October 26: Pact with the Devil, Daughter and Halloween, Boring Teenager

The world has signed a pact with the devil; it had to.  It is a covenant to which every thing, even every hydrogen atom, is bound.  The terms are clear:  if you want to live, you have to die; you cannot have mountains and creeks without space, and space is a beauty married to a blind man.  The blind man is Freedom, or Time, and he does not go anywhere without his great dog Death.  The world came into being with the signing of the contract.  A scientist calls it the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  A poet says, "The force that thought the green fuse drives the flower / Drives my green age."  This is what we know.  The rest is gravy.

This passage reeks of Halloween darkness.  I am especially fond of the blind man Time and his great dog Death.  Talk about a pair made for a horror movie.  Picture them, an eyeless Grim Reaper leading a huge werewolf of a hound.  If that isn't enough to send a shiver down your spine, then you are probably near to shuffling off this mortal coil already.  As Dillard says, the great pact of life is that we all eventually have to encounter the blind man and his pet.

Halloween is fast approaching, and I was informed last night that my fifteen-year-old daughter does not want to get a costume or go trick-or-treating.  She simply wants to walk around with her little brother while he raids the neighborhood.  The news kind of took me by surprise because, up until yesterday, my daughter was shopping for costume pieces online.  When my wife told me that she didn't want to dress up for All Hallow's Eve, I was very supportive.  I believe my exact words were, "So, she's going to be a boring teenager."

Yes, I understand that my daughter is asserting her independence, trying to figure out the world and her place in it.  Being a teenager is scary business, without having to dress up and carve pumpkins.  But I can't help feeling a little sad.  My daughter was always a Halloween nut.  Loved planning out her ensemble for October 31.  Designing pumpkin faces.  Now, another little bit of her childhood has gone for a walk with the blind man and his dog.

Halloween just isn't going to be the same.  I thought I had at least a couple more years of trick-or-treating left with my daughter.  I suppose that I should be happy that she still wants to walk around with her little brother as he hits the neighbors' houses.  There's still enough of the Great Pumpkin in her to do that.  And maybe she'll change her mind before next Monday night.

If not, Saint Marty's jack-o'-lantern will be burning a little less brightly come the last night of October.