An At-Home Holiday

I took some time off work this week.  The public schools are on their half-term holiday, so Little Man is home all week.  I decided after all the craziness of the last six weeks, I needed to be at home with my boy.  My at-home holiday has been delightful so far.  Even though I haven't really spent much time at all with Little Man.

Yesterday, for instance, Big Man and Little Man were invited to join our friend Trevor and his two sons for a 'Dads and Lads' day out.  They drove to Liverpool and toured the HMS Illustrious, a Royal Navy aircraft carrier moored there.  By all accounts they had a great time.  I, too, enjoyed my day home alone.  I slept in until 11:30 (!), which I haven't done in ages.  I spent my whole day cleaning the house, from top to bottom.  The only room I didn't get to was the kitchen.  I really meant to clean it, but tragically (wink, wink), Big Man and Little Man arrived home before I got to it.  I still haven't cleaned it.  I might, but I might not, too.

Today, Little Man's friend Masha is at our house.  They love to play together, and are quite a bit like brother and sister.  Masha is 7, and Joseph is 4, so there is an age difference.  Sometimes they bicker, sometimes they can't agree on what they want to do, but overall, they delight in one another.  Right now, they're in the living room, giggling over Madagascar 2.

Halloween is barely celebrated here.  Most evangelical Christians would not send their kids trick-or-treating, we're told.  That makes me sad.  Not for any big reasons, but just because I have such fond memories of my own trick-or-treating.  Brudder and I would spend weeks agonising with our friends over our costumes.  There was the infamous Paco Taco that Brudder made with my parents, using a gigantic piece of cardboard, and crumpled up tissue paper in green for the lettuce, yellow for the cheese, brown for the beef, and red for the tomatoes.  He had to turn sideways to get through a door, but it won a prize at the Halloween Festival at school.  I had two costumes, basically, through elementary school: Little Red Riding Hood and Princess Diana.  In junior high, my mom made me the coolest poodle skirt, in hot pink, with record album appliques in black, and we spent a few hours combing the thrift shops for saddle shoes and the ubiquitous sweater.

It was so much fun to wear our costumes to school all day.  And then my school always had a great Festival on Halloween night, with hot dogs, ice cream sundaes, a cake walk, bobbing for apples, fair games, and a costume contest.  We always started there, and then headed out trick-or-treating afterwards, when it was properly dark.

And then the actual event itself: the delicious pleasures of being out after dark, in an itchy costume, and the frissons of anxiety/anticipation just before running up the walk to ring the doorbell.  I even remember the wool plaid coat my dad wore, and the red flashlight he carried, in case Little Red Riding Hood got a bit antsy in the dark.  Brudder usually wanted to run ahead with his friends, but he would run back to check on me, quite solicitously, and to exclaim over how much candy I'd collected.  My friends Chris and Laurie were usually along, and it was SUCH fun!!

So aside from the debates over Halloween vs. Harvest, I miss trick-or-treating, and I'm very sad that our current context prevents us from sharing that tradition with our little boy.  He even had a costume all picked out - he was going to dress up like a builder.  I think we'll have an at-home holiday.  We'll have Masha and her parents over, and we'll wear costumes and carve pumpkins and maybe bob for apples, and pass out candy to any who come knocking.