October 31, 2017

All Hallow’s Eve. I thought of the best Halloween of my life, It must have been– what? 1971. George and Denny and Kit and a few others of us ran to the Hiram graveyard, because we knew we would never see a Halloween like that again, under a full moon, the night clear as steel, us friends and, though we never put the name to it, lovers. I knew as I ran there that there would never be another one like it, and I was right. I’m running there now in my memory, but with an odd perspective, ten feet above the sidewalk, as if a I were a giant, or a floating spirit, and the round moon looks directly in my face.

The Halloween of 5th grade, I think it was, when I was getting to go out at night in my costume, when my father stopped me and said I was not going to trick or treating that night, but instead I was going to work in the garden.
“Why?”
“Because I said so.”
“But, it’s already dark–“
He hit me in the mouth and trotted me out to the tiny garden beside the house and showed me what he wanted me to do. I had no idea what I had done. I had no idea what was on his mind. I sat against the wall and sobbed, drawing myself in so the trick or treaters wouldn’t see me, nor I them. I felt the joyful spirits of the night drawing away from me all around. It was the worst night of my life up to that point. It was too dark to do anything he said, so I just sat until it was time to come in.  I wouldn’t have hated him had there been something to balance nights like that, but there was nothing which quite fit into the balance.

I am going to see a run-through of my play. I have not been home on Halloween to give out candy in thirty years.