Five Reasons Halloween Was My Favorite Holiday When I was a Kid

1)    NO FAMILY DRAMA

 

Halloween was the one holiday that my family did not celebrate collectively.  This meant there was no three day housecleaning before or after the holiday.  There was no huge meal to prepare, and consequently no sniping about who was lazy and just brought a jello salad, who made the wrong kind of potato salad, who put too much salt in everything, or who needed to learn that not every holiday needed a cake baked in a mold.  The most food prep that occurred on Halloween was the roasting of pumpkin seeds, and if they burned we ate them anyway.  In addition, there was no one deliberately showing up late, no cousins messing with the order of my toys, and no confusing references to feuds that had started twenty years before I was born but were still potent enough for someone to end up storming off and sitting in a corner.

 

2)    Costumes

 

On a regular school day, my mother stopped me at the door and asked, “Is that really what you’re wearing to school today?”  Halloween was the one day I could cut up whatever old clothes I wanted.  I could wear favorite clothes that were too small.  I could put pussywillows in my hair.  I could draw on myself, not brush my hair, and completely ignore the dreaded concept of “color coordination”. I could even wear dirty clothes to school on Halloween. The only interference I would get was the coat argument, which I’m pretty sure my mother knew she never actually won.  As soon as she drove off, I took off my coat( I did that every day, but on Halloween the neighbor didn’t rat me out.)

 

3)     Freaking Real Candy!

 

Unlike some of my classmates whose parents told them sugar was POISON, my parents weren’t anti-sugar advocates.  They were anti-buying-things-that-are-unnecessary advocates.  I got lots of sweets when I was a kid, but they were mainly homemade.  Pies, cakes, cookies, puddings, canned pears with whipped cream and graham crackers(yeah, I didn’t quite get what that was about either), jellies, fruit breads, cream puffs, soufflés, we had those kinds of sweets three or four times a week as dessert.  Candy, however, was a waste of money.  Since we could get candy for free on Halloween, my parents actively encouraged my brothers and I to haul in as big a stash as we possibly could. We each got a pillowcase and were told to fill that sucker up. Halloween and Easter were the two times a year I was guaranteed to get candy.  Even though my mother was an excellent cook, I was completely jealous of my friends who were occasionally allowed to have REAL candy in their lunches.  No one ever begged for a bite of one of my deflated and leaky cream puffs.  That all changed for a week after Halloween.

 

4)    Being allowed to Run Around in the Dark

 

Honestly, I was the kind of creepy kid who ran around at night anyway, especially if there was a full moon.  On Halloween, though, I got to do it with other kids without being seen as creepy.  Since we lived out in the country, my mother would drive my brothers and me to town, drop us off at a street corner, and tell us to be back there by nine o’ clock.  My older brother would usually ditch me and my little brother and end up frantically racing through the streets searching for us fifteen minutes before the pick up time.  Then he’d charge us a percentage of our candy for taking us trick-or-treating.  Still, there was something completely cool about roaming the dark streets with masses of other children that trumped my usual skulks in the dark.  Even though I was never one to throw eggs, leave flaming bags of dog poop on doorsteps, or drape toilet paper on people’s trees, there was nothing more magical than standing in the midst of that kind of chaos while everyone accepted it as normal.

 

5)    Candy Leverage!!!!!

 

Having a huge stash of candy gave me bargaining power with my brothers, my friends, and even my parents.  My younger brother was always reluctant to play the games I invented.  I don’t know why things like jumping off the cattle barn, drinking polluted creek water, rolling in marsh mud from head to toe, and swimming through the seaweed section of the pond didn’t appeal to him, but he quickly decided to give them a try if I pulled out a piece of stale, six month old Hubba Bubba gum as a bribe.  My older brother could actually be persuaded to let me sit in his room and stare at him while he worked on one of his projects if I suggested that a strawberry flavored Charleston Chew might miraculously slide under his door sometime after supper.  My dad was easy: I’d say, “Here’s some candy corn. Can we go on a nature hike today?”  My mother was the most challenging: she had too much integrity to be outright bribed, but offering her the black licorice went in her notebook of “evidence my child is not completely selfish and possibly deserves something when she asks for it”.  This kind of leverage could last all year if I got the right types of candy and carefully hid them to be used at the most advantageous time.  Candy leverage was the one thing that made growing up in a candy-frugal home worth it: you can’t bribe people with things that they get all the time.

 

Jack Frost Stops by for a Chat

Jack Frost is sitting on the stoop when I come out in the morning.

“I killed your ferns,” he says with a smirk, and points to a clump of fronds outlined with delicate white crystals.

“You know those are perennial, right?  You didn’t kill them.  They’re just dormant now. Frankly, I think you improved their appearance,” I say.

“I was hoping they were tropical,” he says mournfully.

“We go through this every year, Jack. How can you be a manifestation of Nature if you can’t even remember what the basic laws of Nature are?  I don’t grow things that can’t survive your frost,” I scold.

“Jenny Letham down the street usually swears at me when I frost her plants,” Jack replies.

“That’s because Jenny grows scented geraniums and always waits too long to bring them in.  She’s the garden nursery’s best customer.  I seriously don’t understand why you don’t spend more time mocking her instead of coming here every first frost and trying to get a rise out of me,” I sigh.

“She cries.  It makes me feel bad…well, you make me feel bad too, but it’s a different kind of bad.  You just make me feel stupid.  Jenny makes me feel mean.” Jack fiddles with a leaf, slowly tracing its veins with a light coating of frost.

I have to think for a while before I answer him on this.  Jenny is the one who is stupid, and Jack isn’t being mean when he frosts plants that can’t survive our climate.  My plants need the cold period  to live, which is just one reason why I’m not a fan of Jenny’s efforts to defy the laws of our winters.  Jenny’s delusional anger at Jack for frosting her tropical plants is not something that I want Jack to pander to.  At the same time, I like this side of Jack and I’m inclined  to encourage these signs of a conscience.  I decide not to directly respond to his concerns about Jenny.

“I really like what you did to the pine,” I eventually say.  “Your work really stands out on the dark green needles and the pine cones on that branch there.”

Jack looks up. “It is pretty good,” he says with a real smile.  “I spent extra time on those pine cones because I knew you would appreciate it.”

“I do.  I always love when you come back in for the winter.  You make the whole world look like it’s wearing a beautiful ball gown.” I grin at him.

“I could come earlier if you miss me,” he says.

I know he’s testing.  “No, no, Jack.  The best thing about you is that you always come for a visit at just the right time.  You’re so wise for that,” I add.

“Hmm.”  Jack puts the finishing touches on the ironwork around my door.  “I guess it’s a good thing to only visit just when people are starting to miss you.”

“Absolutely, Jack. Absolutely.  This is why we are such good friends,” I say.

“Yes, that’s exactly so. By the way, I just frosted your coffee.  Hope you like it that way,” he says.  He flies off before I can reply.

Author: Beth Avery @violetgrendel
Word Count: 530 words
Genre: Speculative Fiction
E-book: Yes

The Town Beneath the Lake

The cold is so sharp I can feel it outlining my sinuses when I breathe in. It’s an exceptionally clear night, and the dark mountains on the horizon provide a welcome boundary between the blackness of the immense expanse of ice and the blackness of the star-interrupted sky. Before I slide onto the ice, I test my laces one last time. I’m too old to take a hard fall without risking a broken bone, and I have no intention of being found frozen like a popsicle on Christmas morning. This is the first time I will be making this trip alone. For sixty years, Etta and I met on Christmas Eve to make this journey.

We were only 12 for that initial midnight skate. Back then, we were still smarting from the loss of our town in the valley. When the final petition for the big dam went through, our families lost. The year the lake was filled and froze, we arranged to sneak out the night before Christmas to lie on the ice above our old homes and talk about the beautiful Christmas light competitions our community used to have. Our old neighbors had scattered when the town was condemned. Some found homes along the sides of the lake, but many simply moved far away from the little town in the valley.

My mother kept saying it wasn’t so bad, but Etta and I were heartbroken. All the secret hiding places and play areas of our childhood rested beneath fifty feet of water. That first midnight skate, we were mournful. We silently slid over the ice using the radio tower and the new wharf as markers to help us find the part of the lake that covered our old homes. Once there, we stretched out with our cheeks against the ice, peering down and trying to believe we could make out the shapes of the buildings we knew had to be down there.

We weren’t really expecting to see anything. We were just two maudlin girls creating ritual to deal with the first big loss of our lives. We probably squinted at the lights shining from the depths for several minutes before Etta whispered, “Do you see that, Jane?” “The lights?” I whispered. “Are they ghosts?” Etta quavered. We stared for a long time before I answered. “I think…I think it’s the Walden house,” I said. “Look, see how it makes a square of green with a square of red and then a star in white? That’s just how the Waldens always did their lights.” We were quiet then, half frozen fear and wonder, acutely aware that we were two small bodies out on a great field of ice above a tiny drowned town that appeared to still be living.  We finally summoned up the courage to stand up, and then we skated furiously and frantically for the shore. I fell a few times, but Etta did not stop until she was back on solid ground.

We had a whole year to think about what had happened that night before Christmas came around again. In that year, my mother received news that Grandfather Walden had died a few weeks before our first skate. We had been a close knit community, so it grieved her that she did not learn of his death until after his funeral. When another elderly member of our old town died that year, she made sure we went to pay our respects. We were afraid to go, but our parents reminded us that Mr. Stark had been a kind librarian who had always given the children gifts on Christmas and take special care to decorate the library for the holidays.

Etta and I argued long and hard about whether we were going back out the next Christmas Eve. A year older, we had decided that we had imagined the lights. It became a rite of passage to prove we were not babies and we could bravely go out above the ice and look down again. It was harder to go the second time. I was so scared I thought I was going to be sick. Etta clutched my hand as we glided out to the center of the lake. We didn’t lie down this time. We both stared down, poised to flee if any ghostly faces floated up to greet us. I almost bolted when I saw the familiar pattern of the Walden Christmas lights, but Etta grabbed my arm. “Look,” she said, and when I peered I saw another set of lights a goodly distance from the Walden house. “It’s where the library would be,” I said. She nodded. We didn’t run this time. We watched peacefully, and suddenly our love for our lost home didn’t seem so childish. We were not the only ones who thought it had been heaven on Earth.

The skate was less scary after that. Some years there weren’t any new homes lit up; some years there were three or four. This year I skate out alone, but Etta promised she would put up a blue star for me on her house. If she keeps her promise, it won’t feel so bad to be the last person alive who once lived in Ruhetal.

Author: Beth Avery @violetgrendel
Word Count: 874 words
Genre: Speculative Fiction
E-book: Yes

The Dryad and Her Tree

 
It is true that the dryad was sleeping deeply when they cut her tree down.  She awoke in a foggy panic and groggily tried to make sense of things as her tree was dragged through the snow across the field and into the house.  By the time she fully shook herself out of hibernation, her tree was already clamped into standing position inside a pot of cold water, bound with constricting ropes of lights, its branches painfully pinched with dozens of dangling weights.

For a day, she sat warily watching as people came and stared at her tree without touching it.  The cat was the only one that attempted to touch the tree, sending the people in the room into gales of laughter when it ran away yowling after she viciously shoved a pine cone in its ear.  They mocked it for getting an electric shock from clawing one of the strings.

The second day, a young child in a long gown crawled on its hands and knees with a pitcher of water.  The dryad let it approach because its posture of obeisance suggested it had proper respect for the tree.  She was relieved when it filled the pot with a sweet, tangy water that the tree gratefully sucked up through its trunk.  The child crept out backward and in doing so knocked free two of the torturous weights on the tree’s lowest branches.  It stared glumly at the broken glass while an adult came racing into the room. 

“Did you break some of the ornaments?” The adult screeched.  The child sadly lifted the pitcher. “I thought I was helping,” it said tremulously.  “Don’t help!” the adult snapped, and the child hurried from the room.  The dryad winced and decided this human was not allowed near her tree anymore.  When the adult returned with a broom and a dustpan, the dryad waited for the adult to bend over and then swatted the human’s head hard enough to break three more ornaments.  The adult leaped back even faster than the cat and stood staring dumbly at the tree before shaking itself.

“Okay,” the adult whispered, “That was clearly my imagination. I must have stood up a little faster than I thought” even though the adult had not been in the process of standing up when the dryad hit it.  The adult faced the tree and cautiously slid the broom under the branches to pull the glass shards toward it.  The dryad waited for her chance.  Eventually the adult relaxed enough to stop avoiding the branches.  The dryad flung a spray of needles in its face.  The adult covered its eyes and ran swearing from the room.

It took several of these bouts for the humans to respect the tree’s space.  They seemed to have trouble learning that they truly weren’t allowed to touch the tree.  The dryad was amazed at their tenacity.  Scratched hands, stabbed backsides, debris-filled eyes, smashed ornaments, they attributed it all to their own clumsiness, refusing to believe the tree was fighting back.  It was the night they tried to slide brightly wrapped packages under the tree that finally convinced them.  There was no pretending clumsiness when several adults saw the tree angrily bash and fling the packages back at them.

They retreated to the doorway of the room and whispered at each other.  “Is it possessed?”  “Where did you get that tree?” “What do we do about this?” “Maybe we could burn it.”  “You can’t burn it without burning down the house, idiot.”  “I told you it hit me deliberately.” “You did not.  You laughed at me when I said I thought it had something against me.”  They grumbled like this for hours before they gave up and trudged away.

The child woke up early and crept into the dawn grey room to find the room in disarray.  It seemed sad, and the dryad motioned it to come closer.  It tentatively reached for a package wedged deep beneath the branches when one of the adults appeared in the doorway and began to shriek.  “Help, help, the tree is eating Jenny!” “No, it’s not,” the child called. “Jenny, get out of there,” the adult screamed hysterically. The child sighed, “I’m fine.  The Christmas Angel likes me.  Have you guys been naughty?  She doesn’t seem to like any of you.”

 

Year after year, the tree stood in the corner of the room.  Its needles dropped and branch after branch became brittle and snapped under the weight of the ornaments, but the dryad held on.  She guarded her tree with a guilt-laden ferocity, determined to never let anyone do it harm again.  She extended that same protection to the child, who learned to crawl under the tree’s branches whenever one of the adults or even one of the other children was chasing it with malicious intent.  The adults would just shrug when the child hid under the tree.  There wasn’t a single one of them willing to get close enough for the tree to touch them.

Author: Beth Avery @violetgrendel
Word Count: 836 words
Genre: Speculative Fiction
E-book: Yes

 

 

Waiting for the 1812 Overture to Go Somewhere

That fall was the first fall in almost two decades that my brother did not attend school. For the first few weeks, he went into the basement and lay on the cement floor for hours listening to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. We could feel the violins sweeping like a river of sound while he waited with closed eyes for the solution to his involuntary inertia. Some mornings my father would try to give him a list of tasks, but my mother would just hold up one hand and slightly shake her head. It was a brief caesura no one expected to last: my father’s will was like a cannon that catapulted its demands through our hearts once he had reached enough momentum.

After school I would go downstairs and listen to the music with him, suspending myself in the same cacophony of trying to move forward but always repeating a variation of intractable pattern. I was small, but I understood what it felt to be lost in a rhythm of circumstances that left a person with no clear path to follow.

You can only listen to the 1812 Overture so long before it convinces you that laying low is not an option. One day my brother borrowed the car and came back with the news that he had joined the army. It was the only way he could think of to finish college. My mother instantly regretted her policy of silent compassion. Where else could the 1812 Overture lead your child but to war? My father faked approval, but even I knew he was disappointed to lose the resources that my brother embodied.

Throughout his teen years, my brother had “earned his keep”(as my father called it) by doing the hardest and dirtiest work on the farm. He shoveled knee high manure out of the cow stalls and loaded the heavy hay bales into the troughs. He chased escaped sheep in the bitterest cold when the snowdrifts made bridges over the fences. He helped build the house, the barn, and the chicken coop. He strung two miles of barbed wire fence using the wire stretcher that could build up enough tension to slash three inches into the skin if the wire broke.

When my brother was sixteen, my father said he hadn’t earned the right to use the car to drive to a paying job. My brother balked. He applied to the nearest Osco and walked the five miles to the mall for his shifts. He didn’t save up his money for a car, though. He put every dime into a savings account for college. In two years, he saved up $1500 with his two dollar and thirty-five cent an hour job. With his learning disabilities, he had no hope for scholarships. He squeaked into a public school with his hard-won mediocre GPA. It was a victory for him. A chance to prove himself worthy and my father wrong.

It took two years for him to exhaust his funds. The fall that Tchaikovsky rumbled through our house, my father spent $250,000 on a new farm…and refused to spend a single nickel on my brother’s education. There was $500,000 in the stock market and not an ounce of hope for my brother. In the short term, my brother outmaneuvered my father: he joined the army instead of coming back to the farm. But my brother was forever carried along on that symphony of desperation: too proud to tell my mother he’d run out of money, too determined to give up completely, too stymied by his own challenges to get where he really wanted to go. This crescendo of years of stifled aspirations became the major movement that reverberated through my brother’s life: for his entire life he’s been caught up in a revolution that goes nowhere.

Author: Beth Avery
Word Count: 635