Childhood, revisited

I have been having the most wonderful "children" experiences lately. Makes me think I should've had some of my own. Or that perhaps I really ought to be working with them.

I babysat Little Pea and Getting To Yes on Saturday, and they were so incredibly good and charming that I thought I'd landed the Easiest Job Ever. I haven't ever been around children who were so well-behaved.

Some of it is just because they've had good parenting. But another part is because those two are developing a little bit of a relationship with me. Some of it was because they had been heavily stimulated in the hours just prior to my visit with pumpkin carving activities (as they say: a tired dog is a good dog -- that must go for children, too). And then, lastly, their dear father bribed them with CANDY, telling them that if your UCM decided at evening's end that they had been well-behaved, they could each take a premature dip into a bowl of Halloween candy.

Then, tonight, I went trick-or-treating with Little Pea, Getting to Yes, their mom (S2) and dad (JB), The Debutante and The Deb's daughter, Bonnie Blue Butler. I haven't been out trick-or-treating in a good 20 years or so.

In S2's neighborhood, there's a little bit of a time warp going on. On a chilly, windy autumn night, the streets were filled with goblins and princesses and butterflies and pumpkins, all tentatively walking up onto the porches of large, old-fashioned homes from the 1920s -- beautiful places with art deco windows, gorgeous old speakeasies in the doors, large Craftsman bungalows, farm houses and grand old homes with huge front porches. Brown and red and yellow leaves swirled in the streets, and the jack-o-lanterns were all well-carved. It was like being on a movie set. Had Susan Sarandon opened the door at one of these places, I would not have registered the least bit surprise.

Not having a costume, I wore a carnival mask. Kids on the street seemed to like it, and it drew the occasional compliment, as well as the periodic adult insisting I take a piece of candy myself on accounts of my mask. But mainly, I was there to trail the kids, some kind of fifth wheel adult chaperone who'd had a few glasses of wine and was hob-gobblin' it up for the kiddies every once in a while.

And what a sweet thing that was.

When you don't have kids (or neices, nephews or much, much younger siblings), you don't get to go out and do this. You're one of the people who stays at home and opens the door and gives out the candy. (And tries to calm your neurotic dog who's freaking out every time the doorbell rings.)

That's just not the same thing as going out on the streets with a 3-year-old dressed as a pumpkin and a 4-year-old dressed as a princess and a 6-year-old dressed as a butterfly and watching them alternate between the desire for candy and being totally FREAKED OUT by the scary, costumed adults answering the doors at the homes with the strobe lights and the spooky music and lots and lots of cobwebs.

It's not the same as watching the little ones muster their courage to ring the doorbell the first dozen times, weakly issue forth a "trick-or-treat" or a "happy Halloween" or just sit there and STARE at the person who opened the door.

It's not the same as seeing them start to get the idea as they watch the candy -- candy, candy, candy! oh, glorious CANDY! -- accumulate in their bags and then see them get more and more enthusiastic about ringing the doorbell and to hear those first mumbled "trick-or-treats..." become a chorus of "TRICK-OR-TREAT!"

Then, just as the adults are feeling bushed, the little ones start to fade, the bags loaded with candy start to feel heavy, the night starts to feel a little nippy. And so, if you are as lucky a crew as those I was with tonight, you retire to a warm, beautiful home with a roaring fire.

And the kids sit in the middle of the living room and dump their goods and commence, this one night of the year, to eating however the hell much candy they can stuff in their little faces. The adults grab another adult beverage and watch as the little ones ascend the sugar highway before falling, crying and tired and way past their bedtime, into the sugar abyss.

It gets a little rocky near the end, my friends, but damn... childhood was SWEET in so many ways, wasn't it?

Lacking any children of my own, I'm not often afforded this window into the past. I thank my friends, S2 and her JB, as well as The Deb, for inviting me along. It was a priviledge.