Halloween Treats

Halloween is another one of those days where having kids makes it exponentially more fun. Their exuberance is infectious. As soon as the calendar read “October,” Boots and Berzo were hard at work making Halloween decorations. One of Boot's first efforts produced a black cat that adorned our front storm door. Drawings of witches with green faces and black hats appeared on our windows. Pumpkins, bats, even eyeballs-trapped-in-a-spiderweb, graced our refrigerator and all other empty spaces in our home. Berzo would randomly shout, “I have to draw a pumpkin, Halloween is almost here!”

Our house interior properly adorned, the thoughts of my girls turned to costumes. Boots was a “spooky witch” last year and wanted to do that again—but with a new dress. Berzo decided she also wanted to be a spooky witch. Then she wanted to be Elsa, then spooky witch, and finally, after much deliberation, settled on spooky witch. Inspired by my friends Matt and Lori, who plan a family themed costume, I decided I would dress up as a witch too and form our own little coven. Easier said than done. Finding little girl witch costumes was easy, there were two on Zulily that were adorable and affordable, ordered, done. I had a difficult time finding a witch costume that didn't have the word “sexy” in the description. And by “sexy” they mean “kinky lingery sexy”. Charley didn't mind so much, but I dug deeper. After much searching I found a classic witch costume on Amazon. Horray! I ordered it up with a side of green face paint.

Feeling excited about our family costume, we looked up some warlock costumes for Charley, but there was nothing he could stomach wearing… So we thought perhaps he could be a torch and pitchfork wielding peasant farmer. Reception of this idea was cool, so I didn't get my hopes up.

Inside decorations? Check. Costumes on order? Check. Next item on the list, pester Charley to put up the exterior Halloween lights and decorations. The girls took up this task with their usual gusto. Then one unseasonable warm day we were playing outside and I thought I'd drag all the stuff out to see what was what, and if I might put it up. I laid it all out on the lawn. I asked Charley which end of the ghost lights needed to be on which end of the house so they could be plugged in properly, (I'd guess wrong) he decided to put them up himself. (Picture John Wayne, "Better let me take care of that for ya, little lady.")

I found some spider-web-in-a-bag and stretched it across our big bay windows and added a giant hairy spider. Charley put the spider lights in our red rock which is under the front windows, and Boots repositioned the spiders to crawl up the webbing. And so the first house on the block was all decked out for Halloween.

Then we waited.

We filled the time with a trip to the pumpkin patch and trial runs of our costumes and make-up. Then waited some more.

Then we all got sick. Then got better. Then Berzo got a fever, and I got another cold. Then Halloween was here!

Yay! Ug. I wish Berzo and I felt better, but yay!

Party planners extraordinaire.

The first stop on Halloween was to Matt and Lori's for Halloween dinner. Boots and I were late arrivals due to an early afternoon nap (for me-I had a cold) and a time underestimation error, but we made it in plenty of time to enjoy the festivities and food. As usual Matt and Lori put party caterers to shame with the delicious food presented in halloween theme. Spider web dips, brain shaped jello, witch's brew complete with fog and floating eyeballs. There were fried worms and all manner disgusting looking delicious treats.

We played a very cool game in which the kids found clues that would reveal the name of a witch, but be careful to avoid curses! You could barter for clues and curse remedies from other teams. 

All the while we visited and played and ate and drank, the rain came in sheets washing the sidewalks and roads clean. Then just as it became dark, the spigots turned off and the cool night air beckoned trick-or-treaters to come forth. And they did…

Spider Sam

We dashed home to collect Clark, Mary, Princess Elsa (Amelia), and Spiderman (Sam), then we joined groups with our neighbors and headed out. The kids formed an amoebic mass of nylon and neon that stretched to one door then slid past each other, pooled again then stretched to the next door.

The amoeba split when the longer legged nine-years-old-and-ups decided to cover more ground at a faster rate to maximize the candy collection, while the younger kids and toddlers decided on a shorter route through our neighborhood. About the time we were two-thirds done, the toddlers started lagging, “Mama, I think I have enough candy now.” (What!?! Could you imagine uttering such a phrase as a child? Kids today!) The older (of the younger) ones seemed fine with calling it a night so we nudged the toddlers on and made it home.

Loot time!!

Then it was loot time! Candy buckets were dumped and the content thoroughly examined. Careful choices of tonight's treats were made, in-between, ding-dong! “Trick-or-treat!!” Still in my witch costume, I revelled in the opportunity to play my part. I turned on my wicked witch voice, and told the children how tasty they all looked, and,  “Be sure to take some eye balls dearie; they have such a nice gelatinous center." *Cackle* "Oh yes, lovely they are.” One girl asked me how I got my face so green, and I said, “Oh, it's always like this dearie. It's getting it pink the other days, that's the work.” The toddlers sometimes needed some coaxing from their parents to come for a treat… Such fun!

Around eight my cold made my head fuzzy and my face paint was getting crinkley dry so I left Boots, my Wicked Witch of the West in training, and Amelia in charge of the door. They loved it.

After a shower, I put Berzo to bed and my little tuckered spooky witch went right off to sleep, with visions of Snickers bars dancing in her head.

Charley and Clark shared some pints and had more than a few laughs. Sam explored Berzo's toys without fear of retribution while Mary oversaw his activities and played along.

Boots and Mimi were in cousin/best friend heaven as they packed in as much playing as they could before the inevitable good-byes ensued.

I love these holidays—the ones that seemed like more of a nuisance in my twenties are suddenly, once again, magic.

Book Review: Secret Life of Bees

Powell's Books · Barnes & Noble

Sue Monk Kidd © 2003

For quite some time, every book store, garage sale, grocery story display had copies of this book leaning off the shelf trying to fall in to my basket. I'd pick it up, read the synopsis on the back, ho-humm and put it back down—estrogen and honey just aren't my normal flavors. Then during a library book sale it slipped into my hands, hid among my other selections and I didn't realize what had happened until I had it home. OK, already I’ll read it!

I’m glad I did.

The story is set in South Carolina in the 1960's, during the heat of the civil rights movement. It is a story of a young girl named Lily Owens who is tormented by the blurry memory of her mother’s accidental death at her hands. She lives with a father she dubbed, T. Ray, whose only claim to genius is inventing creative way to punish her, such as kneeling on grits piled on the floor for hours. Kneeling on grits!?

The bees are a character of their own accord. They appear in her room at night and disappear when she attempts to show her father. One assumes that his ambient malevolence drove them back into the safety of her walls. Eventually Lily captures one in a jar to prove it to him. Awash in guilty feelings, she tries to release it, but the bee spins and spins it the jar. She can't understand why it won't fly away. Then in a crux moment where she must face her father's impending wrath, she notices the bee is gone. She realizes that there's no lid on her jar either. She bails out of her father's house, breaks her nanny Rosaleen out of the hospital where she’s being treated before being sent back to jail, (Rosaleen was indicted for dumping her tobacco-spit from her jar on some white men’s shoes--they deserved it.) before fleeing to Tiburon, South Carolina. Which is a name Lily found written on the back of a block of wood, sporting the a label for Black Madonna Honey, she found among her mother's things.

This scrap of her mother's belongings brings Lily and Rosaleen to the home of three benevelovent black women who are, yep-you guessed it, beekeepers. Here Lily learns to send love to the bees, reconcile her past, collect honey, learn to trust, make beeswax candles, belong to something bigger than herself, cool bees on hot days, the truth of her mother’s story, cook honey, even understand her father, and finally finds the home she craved.

This is a heartfelt story that also has teeth. It challenges our perceptions and changes our lives in a honey flavored way.

Audubon Nursery Workday Daydreams

Photo by Cara

I was pushing a wheelbarrow filled with pots of Bunchberries and Indian Plum up a trail at the Portland Audubon Society on Sunday. It was a mess. A beautiful mess. The trail was littered with gold, brown, and orange leaves. Ferns, lichens and mosses climbed over each other. Trees intertwined with one another, and small plants and shrubs grew in random clumps. Life giving water pooled, dripped, and beaded everywhere. Sunlight filtered through this mess setting the golds and greens aglow as it sprinkled everything with its warm energy. I was awestruck by beauty and complete lack of order.

In human landscaped environments, we have strategically placed trees, carefully mowed and fertilized grass, wood chips to keep down weeds and to set off persnickety ornamental shrubs, that are often adorned by toxic berries. “Berzo! Spit that out!” Basically we have moved our indoor aesthetics outside. You are not allowed to pick, dig, climb or otherwise disturb the property of this park “nature” in any way. In other words it's utterly boring and even somewhat stressful.

Humans need the complexities and comforts of a beautiful mess. A natural environment that is wild and free. In such a place I can feel my intellect untether from the right-angles of modern culture, my creativity leaps with wild abandon into the heaps of leaves, coming up with blue slugs and an occasional gnome, as a vole stands on hind legs looking on. I brush the gnome from my shirt and he lands in puff of leaves. An owl swoops silently, the vole grabs the gnome and tosses him into the scythe like talons. The owl screeches but cannot let go. Gnomes taste very bitter and can be dangerous. Talons pierce the gnome's soft body and crunch his bones. He whispers an incantation in ancient Gaelic and the owl’s eyes cloud over, the muscles in the feet relax and the gnome, badly hurt but alive, falls to the soft forest floor. A soft thud heralds the arrival of the owl's body.

The gnome indulged his temper and kicked the owl and winced in pain. He then retrieved his moss colored hat to his head and disappears into a rotting log. The vole squeaks in terror of the too-close owl and in fear of retribution from the gnome. He decides to make himself scarce. The owl's eyes clear, he squawks in indignation as he rights himself, and takes off in disgust.

I shake my head and take up my wheelbarrow handles.

***

Our home require order. Our daily lives require schedules by which all things get done and not forgotten. Our learning requires self discipline as does our physical conditioning, caloric intake, and even spiritual growth. All aspects of our lives require, demand, and need order and discipline to thrive and be fruitful.

I posit that our lives also need organic, lovely, unplanned, chaotic, natural mess. Our intellect craves relaxation in an unstructured and unproductive, messy way to fuel our imaginations and refresh our spirits. To feel God, (or divinity of choice) we need to be among his creations as he intended them to live together--in an seemingly disordered state, that is really arrangement so complex as to be undecipherable to our souped up ape-brains, but that we sense on some level is really a web of harmonious, symbiotic exchanges of nutrients and energy. From the worms enriching and aerating the soil with detritus, to alders fixing nitrogen and preventing erosion to heal a scarred land, to a conifer providing homes for insects, birds and mammals, to the microbes that make up eighty percent of the world's biomass.

Although we may not be capable of full comprehension, we can appreciate the vast intricacies, respect the power of intertwined life, and be humbled in its presence. We should reject the notion that we could possibly improve upon nature and that taming it is anything short of an insult, but move to become stewards, benefactors (through fishing, hunting, foraging), and students of this chaotic yet beautiful mess.