We had perfect trick-or-treating weather, I’m just going to say that first.

Second, I will note that I am writing this yesterday (for you), on the night of Halloween, and that as the designated Candy Hander-Outer, I treated myself (see what I did there) to an extra large glass of sauvignon blanc. So. You know. Read this through wine-colored glasses, if you will. Too bad I wasn’t drinking rosé.

Carla was Extremely Serious about trick-or-treating this year. Long past, apparently, are the years when she toddles around our cul-de-sac and comes home, happy and spent, after thirty minutes. Oh no. This year, she was hardly home from school when she began counting down the minutes until six o’clock, which is when our city’s Designated Trick-or-Treating Time begins. (Does your city do this? Mine did not, when I was growing up. Then again, city is a wildly generous term with which to refer to the place I grew up.) If only Carla could apply the same time urgency to getting to school every morning as she did to ensuring she was trick-or-treating at six on the dot! 

She was so Serious that she refused to allow me to take a photo of her. She was a witch. Picture, if you will, a pale blond child with heavy black eye makeup, some of which had migrated in a bruised-looking way to under her eyes, and black lipstick, scowl of determination and sparkly witch’s hat askew on her head, marching into the leaf-scattered twilight, a swath of black polyester and glitter – so much glitter – trailing in her wake. 

(My husband went trick-or-treating with her; she isn’t quite at an age where we feel comfortable releasing her into the wild; dark things traipse about on Halloween night, even in our lovely neighborhood. I forced him to promise to capture her image, somewhere, somehow.)

I remained at home, to hand out treats. 

I had to buy four bags of candy. Candy is HOLY KITKAT EXPENSIVE this year, right alongside everything else I suppose. I bought two bags sight unseen from the Target drive-up service; one of chocolatey things like KitKats and Whoppers and Heath bars, and the other of gummy things like Twizzlers and Sour Patch Kids. They turned out to be tiny bags, with 50 pieces of candy in each bag. And each piece was nothing but a bite. A BITE. I know this because I sampled some or maybe all of the Heath bars. “Fun size” has shrunken by at least 60%, in my estimation. So, in a panic, I went to Target this past weekend. All the good candy (subjective) was gone, and the remaining bags were $10.99 or $15.00 apiece. (I looked at my receipt for the 50-pieces-per-bag purchases; they were only $5.99 per bag, so perhaps I got what I paid for.) I got a giant $15 bag of Tootsie Rolls and Dots mix and a $10.99 bag of Smarties.

This assortment turned out to be… too much. We had far fewer trick-or-treaters than in years past. One of my neighbors said, the other day, that she thinks “they bus the kids in,” based on how many children we usually have streaming down our sidewalks. But this year, it was a slow trickle with little bunches of kids in groups. 

Some observations:

1. The majority – VAST majority – of our trick-or-treaters seemed to be in that nebulous teenage range. Maybe they were middle schoolers, maybe they were high schoolers; I could not tell. Some were wearing costumes, some were wearing jeans and a hoodie. I handed out candy and overly enthusiastic “Happy Halloweens!” to anyone who dared knock on my door. (One mother came up with three smallish children, none of whom were in costume, and said apologetically that they had all had inflatable costumes, but they had all popped. I told her that I was happy to give candy to any trick-or-treaters, and asked if she wanted some candy; she declined.) 
2. There was only a small handful of kids Carla’s age-ish.
3. There was another small handful of kids in the baby-to-toddler range. One little kiddo was wearing an inflatable tractor of some sort. I asked him if he was a bulldozer, and he made an elaborate digging motion and said, “I’m a backhoe.” Thank you, kind sir, for the correction! (It was adorable.)
4. We lost SO MANY kids to our video doorbell. Let me back up: We have a video doorbell now. I objected strenuously for many years, but finally my husband’s desire for video evidence of… tomfoolery??? won out, and we have one. All the notifications go to his phone, which is the sole satisfaction I get from having this thing. But the trick-or-treaters had no idea how to deal with it! I had the door open (perfect weather) and was sitting in my office (reading blogs, drinking wine) a mere six feet from the door, and overheard several kids saying, “I don’t know how to ring this doorbell!” I guess I figured kids would knock? Or say, “Trick or treat!” or something through the screen? But no. Some of them WALKED AWAY before I could catch them! Oh well???
5. At one point, I put up a sign that said PLEASE KNOCK! I HAVE CANDY FOR YOU! and I heard one child read it to another; the other child’s unironic response? “Okay, I guess we should ring the bell!” 
6. I was so un-busy with handing out candy, I may have done a TEENY bit of amazon shopping, I’m sorry!!, sauvignon blanc loosens my wallet and my ability to leave things in my cart overnight. I’m sorry!!! It seemed like a necessity at the time! 
7. Each Halloween, the children who lived in our house before we moved in come by. They don’t know us; we only know them because they used to come to our neighborhood block party. It’s always slightly uncomfortable, because they will peer behind me into the hall, and whisper to their friends that they used to live here, and they never smile. But this year, I didn’t see any of the kids. I suppose they may have all grown up by now; we’ve lived here eleven years, after all. That makes me a little sad, even if I am also relieved to no longer feel like I stole something precious from them.

Carla came in fairly early. My husband and I both think that next year, we should really make an effort to find her some friends to trick-or-treat with. This goes against my hermit tendencies, but I do think she’d enjoy herself more. She claimed that she’d had fun, but she seemed SO SERIOUS about the whole thing. All business, as my husband said. 

She came home with quite the haul. She organized everything by candy type and counted it all: 89 pieces of candy, 12 of which were Milky Ways, 10 of which were plain M&Ms. I asked her which is her favorite, and she shrugged helplessly. “All?”

Lots of our neighbors give out full-size candy bars, and it lit a competitive flame inside my husband. He wants to hand out full-size candy next year. “We don’t want to be the house with the bad candy,” he told me earnestly. No, honey. No we don’t. 

I continue to love Halloween. It is so stress-free and I love how strangers and neighbors alike open their homes and candy bowls for children they may or may not know. I love the joy in dressing up. I love seeing children of all ages making the rounds, no matter what they are wearing. I love how many teenagers commented on Carla’s pumpkins. I love how friendly the night becomes. It makes me feel so warm and happy and full of tenderness for our children and one another. It was a good night.

I hope your Halloween was as charming and balmy as mine was.