under the weather

The weather is cool, cold really. A friend in Washington State posts on fb that she can see snow on the mountaintops from her kitchen window. There is no snow yet in Colorado where my nephew and his wife live, or they haven't posted it yet. We live in a shrinking world and yesterday was spent in bed sleeping and feeling a little like death only to wake, after eighteen hours of sleep, and have my oldest son (again at home) fix me coffee before he went out for the night. Because even though today is Halloween, last night was the night for parties.

The years of trick-or-treating are far behind us. Did they really go so fast? I think, remembering the trick-or-treating we did with our cousins back in the late sixties. The exitement, the costumes, the kicking of the leaves. One year, a house in their neighborhood had a "haunted house" that the children of the family had set up. They invited everyone in to wander through their basement and be 'scared' only to return to the main level for cider and donuts before going outside again to the cold, the leaves and the smell of woodsmoke. 

They were good times, those days, where nostalgia lives and breathes and finds my being too often lurking. Where the houses are old and large and full of polished wood and back staircases. Now Chuck talks to me about Halloween next year as he looks forward to taking Elliot out and about, most likely in his dad's (Elliot's grand-dad's) neighborhood where trick or treaters flourish and where his own memories of Halloween reside.



in younger years, l-r: Dylan, Ray, Chuck