October 31: "The Chairs That No One Sits In," All Hallows' Eve, Change

It is All Hallows' Eve.  Jack-o'-lanterns.  Candy.  Costumes.  Trick-or-treating.

In the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, All Hallows' Eve also means freezing rain, wind, and snow usually.  As I sit typing this blog post, it has just started snowing.  It's a little after 10 p.m., and I've spent a majority of my day thinking about how my life has changed.

Billy Collins meditates on empty chairs . . .

The Chairs That No One Sits In

by: Billy Collins

You see them on porches and on lawns
down by the lakeside,
usually arranged in pairs implying a couple

who might sit there and look out
at the water or the big shade trees.
The trouble is you never see anyone

sitting in these forlorn chairs
though at one time it must have seemed
a good place to stop and do nothing for a while.

Sometimes there is a little table
between the chairs where no one
is resting a glass or placing a book facedown.

It may not be any of my business,
but let us suppose one day
that everyone who placed those vacant chairs

on a veranda or a dock sat down in them
if only for the sake of remembering

what it was they thought deserved

to be viewed from two chairs,
side by side with a table in between.
The clouds are high and massive that day.

The woman looks up from her book.
The man takes a sip of his drink.
Then there is only the sound of their looking,

the lapping of lake water, and a call of one bird
then another, cries of joy or warning—
it passes the time to wonder which.

This poem, for me, drips with nostalgia and loss.  Two people used to sit in those chairs, perhaps an old man and woman.  They have been together so long that they no longer need words to communicate--reading each other's minds through looks or glances, body language.

This is the first Halloween in 24 years that my wife and I didn't go trick-or-treating with our kids.  Our daughter and son made their own plans, so we sort of experienced an empty nest night.  We handed out candy and walked down the street to visit our neighbor's haunted garage (an annual tradition on our street).  Then we drove to a good friend's house for hot chocolate, snacks, and conversation (another annual tradition for our family).

But there were empty chairs at our All Hallows' Eve table.  Don't get me wrong.  My wife and I enjoyed the evening, despite the shitty weather.  The trick-or-treaters were cute.  Chocolate was plentiful.  And we laughed a lot at our friend's house.  However, when we got in our car to drive home, my wife said, "It sure was strange not having the kids."

Yes, my wife and I are slowly transitioning into our days of porch sitting and world observing.  When I picked up my son tonight from his friend's house, he put his head back on the seat and fell asleep without so much as a "Happy Halloween!"

If you haven't noticed, I do not deal with change well.  This childless All Hallows' Eve was a huge change.  I missed the joy (and frozen misery) of ransacking neighborhoods for candy with my kids.  Missed painting their faces and forcing them to pose for pictures.

Saint Marty missed it all.  It's a good thing there's plenty of leftover chocolate.

October 31: Fall Migration, Great Pumpkin, My Nobel Prize

In autumn the winding passage of ravens from the north heralds the great fall migration of caribou . . . 

The passage of ravens.  The great fall migration of caribou.  Autumn.

This morning, I heard a great flock of geese above me, loud as city traffic.  Honking and honking.  Heading away from winter, toward something warmer, something summer.  Perfect music for the beginning of Halloween.

It is late.  I have just returned from the great migration of trick-or-treating.  Both of my kids are in bed, and I am surrounded by plastic pumpkins filled with Milky Ways and Twix bars and boxes of Dots.  I am watching an episode of the new season of American Horror Story.  Believe it or not, I've never watched the show before.  It's a good way to end a windy, dark Halloween night.

The Great Pumpkin has come and gone.  It is time now to slip into November and Thanksgiving.  December is right around the corner, and Bob Dylan will be traveling to Sweden to receive my Nobel Prize.

Saint Marty wishes everybody a Happy Halloween.

October 31: Happy Halloween, Facetious Snowball, Worry Wednesday

My son's pumpkin

For, the people who were shovelling away on the house-tops were jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another from the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious snowball--better-natured missile far than many a wordy jest--laughing heartily if it went right and not less heartily if it went wrong...

Yes, I am writing about snow this Halloween morning.  That's the reason I chose the above passage from A Christmas Carol:  it's about snow.  I woke to a couple inches of snow on the ground and my car.  Thanks to Hurricane Sandy, it will be a white Halloween in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

I have nothing against snow.  If I did, I would not live in the place I live.  I would live somewhere warmer and less cold and white.  Like Grand Rapids or Kalamazoo.  No, I like this kind of weather, when it comes after October 31st (preferably after Thanksgiving).  However, since my daughter was born close to twelve years ago and I joined the ranks of trick-or-treating parents, I have frozen my candy corn off every Halloween.  It never fails.

Thus, my Worry Wednesday is about cold, heavy, wet, white precipitation.  The precipitation of which we dare not speak.  It is going to be a miserable night for candy begging.  We will make the neighborhood rounds, whether rain or sleet or snow.  Nothing will keep my children from their appointed duties of collecting as much free candy as possible for me...I mean, for themselves.  I have explained the Daddy tax to my daughter.  That's the portion of Halloween candy that fathers are entitled to collect on November 1.  In past years, that tax has been 20%.  This year, due to the economic volatility in Greece, the Daddy tax has been raised to 22.5%.  I haven't broken that news to either of my children yet.  It's the least they can do, considering the cold work ahead of me this evening.

I have other worries this All Hallow's Eve Wednesday.  The presidential election.  The devastation on the East Coast caused by Hurricane Sandy.  The Milky Ways I bought for the trick-or-treaters tonight (I don't want to surrender my Milky Ways to the grubby little goblins).  These are important issues, as well.

But Saint Marty's biggest worry is that stuff he shovelled off his windshield a couple of hours ago.  That stuff is going to make Saint Marty's evening pretty miserable.  As Tiny Tim says, "More snow?!  Jesus!"