halloween snippets

~ We drove up to trick-or-treat with Piper on Friday. It’s tradition. She’s eight now, so who knows how many more years she’ll want to trick-or-treat with Tee Tee and Uncle Beloved. Gulp. I guess once that day comes, we’ll inflict ourselves on The Banshees until they get sick of us. Gulp. But for now, we cherish every second. And for now, she was still there in the driveway, waving to us as we pulled up. My heart exploded with joy.

~ She instantly showered us with some Halloween drawings as, well, showing-up gifts, I guess.

~ Sparky, Piper’s Tsu-chon puppy, has grown so much in the 6 weeks since I last saw him. HUGE growth spurt. Massive. Yes. He weighs 5 pounds.

~ The vet is teaching Piper how to seem more “alpha” to Sparky — which I think is so cute and helpful. I mean, to repeat, Sparky weighs 5 massive pounds. Still, apparently, Piper has been instructed to spend time each day carrying him around like a baby so that little despot will know who’s boss. Hahaha. I think I’m in love with that vet.

~ Before the big event, we played games. The first was some impossible High School Musical trivia/board/card game. Seriously. The directions made NO sense. My sister was reading the directions and none of us — not my 17-year-old nephew who was recruited to play, not my 14-year-old nephew who was recruited to play, not my sister, not MB, not me — NONE of us could make heads or tails of that stupid game. There was a whole set of cards that wasn’t even talked about in the directions. Needless to say, it was demoralizing to one and all, not being able to figure out how to play some lame-o High School Musical trivia/board/card game. Well, not “one and all.” Piper didn’t care. She had no ego wrapped up in that endeavor. The rest of us? Crushed. Crushed by our apparent collective idiocy. So we finally abandoned the rules and just asked each other the trivia questions. Oh, from High School Musical 2, which neither MB or I have ever seen. And somehow, through the wonder of guessing, I ended up winning our makeshift game.

~ After the HSM trivia/board/card game thrill-fest, we moved on to a game called “Apples to Apples.” It goes like this: Each round, you have a hand of 7 cards. They say things like “Senators” or “Goldie Hawn” or “Duct Tape.” One person each round is The Judge. The Judge turns over a card from the middle pile. Each of these cards has an adjective on it — fantastical, boring, slippery — and each player has to pick the card from their hand that they think best fits the adjective and put it in the middle of the table. The Judge then takes the cards, shuffles them up to keep it anonymous, and selects the “best” match. The person whose card is picked gets to keep the Adjective Card. Most Adjective Cards wins. So you have to be able to read your cards, duh, and choose the best fit from amongst some pretty sucky choices sometimes. And what seems like the perfect fit to you, may not seem that way to The Judge. SO subjective and vexing and fun. Sitting next to Piper, I became her official helper. She can read quite well actually; it’s just what was on her cards was mostly way beyond her knowledge base. Things like, oh, Muhammed Ali. Elizabeth Taylor. The Titanic. Paying Your Bills. Richard Nixon. Plumbers. Zaire. Etc. Poor Girl. She was a bit lost on this one, but she always wants to play. Whatever the game is, she wants to be involved. I mean, somewhere around here, I have a picture of her trying to play Texas Hold ‘Em when she was four years old. That’s Piper. Count her IN, whatever it is. So when the game started, I watched her carefully read all her cards and take in what they said as best she could. She sat quite composed for a moment, as if the things named on her cards were no stumbling blocks for her whatsoever. Everyone but Piper had played a card so her brother said, “Piper, put a card in.” A long pause. Then “Uhmm, Tee Tee ….. which one of these is boring?” I looked at her cards and whispered, “How ’bout this one? Paying Your Bills. That’s a good fit, I think.” “Oh, okay, Tee Tee.” Basically, the entire game went by like this. I played my cards and helped her decipher her cards. Well, sometimes she was able to make her own pick, but if not, it was always “Uhm, Tee Tee …..” at the very last minute. She finally won a round when MB took pity on her and just knew somehow that I had put The Titanic out there on Piper’s behalf for the word fantastical. Going on pure intuition, he chose it with a nice big flourish. She squealed in triumph. “I got the card, Tee Tee!” “All right, Pipey!!”

~ For her costume this year, Piper went as Sharpay (who else?) from High School Musical (what else?). She made sure to inform me, “This is Sharpay’s prom dress from High School Musical 1.” Oh, okay. “Is Sharpay your favorite, Piper?” “Oh, no. Sharpay isn’t very nice. I just like the way she dresses.” Oh, okay.

~ We started out trick-or-treating a bit early, I guess. Well, not that early, really. 6:20-ish. It was getting dark. But, still, there was only a trickle of kids out, which I think worked to Piper’s advantage because everyone was extremely generous. “Ohhhh, take another one, sweetie.” “Lemme give you more here, honey.” We heard this repeatedly. I’m telling you, every Halloween that kid brings the junk hommmmme. And she doesn’t really even like candy. She just likes to trick-or-treat. Hahaha. I’ve noticed over the years that men, in general, are more generous with the candy than women, at least in my sister’s neighborhood anyway. And if it’s a cute little girl tugging at their heartstrings? Fuggedaboudit. A couple of years ago, when Piper was a kitty, she’d go up to each door and say, “Trick or Treeee-eeeeat” in this high-pitched sing-song voice, stretching out the word treat into two syllables, as if she was singing it. It was basically adorable. No one told her to do this. She just did it. I have no idea where it came from. At one house, a man answered the door, Piper sang trick-or-treat to him, he suddenly closed the door and we could hear him calling, “Nancy! NANCY! You gotta come see this kid!!” Seconds later, he reopened the door with “Nancy,” I guess, and they oohed and ahhed over Piper kitty while shoving handfuls of candy into her bag. I can’t name it exactly. The kid just has that “thing.”

~ I am always proud of how she says thank you without fail and without being prompted. We tromped all up and down that hilly neighborhood for an hour and a half and, although she eventually said she was tired and we were still far from home, she never once forgot to say thank you and we never once had to prompt her. I heard lots of parents having to prompt lots of kids who should be old enough to say thank you on their own, so I was especially proud of our Sharpay. Good girl!!

~ There was an unexpected addition to the usual hearty thank you this year. I noticed that, at every house, after receiving the candy, after saying thank you, Piper would do her point-blank wave, smile, call out a cheery “Happy Halloween!” and turn to skip on back to the sidewalk where we stood waiting. It wasn’t an afterthought or an over-the-shoulder thing. No. It was on the doorstep. Eighteen inches from their faces. Every time. I want you to know that I want you to have a Happy Halloween. Hahaha. So cute. Again, no one told her to do this. It wasn’t rehearsed. It was just Piper being Piper. She’s just a good-natured kid and actually thinks of other people. Thinks of how to make them happy or how to share the joy that she feels about things. It’s something I’ve noticed over the years. It’s not a calculated thing. She doesn’t have a stage mom making her “perform” a certain way. It’s simply an outgrowth of who she is at the core. I noticed, too, that her spontaneous Halloween wishes would almost always get return wishes from neighbors, smiling through their surprise. She may have been dressed as Sharpay, but she was like a little Halloween sprite, that girl.

~ At one house, she forgot herself and when the people opened the door, she said, “Happy Hallowee — oops ….. I mean, trick or treat!!”

~ Every year, one of my favorite houses is just up the street from my sister’s. They have a small courtyard entryway with a koi pond and every year they go all out. What may be a peaceful koi pond by day turns into The Black Lagoon on Halloween. It looks deadly, dark, and bottomless. There is always something sinister in that water. You can only partly see it, but it’s always there, hinting at menace. A shadowy face. Something skeletal. You’re never entirely sure. The courtyard swirls with a dry-ice fog and eerie music whines as you tiptoe past the black lagoon. And you always tiptoe past that black lagoon because you’re always sure your eternal doom is going to rise up from its inky depths and drag you down with it into nothingness. Shiver.

~ Between houses, we’d chat about this and that, always on a Halloween theme. At one point, Piper shared with us, “You know, my friend told me that one house in her neighborhood ran out of candy last year and so the man started giving out wires and eggs and ice cubes.” She said it quite matter of factly, even the way she stretched out the words. Wiii-errrs and ehhhggs and ice cuuubes. Like she was reading a shopping list or something.

~ At one point, before we set out, MB and I were sitting on a loveseat in my sister’s living room, Piper smushed between us, chatting with my sister about some long-ago road trip she and I had taken. We were trying to remember who had been with us on this trip and I mentioned, “Oh, you know, The Moon-Faced Boy was with us!” (Although I used his real name.) Piper said, “Who’s The Moon-Faced Boy?” “Ohhh, well, he’s this guy that Tee Tee almost married.” (“Almost” was expressing it a bit dramatically, but oh, well.) “You might have had an Uncle Moon Face.”

Uh-oh. Not a good thing to say.

Because Piper, smushed between Tee Tee and her much-beloved Uncle Beloved, was NOT okay with this bit of information. Her eyes bugged out for a moment and she looked like she was going to cry or flip out in some permanent irreparable way. I tried to make the moment go away.

“Aren’t you glad you don’t have Uncle Moon Face — that you have Uncle Beloved instead?”

She snuggled HARD against MB’s chest, burying her face, and murmured, “Yes. I want Uncle Beloved.”

Later, as we reached trick-or-treating exhaustion and lumbered down the hill towards home, she mentioned it again. Holding both our hands, she said, “I’m so glad I don’t have an Uncle Moon Face …… there’s no way he could be as sweeeet and …. funnnny and …. stronnng as Uncle Beloved.” I loved the way she paused, thinking about what she wanted to add to her list. And, you know, when you’re right, you’re right, kid.

~ Back at home, we emptied approximately 2.39 tons of loot onto the kitchen table. Piper is basically unfamiliar with a lot of candy types and, really doesn’t seem to care about it too much. She’s not grasping and greedy about her stash. Quite the opposite. She always makes piles to give to her brothers, her mom, her dad. Likes to share with Tee Tee and Uncle Beloved. I think she just likes looking at the pile or the idea of the pile or thinking of what she could do with the pile. She likes to ask, “What kind do you like, Tee Tee? What kind do you like, Uncle Beloved?”

Honestly, I don’t care either, kid. Just hanging out with you is more than enough.