Never have I ever seen Halloween done up in the way New Jersey does up Halloween. You should’ve seen it. Heck, I should’ve seen it. Most of what I saw was from the window of the restaurant where I work, but even so, it was pretty amazing. Streets strewn with costumed revelers of every age, a flash mob dance of witches in the street, Cruella D’Villes and gnomes and popes at the bar ordering beers and then the rains began to fall. A pirate ship, an art teacher’s house, a town full to bursting like a little kids pillow case candy sack after a good night. It reminds me of when we were kids on the floor of the TV room inventorying our haul into little piles of smarties, hersheys, reese’s, snickers, bit o’honeys, and the gross almond joys I was never gonna eat. Parties all weekend, fun and celebration and a coming together that was joyful to witness while walking to table 8 to see if they were doin’ OK.
And now it’s November and we’re faced with the very real reality of seasons changing, mounds of leaves gathering beneath trees quietly with no 20 mph wind to send them into the neighbor’s yard to the south. Just quietly resting and patiently waiting for rakes and bags and boys with chores on a Saturday morning. So weird after 12 years in Nebraska.
I cry over lots of things. The tears come so much easier with every passing year and maybe it’s because I need to make up for lost time or maybe it’s because the beauty and yearning, the heartache and truth of this one life we live are simply undeniable as age gently informs me that we are, in fact, participating and living moments never swiftly hastening past, that it’s going faster than we thought it would, and, that the strength of our younger selves can’t control the turning of the earth, nor the forecast of this coming day so we better get moving or we’ll miss the chance. Feel it now. Be here now. Now is the most powerful thing we’re ever gonna get.
I like to fool myself into thinking my hands and feet will save me. My work will be my redemption. It’s the only thing I can do to get someone to love me. What can I pour out? What can I give? What of my beggar’s bounty can I share for a shadow of a scrap of love? How can I get it right? What rightness is beyond my grasp? What shall I give up wanting in order to be content with the now I’ve been handed to make it count and earn some points? I know this whole story isn’t about me. How can I prove I know it’s not about me? Let me count the ways.
And then I think of my mom. I am my mother’s daughter. She was always a striver and always a worker and resisted the notion of rest right up until the notion vanished from her grasp along with all the others.
When it’s my turn to disappear I don’t want any of the drugs. When it’s my turn to fade into the shadows I don’t want any heroic resistance to the ushering of what I’m supposed to become next. Gilbert Meilander wrote a piece a while back about wanting to be a burden to his friends and family but I can’t see how that’s possible for me when my mantra has always been to be the exact opposite. And then I think of my mom.
Jon, in his wisdom, reminded me that she’s safe now from the turmoil that can plague the human heart and human mind. She has left the illusion of earning a place and has entered into the place of being. Her being, her presence, her existance has earned her a place in the kingdom because she is loved. She is loved by the one who created her and that is enough. No illusion of some intellectual argument, some moral high ground, some ability to win favor and garner ribbons. She just is. And she is enough. Her place is this world is rooted in being, in love, in being beloved. Period. Like a small child, like anyone on this earth outside the realm of achievement or knowing, she is safe and secure and loved and cherished. And really, she didn’t get that seat of safety when Alzheimer’s took away her ability to strive and earn. She had it the whole time. We all have it this whole time and i do too. And you do too. Love and value apart from CV, trophies, accolades, prestige, effort, and work.
We don’t start empty and then fill up our coffers. We start full of love and value and stay that way. Somewhere along the way we may be fed lots of stories about getting more than the next guy, being better that before with some good old elbow grease and some college degrees, some bank account heft and a shiny list of contacts, but those are just human stories and they don’t erase the treasure we had when we first got here. What we got here with was love and being and that’s what we’ll have that’s treasure enough.
The world wants us doing and fearing and wanting and getting and comparing and bullshit.
Rubbish. Like dressing up on Halloween only a complete bummer. A better Halloween would be to show up as we are, dancing a witch’s boogy for all the world to see and leading with love and snack sized candy bars. That might be truer to the mission than hustle and bullshit. It is the wisdom of the eldest feeblest elders in need of assistance and grace, gentleness and being seen. Being seen for who we are and not what we do. That’s us. That’s a gift to reorient our vision to something truer and deeper and will not fade away.
If you love learning about cross cultural stuff like I do, you’ll probably have learned that North Americans are some of the only people on earth who ask “What do you do?” as a cocktail party question. Most cultures think that’s the least interesting part about you. Instead, in other countries, one might talk on travel, past times, family, food, ideas and living. All us American efficiency experts have a hard time adjusting to the four hour dinners, the 6-8 hour house visits, the slow living of life over the frantic checking of boxes.
Halloween in a way that gathers, delights, imagines, plays, celebrates, and eats lots of candy. When it comes to “what it looks like” from an outsider’s perspective, the nuttier, the freer, the better. What a notion. It’s food for thought that isn’t empty calories or a recipe for a sugar crash. Hell it might be the launching pad for something more present, more vibrant, more teary-eyed beautiful than we usually like to consider. High five.