characters we were unaware of? Uh, we don’t know. I guess they weren’t expecting to be interrogated about princesses when Trick or Treating.

We saw one young black young man dressed to the nines like a singer on a cruise ship. He had a top hat, vest, and was perfectly in character. He was, every inch, the actor! Mom was on the porch, clearly proud of him. She should have been.

We saw lots of parents walking with their kids. We even saaw adults who were costumed, even one male adult dressed up as a skeleton. That whole family came to trick or treat, though I don’t remember any adults taking candy.

Neither my wife nor I remember anyone who acted cocky; not even the teens (the teens aren’t usually jerks but they are, as psychologists say, differentiating themselves). Overall, there were fewer people this year? Why? Are we all further retreating from our neighbors and communities? Usually, haywagons of people arrive around 7:45 pm disgorging young people.

There was one young princess who loved Cassie (our English Cream Golden Retriever). We think she could have spent an hour talking with us (while Mom or Dad waited at the sidewalk). We would have enjoyed talking with her. She was a sweetheart. Toward the end, a young male teen came by and loved on Cassie. I was surprised to see his escort for Trick or Treating was an older male. His Dad? I’m assuming so. At any rate, I watched as Dad and his son walked down the block, close and side by side. How many Dads consider Halloween important enough to go Trick or Treating with their sons? The last visit was the Mom who returned with her daughter asking if her daughter could say Hi to Cassie again. For her part, Cassie could barely stand trying to see over the bushes: Who’s coming next? She “kissed” almost every hand that came her direction. There’s so much that is fearful these days, much of it created by supposed adults. The kids wanted just a little edge toward fear, but mostly wonder, kindness, lights, sounds, and gentle dogs.

My entire night was filled with questions and possible stories about ourselves, those who came to visit, our dog, and our hard and cruel lives in these times.

Years ago, my wife and I talked with two funeral home owners whose families had been doing two generations. In their early days, the owners said, their father would embalm the body in the home. While the death care was going on, family stayed elsewhere in the house or on the property. People came from all around to pay their respects. By your sixteenth birthday, there was no one who hadn’t been around death. They saw death care in their own homes. The good thing about this was that death was real. In our times there are people who are twenty-five who have never been to a funeral! This is a shame. The kids who lived around death, even when their granddaddy died, saw the neighboor kids playing. They learned there was a time when grieving people recover and learn to go about life. They learned how to live through the fear and pain.

This year, as we shifted our Halloween plans, my wife said, Kids need some fear. Having been a Licensed Professional Counselor and ressearcher, she knows what she’s talking about. After over a decade of doing Halloween observations, the joy and value of communal safety in this once-a-year ritual is more apparent than ever.

Further questions:

• Why princesses?
• I was proud of a male walking a teenage male to do Trick or Treating
• I was thrilled with the number of kids who let our dog kiss their hands. Again, the communal was important: some kids who seemed scared of our dog at first, saw other kids pet our dog and they gained strength to try it themselves. This is the power of community.
• Each year, I’m impressed by the number of young people who are kind and explicity say, Thank you..
• I was impressed by many adults who obviously want their children to have communal experiences. These people nurture these experiences in their children.
• I am very concerned about the darkness of our current political situation where there are people who live to peddle ideology of doubt and fear. Particularly since we are less than a week from Election Day, I’m fearful that people we should be afraid of are shielding children from necessary communal experiences. Kids who should have been trick or treating weren’t. Thus, we didn’t have as many people as we usually would: from upt to 120 children visiting to about 75. Why?