At the last moment, Halloween was saved. My worst fears — that a pyramid-sized pile of candy wouldn’t materialize from my daughter’s well-worn trick-or-treating pumpkin — were allayed.
Long live Halloween … the night when dads gorge themselves on the spoils of their children’s hard work.
But this year, it wasn’t looking so good. My 11-year-old daughter had decided a week or so ago she wasn’t going to participate. No dressing up. No trick-or-treating with friends. No pyramid of sweetness for dear old dad. She would just give out candy at home … THAT WE HAD TO BUY!!!
My daughter only eats about a third of her candy from Halloween: pink and red Starbursts, a scattering of Skittles, Whoppers and a few other sugar-laden, artificially-dyed brands. They have to meet her high standards, and not seem tampered with. (If a cat so much as looks at my child funny, she blacklists the house, quarantines the candy as “tampered with” and turns it over to me.)
All that candy – Almond Joys, Snickers, Baby Ruths! – all become mine.
I spend weeks ahead of Halloween hand-stretching the waistbands of my pants for the inevitable expansion of my belly. (It cut-off circulation to my legs one year.) People ask me why I run so much. HALLOWEEN is why I run so much.
So when she said she wasn’t going – Wasn’t GOING!!! – I panicked. Where would I get my candy? How would I unstretch my pants? Would she ever trick-or-treat again?
Then, late in the afternoon on Halloween, I got a text from my wife. At the last moment she had decided to go with a friend. She quickly re-worked a costume from a previous year — no self-respecting child doesn’t keep a Halloween costume lying around emergencies — and ventured off without her parents. It was the first time my wife and I hadn’t been on a trick-or-treat in over a decade. We sat around the dining room table eating quesadillas and talking about how we were at a strange turning point as a family.
It’s sad thinking about how things are changing. How kids grow up, and slowly grow out of things that had once been so important.
“You know, we don’t have her for that many more years,” my wife said. “It’s a good thing you and I still like each other.”
“Tell me about it,” I said, wondering if there was some subtext I should take note of.
But I wasn’t ready to lament the past or worry about what the future would hold. For now, Halloween had been saved. Soon, a child would return with a bag heavy from candy. She would spill it all out on the table, rummage through it, declare most of it unworthy (or possibly poisoned) and then turn it over to me.
With my pants hand-stretched, I’ll dig into my horde of candy over the coming days, knowing that this pile of treasure might be my last, and that going forward things may never be the same. But for now, long live Halloween!