Every once in awhile, I learn something new about my kids.
It’s an interesting thing, discovering something new about a person you can’t imagine knowing any better than you already do. It’s like seeing a new flower appear on a plant you’ve been watching since it was a seedling — it’s surprising. You didn’t change the water or the sunlight or the soil, so where did that flower come from?
I think I know more about my kids than anyone. I know what they eat, when they go to bed. I know what they wear, when they shower, what shampoo they use. I know what they do for fun, and what happens when they get in trouble. I know what makes them mad and sad and happy. But even so, this Halloween season brought some new color to my kids’ metaphorical leaves.
Some new sprouts started to appear right at the beginning of the month, when my youngest son asked about our Halloween decorations. He saw spiders and pumpkins around the neighborhood, and he wondered why we weren’t keeping up. I brushed him off, thinking it wasn’t a very big deal and recognizing that it was a nuisance to haul out Halloween decorations just to put them away again in a few weeks.
He didn’t let it go. Instead, he took matters into his own hands, finding the big light-up pumpkin we kept in the garage and putting it on the porch. My older son got in on the decorating, making his own scary signs to hang above our door. I didn’t realize what he was up to until the next morning, when I stepped onto my porch to walk my kids to the bus stop and I saw the words “DIE” and “TERROR” written in big, red letters taped to my door frame.
Now, I live on a fairly busy street, and my son’s handwriting, coupled with the red paint he used, looked downright threatening — like our house had been marked for some serious impending violence. He used one page of white printing paper per letter, so you could definitely read the words quite clearly, even if you were standing on the sidewalk across the street.
I debated taking the words down, wondering if it was venturing toward being inappropriate, but I just couldn’t invalidate his initiative. I was honestly pleased to see his creativity shine, even if it was a shade morbid, and I thought it was amusing that he made his own decorations since ours were so lacking.
It was around this time that my youngest son started really pushing hard for me to buy some more pumpkins for the porch. One day, he came into my room and sat on my bed and sobbed that our house wasn’t spooky enough.
“You think our house should be a little scarier?” I asked him, as the tears rolled down his cheeks.
“Yes mom, it’s Halloween,” he took big pauses between words as his breath shuddered from crying so hard. “It’s … supposed ... to be spooky!”
I didn’t anticipate him having such strong feelings over a holiday we’ve hardly celebrated before. So we went to the grocery store and picked out a pumpkin, and he carried it up the stairs by himself with a beaming pride and joy that lasted about one day until he started asking for more pumpkins.
A friend of mine who lives on the other side of the country heard about his plight and sent him a package filled with Halloween delights, including a countdown calendar. It was such a touching gesture, I felt like a global village was with me in fascination and surprise at this passionate display of Halloween obsession, helping me nourish this strange bloom that appeared out of nowhere.
He asked me every morning how many days were left until Halloween. He made his own decorations, drawing rough sketches of pumpkins of all sizes, cutting them out in little circles and leaving them on the floor by his bed. And he started to shake and giggle with glee as he anticipated his first-grade Halloween concert that was drawing closer and closer.
The morning of his concert, he was ready. He picked out an all-black outfit, ate a balanced breakfast and made sure I would be at the school on time and ready to be amazed. We talked about his favorite song and my favorite song, and he walked out the door like he was on top of the world.
He knew every word of every song, every hand movement and every spooky poem for the entire program. And at the end of it, he told me that Halloween was his favorite holiday of all — even more than Christmas.
It was different, and new, and I was surprised, but I was so happy to see this new side of his personality appear. Next Halloween, I’m going to be ready and waiting to see what new flowers come — watching him bloom is a beautiful sight.
Amy Choate-Nielsen writes a bi-monthly column on her family experiences and lessons learned from her grandmother, Fleeta, who died before she was born.