Going out for dinner and drinks on Halloween feels a little like what I would imagine Vegas at Christmas would feel like.  It was odd, super odd.  It was as if we were invited to a land we didn’t really know existed.  Not quite Alice in Wonderland, but it was close.

This was our first Halloween in twenty years without a child to tote around from house to house.  That means the last time Michael and I even had the opportunity to have drinks on Halloween, we were twenty-two years old.  We had a newborn by October 1993, so unless the baby was coming to the bar with us, let’s say the last time we were twenty-one.  We have not sat anywhere, done anything, other than get costumes on, fix makeup, make sure flashlights had batteries, load munchkins or older kids into a wagon or a car or a golf cart to trick or treat, in over twenty years.  That’s astounding to me.

I’m not sure what throws me more, that we survived all of those Halloweens or that Halloween, as we have known it, is over.  Katlyn is in college.  Cotter and Maggie wore nasty gory masks and went trick or treating with friends.

I should say, I love Halloween.  It’s one of my favorite holidays and some of my children’s costumes over the years have been epic.  The years Cotter was the Joker, Harry Potter and the Lobster stand out.  Maggie’s Queen Elizabeth, Dorothy and Velma from Scooby Doo are favorites.  Katlyn’s Flamingo, Corpse Bride and Tinkerbell (our first costume ever) certainly make the list.

Thinking about never having grease paint smeared on my hands or never again sifting through candy, looking for open pieces, makes me a little sad.  I throughly enjoyed each and every Halloween, even though some of them were pure insanity.  I will miss Halloween the way it used to be, but change is part of life.  I’m proud of the Halloweens we gave our young children, movies we watch, the stories and the traditions we have established.  We will make sure some of those traditions live on, but they need to go out and have their own fun and they will have it.

Letting go and allowing change is hard, but the alternative is becoming that crazy mom that follows my teenagers around reminding them to look both ways before crossing to another house and whispering that they should say “please” and “thank you”.

Compared to that hot mess, a couple of drinks on Halloween sounds like a great idea.

My thoughts from the laundry room.  Insomnia.

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