Last Halloween
There comes a time when we start doing things for the last time.
Today was a hard day to write. Life got in the way. Between cheering my teenage son on as he pushed “submit” on his first college application (was it as momentous as his first physical step 15 years ago — yes, it felt like it was) to doing what might be my very last Halloween baking for our three-person family, it was a day to live and feel each moment wash over and through me. Every day should be like that, you intone. Yes, yes, you are right. But like many humans, I forget, and then live as if we all have years before us, rolling out like red carpets before a king.
I made a pumpkin pie from scratch and there was too much water in the puree. I baked the pie for longer and finally drained the pie of its extra water. It sat for a few hours and in the sitting, set. It was delicious. But I’d forgotten the homemade whipped cream in the freezer, and now we have whipped ice cream — a new delicacy.
I baked brownies in the form of angry pumpkins and as I popped them out of their mould, still warm and moist, my heart stopped. The last time. I’d made these for years running — I’d later find photos of them year after year, along with photos of roasted pumpkin seeds of all sorts and sizes. These, along with the candy corn and our pumpkin carvings, our decorations and listening to Poe speak yet again of being buried alive, were our traditions.
Do traditions stop when your children move on? Stop, perhaps, not. Transform or change into once-in-a-while things? Perhaps. Do these traditions become things we do with other — or fewer — people? Will we always remember doing them with our children, first?
Some years ago, a friend of mine mentioned he’d bought kitchenware for the last time. He was beginning to notice he was now doing things for the last time in his lifetime. Buying the last frying pan. He wouldn’t need another one — he’d done the math. How many more blankets will you need? Or pairs of curtains. Or shoes. He’d come to the end of buying these things — and to my mind, was still young.
But he was right.
There comes a time when we start doing things for the last time.
We don’t brush our teeth in the morning and think, “I will never do this again. This is the last time.” But do you remember the last time you skipped down the street? Or swung on a swing, flinging your legs into the sky? You did those things once. The last time you did them, did you know?
We grow up, and as I think of it, I’m sorry we do. So keen to become adults, to do adult things, to have the experiences that make adults adults, we rush into adulting and before we know it, we’re looking back, nostalgic. Where did the time go? Where did we go?
Today was a hard day to write. I wanted the world to slow to a snail’s pace. I wanted to rewind time, give me back the years I’d lived, the time with our son, the laughter and giggles, the traditions, the things we still looked forward to.
But growing up and older doesn’t work like that. I tell myself and others that time isn’t linear. It feels like it is because we seem to perpetually be moving forward, away from the past, into the future. This forward movement doesn’t seem to stop. But it does. We forget things like the whipped cream in the freezer and so we are forced back, not forward. Oh yes, we think. Forgetting takes us back, like memory. And then your teen is standing tall above you, asking, “Hey Mom, are you alright?”
Yes, I’m alright. Time isn’t linear. I will be able to come back to you and to this. You may not be here anymore, and maybe I won’t either. But I will be able to come back to this moment. This moment when I couldn’t write.
I could only feel — our last Halloween.
