October Magic

October soared homeward in the middle of the night, landing in her yard somewhere before daybreak. By dawn the spreading oaks in the cemetery had taken on a crimson tinge and the air had become so clear and chill that to drink of it was to know an immediate intoxication.

She would have known it was October even with her eyes closed. Would have felt it in her blood, would have remembered the way it slipped like a cool satin cloak around her shoulders.

And so, she kissed her true love right away, because there is nothing so magical as love, and as always in October, she was insanely, delightfully in love again.

 

After that, she danced to the soundtrack of Practical Magic with her black kitty, folded every single summer dress she owned into the closet, and put a purple witch hat on the scarecrow.

She burned leaves just to watch the smoke swirl in curlicues against a sky as shiny and hard as blue ceramic, and she sent good prayers skyward with each plume.

The Halloween box had spent eleven months in the basement but there wasn’t a speck of dust on it. In fact, when she pulled it from beneath the stairs, she noticed the way it glittered like moon light beneath her fingers, and when she removed the lid, a chorus of little voices sang forth:

Ooooh, there’s my favorite ghost, Mommy!

Halloween’s coming, skeletons will be after you!

I want to take the bloody knife to school tomorrow!

For a moment, she hesitated with her fingers still clutching the lid; she could feel the passage of time as ominous and cold as November thunderheads, rolling and tumbling and never-ever looking back, and she knew another year had passed. But October isn’t about regrets, and when the thunder passes . . .  well, the fat, white moon owns the sky; she dug into the box with both hands.

She unearthed cackling jack-o-lanterns, hanging skeletons, swooping bats on invisible wires, and by evening some of the little voices from the box had dropped by in their adult form, only to become children again. (Hershey bars and candy corn are the best cure for dull adulthood, but if you persist in being a grown-up, you should sip a little apple wine to relieve that headache.)

The sun lay down earlier than it had all year, in a nest of golden feathers, and the big dipper poured star dust over the yard. By midnight, she had really and truly let summer go.

Hello, beautiful October.

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We Loved October

 I’ve always been a bit startled by the concept of a God who demands an accounting at the end of the day. The notion of “Where did you err?” is a frightening one, and the list, alas, all too long. But here - what if the question is “What did you love?” Will the list, again, be unending?

                I hope so.

                But for now, let’s stick with October. Dear God, we loved October. Every glorious, gold-tinged, sweet-smelling moment. We ate popcorn in the bleachers at the football games; we kicked leaves all over the yard; we laughed, hard and often.

                October found us strewing decorations all over the house like madmen. Jack-o-lanterns, witches, twinkling orange light strings. To hell with the diet, we gained extra pounds in cookies and millions of teensy candy bars.

                In Galena, we drank too much wine and sat on the porch of our cabin with the owls hooting and the crows cawing all around us. All night, we talked, laughed, reminisced.

                Three birthdays in October! Beautiful faces reflected in candlelight, family and friends gathered, another year whooshing past like the leaves blowing off the hill.

                We sang around a bonfire, we scavenger-hunted, we played dress-up with the delight of small children. We sat transfixed before the millionth showing of “Hocus Pocus” and got goosebumps crossing the yard in the dark after “Nightmare on Elm Street.”

                Halloween! The gem in the crown. The rush, the exuberance, the very air alive with expectation. Could there be anything better?

                Chocolate, rum, granny smith apples – all sweeter in October.

Life – yes, sweeter.

                And that Oogey-Boogey Man November lurking just around the corner? BOO! It's here.

Halloween Magic: Behind Our Silly Adult Masks

Art by Julie Jamison-Lewis

I’m pretty sure time stands still on October 31^st.

Every Halloween, all of our lives, frozen still in amber. Here we are as little children, grinning behind the old plastic masks – cowboys and Indians, back in the day. Casper and Sylvester the cat.  We lit jack-o-lanterns with tapered candles that our mom had cut into halves, sticky caramel on our fingers, cold wind in our hair. Running, always running, through the crimson blitz of autumn, gold leaves spinning in a smoky twilight sky.

November as far away as tomorrow.

My daughter was a week old on her first Halloween. She wore a teensy black cat costume, and I took her trick-or-treating in her stroller, winding full-speed through our trailer court with maple spinners crunching beneath my tennis shoes. Already smiling, already caught up in the enchantment. The child she was – the child I was – they are still here, suspended in perfect bursts of autumn color.

Three gorgeous kids, years and years of costumes and cookies and scavenger hunts. Bonfires, buckeyes and bob-for-apples. Every year, a year older. Every year, still magic. We did Build-A-Monster, cemetery walks, the town parade - and always, always, the air was crisp as a new apple, the moon a sharp crescent in a broad and purple sky.  Dizzy with laughter, drunk on excitement, we zoomed from house to house and never seemed to touch the ground.

Another year – pumpkins already on the porch, lights strung through the bushes, Jack Skellington climbing the hill again, bony silhouette against the fat yellow moon. Children grown and new steps going up to the cemetery. Endless busy days – work and college and meetings; and nothing has changed at all. Not on Halloween.

On Halloween, the world stops spinning while the moon comes up and the ghouls come out and the jack-o-lanterns leer from the shadows. We hold our breaths while the magic, the never-ever-failing Halloween magic, fills the air and fills us all. For an instant, we are grinning kids again behind our silly adult masks.

And so, my friends, the biggest, the bestest holiday of all is soon upon us. Wishing you all a wonderful, fantastical, beautiful night.