Tag Archives: Halloween

hungry and the mop

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Mess. Confusion.

I’m mopping the floor. I’m expecting someone. Ardently. Fearfully. The place is a mess. A bell rings. Too late. I’m too late. It’s too late. The bell rings with insistence. As I rush to the door, I fall to a horizontal position. Flow to the side… and turn.

What? Where?

My mind focuses down to a point before my eyes. My phone is on the night table, vibrating madly. It buzzes off the table, onto the ground.

Shit! It’s 7 a.m. again. I might as well get up quickly. Staying in bed means falling asleep and mopping the floor in fear.

As I step out of my room I bump into Noah, catch him before he hits the wall. He looks up at me with puffy eyes.

“Hey, dad. It’s dark.”

I look at the kitchen window. Actually there’s bright sunlight streaming in.

“Open your eyes, Noah, it’s nice and sunny.”

He lifts his eyebrows but fails to open his eyes beyond the embryonic slit stage.

“Oooouuuh, that’s too bright, dad. I wanna go back to bed.”

He leans his head against my belly. I rub the scruff of his neck, idly run my fingers through his hair. Something springs onto my hand.

LICE!?!

There’s been an epidemic at his school. I look at it more closely. A crumb from last night’s blueberry muffin.

“Gotta pee, dad.”

He runs off, dropping his pants as he goes.

“Make sure you open your eyes.”

As I move to the kitchen, I cross the open bathroom door and see him, head thrown back, eyes closed as he hits the toilet with a full night’s accumulation.

“Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhh……” he says. Total satisfaction. I don’t look too closely at the accuracy of the fire hose.

Choose your battles, I say to myself.

As I prepare our breakfast and his lunch, I make mental notes: last juice box, okay on bread for tomorrow, out of coffee, almost out of cereal, definitely out of lunch meats.

“Dad, dad.”

He comes rushing in, wiping his hands on his pants. I say nothing. Choose your battles, I remind myself.

“Dad, you know what sucks?”

Do I ever!!

“No, what sucks?”

“That we, I mean, me, I’m going to have to wear long sleeves on the rides. Because it’s cold now.”

“What rides?”

“The scary ones that they like, like …” He hops on the spot in the irritated impossibility of finding the right words.

He looks like a writer on a bad day. Like me on most days.

“We have to go, and stay up until, uhm, until at least 11 o’clock. You know.”

I stand by the moka coffee pot which is just starting to hiss on the stove. Still minutes away from kick-starting my brain. Noah has no such issue. He went from sleep to 100 mph in one urination.

“Dad? We get to ride on the new ride that they always like open every year, yeah we get to ride it first, you know.”

The coffee is rising. Like Reagan in the morning…

“Noah, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I already told you dad. The special Halloween night at La Ronde. Yeah, they have special freaky scary rides just for Halloween and then you get to be the first that goes on the new ride for the next year. Cool, huh? But you have to stay late, or else, it’s not like freaky scary enough.”

Wooouuuaaaaaaaahhhhh! The coffee expresses itself as it pushes up into the pot. I preemptively pour myself the first milliliters.

“I don’t know why dad. I don’t know why it feels so good to feel so scared.”

I sip the kahwa. Ah yes!

“It’s exciting because you feel really alive when you’re at risk.”

“Yeah, that’s it dad. You’re all excited because something bad could happen and you could like even die but then you don’t.”

“Yup.” You don’t die.

So who exactly was I mopping the floor for?

“Dad, you know that nobody ever died doing the rides at La Ronde. Yeah, so it’s scary, but good scary because you scream and you freak and then you laugh because you want to start over.”

I throw down the mop, fling open the door, and….

…wake up to a new day, much like any other, but then again, who knows?

Freaky, scary, but you don’t die and then you laugh and start over.

“Dad, I’m hungry.”

“Yeah, me too.”

 

 

A haunting…

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…number

“So, how’s life, on a scale from one to ten?”

Halloween evening and we’ve gathered at a friend’s house for a pre-Trick or Treat spaghetti dinner.

It has been our tradition since Noah was 5. A daycare buddy, Lucas, who’s still a friend even though they see each other only twice a year…at Halloween and at an annual summer picnic.

So Lucas’ Mother, a sweet very together audiologist,  genuinely cares to know.

So I genuinely try to answer for real rather than the usual reflexive, “I’m OK” or some easy joke.

“Dad, dad !” My very own Soul Reaper comes charging up the stairs. “Can we go yet, for trick or treat?”

“Mom, mom!” Lucas, as a construction worker, comes charging up the stairs. “Everybody is already trick or treating.”

“First, spaghetti…” , in unison, me and the Mom.

Kids are streaming in, families are gathering for the great assault on the neighborhood’s haunted houses, witches’ covens and other comically ghoulish candy givers.

The Moms gather in the kitchen, slinging spaghetti in bowls and holding their kids in place just long enough to suck down a few noodles.

The Dad’s gather in the kitchen and get involved in discussions about design, renovation, politics, while sucking down noodles.

I gravitate to the Mothers. Because I have to feed my kid and because I like women. I get involved in a conversation about language education and acid reflux in children.

I may not be changing the world. Then again, maybe I am.

My little Soul Reaper is just bursting out of his costume with excitement.

“Daaaaaaadddddd, can we go NOW, pleeaassee.”

“Mooooommm…..”. Lucas is hopping vertically as if he’s swallowed a pogo stick.

We gather the kids and parents, dictate a few rules than no one is listening to and the expedition sets off.

Instantly, the kids run off, screaming in pure adrenaline joy. The walk in the streets is a delight. The scene is pure fantasy with a host of characters,  funny and gross or weird and beautiful. The Dad’s do the walking while the Mom’s stay at home for the candy distribution.

This time I’m with the Dads.

As I follow the six kids we’re watching, the Dads hang back and chat or check their smart phones. I have a dumb-phone, so I watch my Soul Reaper and his Construction friend, followed by a geisha, an astronaut, a super hero and a princess.

I went from being a Mom to being a Dad, and finally, full circle, to being a kid.

I howl spontaneously to the moon. The kids join in without a neuron’s hesitation.

I suddenly realize I never answered Lucas’ Mother’s question.

“How’s my life on a scale of one to ten?”

Must remember to tell her that right now, this very instant, definitely…

… a fat, giggling 10 .

 

 

bury…

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…the dead

“Check this out, dad. It’s like the most fun I’ll ever have, ever, of my whole life like.”

This was last Friday morning on the way to the school bus. It has been the theme of his week. The upcoming unimaginably wonderful weekend.

“First, Alissa comes tonight and I can go on the computer…”

“Only if you…”

“Yeah, yeah, I know dad, only if I behave right at school. But listen, after I go on the computer, tomorrow … ”

Now that had an impact.

“…tomorrow it’s Edgar’s birthday and we go go go go…hah, did you hear me dad?…yeah we go go go go-karting. Aaaawwwwessssome.”

I must admit go karting is pretty awesome. Small, powerful, smelly vehicles careening around an indoor track in barely controlled mayhem.

Too bad it’s with a bunch of kids who have only recently learned to control their bowel movements, let alone hurtling vehicles.

“Yeah and then, Sunday, it’s the Pokemon Pre-Release Tournament where we get like, eh, you know, sixty, yeah, sixty, imagine sixty new cards that are not even released yet, That’s why it’s called Pre-Release. You understand?”

He’s told me everyday, several times a day for the last few days, so, yeah….

“I understand, Noah.”

“Yeah and then Monday its Halloween and we go to school in costume. Dad we gotta get gray and red and black make-up.”

“On the way home, tonight.”

“We need lots.”

“Of course.”

I’ve learned that you don’t argue about taste or quantities. My feast is another man’s poverty.

“And then, it’s Trrrrrricccckkkk ‘RRRRR  Treeeaaaatttt, oh yeah, oh yeah, aaaawwwweessssooommmeeee.”

He’s still dancing and singing as he disappears into the school bus.

That’s his weekend, so, by definition, it’s my weekend.

The hell with the things undone that rot my life. The unpaid bills, the unwashed dishes, the unswept floors, the unfilmed screenplays, the  women unloved, the depths unplumbed, the heights unconquered.

Saturday, I strap on a helmet and whoop in the noxious fumes of Kartomania.

Sunday, I rah rah and fist pump my future Pokemon Master on his quest through the Univa region.

Monday, I’m the bag man as he roams the streets as the Soul Reaper, harvesting candies in such abundance that I carry two spare bags for the overflow.

Halloween weekend… celebrating the departed through derision, fun and noise.

My illusions are lying in a shallow grave, in between the tombstones of Past and Future.

I have finished mourning them all.

BOOOOO…..you don’t scare me anymore. PPPPFFFFFFFTTTT…. you don’t seduce me anymore.

Focus, dad. Relax, dad. Enjoy, dad.

Just before he disappears in the school bus, this  Halloween Monday morning, my little Soul Reaper flashes me a smile and mouths a silent ‘Aweeeeeessssommmmeee’ complete with fist pump.

I may be slow, but I’m getting the message.

 

 

 

 

soul…

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…Reaper

“I’m so excited about Monday.”

Monday is Halloween.

“Today’s Thursday, right dad?”

“Wednesday.”

For some odd reason, Noah has not memorized the sequence of days of the week, in either of his two languages. Nor the months for that matter. Yet he knows dozens of Pokemon by name as well as their evolutions, strengths, Hp Powers and other arcane battle data.

Mythological battles are more interesting than stringing days of the week.

“So how many days, dad?”

“Count.”

“Grrrr”.

He’s almost nine so its cute for now when he growls. I wonder what it’ll feel like when he’s 18.

“5 days, that’s right, huh, dad? I wish I could close my eyes and, pop, when I open them its already Monday. I wanna so show off my costume at school. Do you think I made a good choice, dad?”

“Absolutely.”

He went from having no ideas for Halloween to being supercharged all in the space of a few minutes.

Once he found the right costume.

“Dad, can I try it on again?”

“Sure thing.”

“Oh yeah, oh yeah.”

He runs off to his room.

“Don’t look.”

He doesn’t close his door. That freaks him out even in full daylight. But I don’t look.

I promised. And I keep my promises. At least those I make to others. Noah knows how seriously he can take my word. I don’t make promises I can’t keep.

Except for those I make to myself. Indulgence, self-contempt?

“Turn around, dad, don’t look.” I sit still on the futon…pretending terrified petrification.

He sneaks up noisily behind me. He’s in full costume, with gruesome mask, black robe and hood.

The Soul Reaper sidles up to my ear. A deep cavernous whisper.

“I’ve come to get yooooouuuu.”

Would be scary, if his hot breath wasn’t tickling me. I try not to giggle, to look horrified instead.

The Soul Reaper jumps in front of me.

I’m startled. Recoil.

He pumps a heart in his hand and slime-green souls, reduced to howling proto-humans, move ominously out of his chest.

Cool costume.

“I’m reaping you.” His ominous hiss is accentuated by a zombie walk.

Too bad for the effect that he’s only three feet tall.

“Aaaaaaaaahhhhh.” I shake in fear.

“Hah…so cool! I gotta find a stick for like a staff, you know.”

He runs off. Hollers from his room.

“How many days again to Monday?”

“Count.”

“Grrrrr.”

Maybe this Halloween I’ll go disguised as a writer.

Soul Reapers, father ands son.

 

Space and…

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…Time

Halloween 2009

“Daddy, it’s going to be weird like at Christmas and my birthday and all that, now that Nonna is gone.”

“It sure will, Noah.”

No sense denying the obvious.

My Mother would sit in her living room in her Power Lift Chair, surrounded by crazy noise, wild song and fevered unwrapping of gifts. She was only semi-involved, one foot already in the new world that was calling her…echoes of my father, her sisters, her mother and all her world that had already gone.

But she was still there…a small soft ball of life and history.

“Dad, its weird, this year I have no ideas about Halloween and what costume I could wear. Last year, I was like ‘I could be this,’ and then I would change my mind, ‘Oh, dad, I want to be this other one instead’. Remember Dad?  I was so full of ideas that this year are just gone. I don’t know why I lost all my ideas.”

Mourning the gone.

“Cool, Noah.”

Gone is not lost. Nothing is ever lost. It only ends, transforms.

“Eh?” His eyebrow lifts, classic Noah.

“Yeah, this way your mind is all free and a new idea will pop in.”

“Really? But I liked the old ones.”

Enough people have left my life, after variable stays, for me to know that the old ones and the new ones always coexist.

Some people I can’t recall beyond their eyes or their body or their smell or a smile, a word, a touch or a thought. Others, I relive daily, as if the moments of our time together were a continuing reality.

Still others have only gone further in space, measured in mere miles and time zones.

“Well then, if you liked the old ones, you could wear last year’s costume.”

“Oh, no, it won’t fit.”

I know it will fit, but its last year’s … like trying to renew last year’s affections. Their beauty was their temporary nature.

Everything is by necessity, impermanent.

A lover who crosses for a moment is never gone. As is the parent who is there your whole life.

“Dad, I’m going to be like really too young when you die.”

“How’s that?”

“Yeah, I’ll be like only 55 when you’re going to die at a hundred.”

He’s good at math. And generous with my life span.

“You’ll be older than I am now.”

“That’s young, dad.”

Nice kid. Can’t help but agree.

“Is Halloween about the dead people, dad?”

“Well, traditionally, its a night when spirits and the living can mingle for a while. But that’s a story, true or not who knows.”

Short and probably inaccurate definition.

“Freaky.”

“And fun…remember Noah, all the kids running around, the haunted houses, the bags of candies…”.

“Yeah, and there’s always a poor kid whose bag breaks and who cries with all his candy around him. Every year. Not you and me, we’re a team and like you always have an extra bag where I empty the stuff when it gets too heavy. We’re champs. Why don’t the other kids remember the year before, dad?”

“We’re just particularly good at remembering.”

“Yeah.”

“After school, Noah, we’ll go to the costume store…find you a disguise for Halloween.”

“Oh, yeah, this way I’ll get new ideas. Thanks dad.”

Thank you, Noah.

Thank you, time, for the gift of impermanence.

 

Dark like…

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…a witch’s butt crack

“Dad, it’s the middle of the night. Why are you up.”

“I had to pee.”

“Daddy, you should go back to bed.”

Amusing role reversal.

“It’s 6h30, Noah, time to get up soon anyways.”

“But it’s so black. Look, dad, there’s no like you know, sunrise or anything like light in the widows. Freaky.”

“Winters coming, the days are shortening.”

“Imagine, dad, how freaky cool it would be if, yeah, we would go out when its dark and everything is open. All the stores and things are open and we go to learn at school, but at night.”

“Would be weird.”

“Yeah, but cool.”

As I warm his glass of milk, he stares down his breakfast pastry. He takes a mouth-filling bite and stares at it again.

He splutters a few flakes as he talks.

“And imagine, dad, La Ronde, yeah with you know like the ferris wheel but ooouuuhhh, nobody is on it….yeah and the like game, uh, uh, …”

“…stands…”

“…yeah, there’s nobody at the game stands but its all moving. Like ghostly like.”

He licks his fingers. Master of his pastry.

“And like, yeah, there’s a freaky park where the round thing is turning and the swings are swinging and its night and noooooooo one is theeeeerrreee. But something freaky scary is about to happen. AAAaaaaaaaaahhhhh.”

The sun is slowly rising but with little effect. It is really a very dark morning. The first after Noah’s one-day suspension from Grade Three.

Climatic commentary on my state of mind?

Aaaaaaarrrrggghhhh! I need to understand why he disrupts his class, why he doesn’t follow instructions, why he can’t sit more than a few minutes at a task without going wild.

“Feels halloweeny, eh dad?”

“Yup.”

“Dad, is there something wrong in my head?”

Love the way this kid just sucker punches in the balls at the most unexpected moment.

“Why do you say that?”

“You know, because I’m like a bad pear at school.”

My little frenchified pseudo-anglo mixes his colloquialisms.

“Noah, you’re brilliant. To quote your progress report, ‘Noah performs to a very high standard…”

“..when he wants to.”

“When you focus. Plus you sing on key, play the piano instinctively and you draw like you were born with a pencil in your hand. You’re smart and full of talents.”

“Really?”

“You know that.”

“I forgot.”

“Come on, time to get dressed for school.”

“Oh, yeah…it’s still super dark.”

He drops pyjama pants and underwear and runs naked to his room. He proceeds to holler. Poor neighbours.

“Daaaaddddd….I forgot, tomorrow is aaawwwweessssommmme. You know why.”

“Don’t scream Noah, I can hear you.”

“OK”  just as loudly.

“Tomorrow, there’s a show by this kid or not really a kid. I think he’s like old like a young man. Yeah, we learned about him in hip hop class. Yeah, he’s coming to our school. There’s something wrong with his legs. Like he was born like that. His legs are all small and weak. And he does breakdance and does spins and everything but with crutches. Sooooo cooooll. We saw a video of him. He’s called Luca Lazylegz. And he’s Italian like me.”

Noah may have something wrong with his head.

His Mother does, navigating on the other side of the ocean between the wonderful lands of Schizophrenia, Psychosis and Paranoia. And I am certainly “particular”, to be charitable with myself.

But I have no doubt that whatever is going on with him, we will solve and he will be fine.

Like Luca Lazylegz.

Even if today is as dark as a witch’s butt crack.

$10 000 000…

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…smile revolution

Someone has turned out the light in the city. Sunny summer has ended abruptly. The last three days have gone from very dark in the morning to very dark in the afternoon to even darker in the evening. All this blasted by wind and water and cold. 

The leaves have been falling by the branchful before they can even color.

No wonder that human history is filled with autumn revolutions. The sky is so low that the barely tolerable becomes totally intolerable.

“Dad, its October, that means Halloween soon. Right? Oh yeah.”

He dances and sings and smiles up a storm that pushes against the one beating the house.

“I don’t even know what I’m like going to dress up as.”

Imagine.

Branches rake the windows as the wind blows leaves and debris in a swirl.

“You know dad, I just thought of something really awesome.” His face is split in a wide wonderful smile.

I turn on a light in the living room. It barely helps. Noah is poised to explain, arms and legs akimbo.

“Yeah for Halloween we could get like two, no four, pumpkins and you know I’ll draw a face on one that has a smile like this….”

His delighted smile becomes even wider. He points to it.

“…yeah and then we’ll put it on the balcony, on the side you know where the squirrels go. Yeah and I’ll do another one with a smile like this….”

Now he gives me a crooked, pirate-like smile.

“…cool huh? That pumpkin I’ll like put on the other side. You get it, dad? Remember this, o.k.? So that when we get the pumpkins you’ll help, right? So, Pumpkin number Three, that’s funny eh? (he chortles like so many soda bubbles) Contestant Number Three, haha, that’s good, yeah,  I’ll give him this kind of smile, look, dad, look…”

A crazy, happy, enchanted simpleton of a smile.

“…a Sponge Bob smile, yeah, you see it dad? Good huh?”

He knows its good.

“And that guy we’ll put at the front door, on the side, like, so that there’s room for Contestant Number Four, hahaha (he’s cracking himself up)…”

The living room light crackles and goes out. End of the world darkness drops on us. That was my last light bulb.

“Ahhhhhh….”.

Noah rushes crazily to his arts and crafts tree, an old candelabra which used to star candles for sexy lighting and which is now laden with strings and masks and things. He unhooks something.

A snap and he lights the explorer’s lamp on his head, illuminating a triumphant smile. Darkness beware, Noah is here.

“And the last pumpkin, the last but not the least, hehehe (he’s on fire). well, he’ll be like this….”

A crazy, nasty, Addams family smile.

“Awesome hunh, dad?”

Now its an expectant smile.

Reminds me of something I read just yesterday. Research demonstrates that one smile generates as many pleasurable chemicals in the brain as being given $25 000 in cash. And that the average kid smiles 400 times in a day.

Enough pleasure for a $10 000 000 payday.

“No kidding, Noah…..awwwwweeeeesssssomeeee.”

And I smile at him.

October Revolution…here I come….smiling.