Halloween and Mom

Halloween and Mom...

It was a large lamp, a light, an orange salad bowl, 1 white sheet, 2 black eyes make from construction paper and 2 black hands.

At Christmas time, the tree was center window, lights ablaze.

For Halloween it was the ghost made from the ingredients above.

One year the bowl melted a bit... 

Halloween was always fun.  Whatever the Holiday, mom decorated.  Hallmark cutouts of ghosts, witches and Autumn themed decorations.  Pine cones, orange and yellow maple leaves, Mom loved Autumn.  She was born in October.  It was her time.  The season where things die and get ready for the winter was also the season of her life beginning.  Every set of decorations through childhood contained some level of magic, rising in intensity to the most magical time in a child's life.  Christmas. 

This year for Halloween, Neff and I carved a pumpkin and decorated her uncle's sculpture.  We have a few knickknacks around the apartment too.  No ghosts on lamp posts, but a few signs of the season.  I was reminded of the Halloweens of childhood.  Trick-or-Treating with my buddy Stephan.  One year I was Luke Skywalker, another year a Cowboy, as I got a little older (and slightly more Gothic) I went as the Grim Reaper.  Halloween was different in the 70's and 80's.  Sure there's always the concern of razors in the apples and poison candy but for whatever reason Halloween in the small town of Yucaipa in 1981 is a whole different Holiday compared to Halloween 2010 Encino, CA.

Mom was always there throughout childhood and it seems as I spend this year documenting feather sightings and reliving Holiday memories in my mind, I struggle sometimes recalling things.  I want to remember more.  Maybe by remembering more it'll be like having her back for just a little while.

Mom was always there during childhood.  Well, no duh!?!?  Sounds like such an obvious statement.  But she's missing from my adulthood (sort of...  ok, physically) and that means that the time she was here (childhood, in this case) becomes all the more precious and valuable. 

You can't TiVo Mom.  Either way, it became clear that Mom liked the Jack-O-Lantern.  On Monday morning this little guy was hanging out just under the table from where the Jack-O-Lantern sat.  I snapped this pick as I played a Trick in lieu of a Treat on our resident apartment manager.  The trick will be for a different blog altogether but mark my words, Mom and Doris together smiled down at this little bit of delinquency on my part..