It’s coming up to Halloween and I have teenagers. My eldest, Dylan, isn’t remotely interested (aside from insisting Nathan shares his haul.) Nathan, still wants to go trick-or-treating. This year he is going dressed up as a badger.
I think he only wants to go because it’s one of the few times he gets access to lots of sweets and is temporarily in control of their distribution. Then I will start panicking at the sugar content and confiscate them. I’ll probably hand them over to their dad, who dishes them out arbitrarily (but at least I’m not there to witness it). Or drip feed them out gradually until I later have the Easter chocolate to worry about. Some usually end up in the bin.
When J was here, we went all-out at Halloween. We not only carved pumpkins, we painted them. Or at least I did. (I’ve brazenly shoe-horned that in so that I can include pictures of my pumpkins. Four years at Art College and they’re probably the only art-work I ever show off about. We won’t mention the fact that the ET pumpkin was originally meant to be Yoda.)
One year we decorated the house and made a ‘spooky’ ghost walk through the rooms downstairs. There was a sheet-ghost that came hurtling down the stairs on a string, with a scream playing through the bluetooth speaker. A hand coming through a box (J hiding underneath) to grab at the boys as they walked past. A drawer opening all on its own (more string) to reveal a creepy skull. Plastic spiders flying out from behind doors. Me and J each took it in turn to hide and set up the next scare, the other navigating the boys to the right spot.
Unfortunately Dylan’s friend Elliot had come with them to experience this silly fright-fest. He brought with him a torch so powerful that it ruined all the set-ups that relied on low lighting. And he spoiled it with his cynicism. He would pointedly say in each room: “Why are you hiding under that blanket?” or “Hmmm… I wonder where J has gone.” I knew there was a reason I didn’t like that boy.
A friend of mine said recently, when we were talking about J: “The reason you liked him so much was because he was so childish.” A bit – OK, a lot – simplistic maybe, but there’s some truth in it. He made things fun, and silly and it made me want to be fun and silly too. When you have a serious, and responsible job, it’s liberating to find someone who makes everything an adventure. But at what cost?
The night before the Halloween house, when we were setting everything up, J became almost manic. What we’d done wasn’t enough – he wanted to keep going. We ended up arguing about it – I wanted to go to bed, he wanted to do more. I can’t remember if he ended stayed up late by himself, it wasn’t unusual.
On the night of the Halloween house, once me and the boys had gone to bed, he stayed up. Drinking and most likely smoking weed. While we were sleeping, he took videos of the house decorations we’d put up. The next morning he was really excited to show them to me.
They were completely underwhelming. Boring videos of some skeletons sitting on a pile of autumn leaves, or cut-out bats stuck to the wall. I think he was trying to keep the ‘high’ going. It had been brilliant fun coming up with the ideas for the house, and putting it all together. But where I was able to say: “That was fun,” and walk away when it was over, he was addicted to the high. He didn’t want it to stop. And when it did stop, the crash was brutal.
So, it will be a low-key Halloween this year. Partly to do with teenagers not thinking it’s ‘cool’ and partly because I don’t have the energy to go all-out on my own. No pumpkin painting this year (I know! What a waste, I hear you say). I’ll put a few decorations up and get the sweets ready for any visitors we get. But I will also enjoy the relative calm. I miss the fun and excitement J brought to Halloween, but not the strings that came attached to it.
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