Halloween sad-face

When raising children there are those milestones you look forward to, and then there are the ones that pass a bit more poignantly. When your children reach the teen years, it seems, you start getting more and more of those poignant ones!

This year marks the official end of our family trick-or-treating. Insert sad pumpkin face here.

For years, we’ve had a tradition that I have loved: We go out with the kids and neighbors, and trick-or-treat on our unlit, sidewalk-less little street where over half of the homeowners pointedly do not put on their outside lights.

Why do we trick-or-treat here rather than driving to the very fun neighborhood just up the hill? I’ll send you to a six-year-old blog post to answer that question in detail. The short answer is that Halloween on our little street makes me feel like we’re living in the close-knit, small-town neighborhood I grew up in. We’re not: On my old street, we knew everyone. Now, though we know many of our neighbors, we certainly know fewer than half by name. But on Halloween, all the modern barriers break down. By tradition, the adults start out with a wine glass in hand and get refills from houses we stop at with the kids. The kids get to visit many fewer houses than possible because of all the adult gabbing, but on the bright side, there are so few kids trick-or-treating that each house tries to off-load lots of candy into their bags.

So, back to the sad pumpkin-face. Our 15-year-old really is too old for trick-or-treating, and he already went to his Halloween party. He’s hoping, I’m sure, to score a little candy here and there, but if he wants candy he’ll just go out and buy candy that he actually likes. Our 11-year-old—now a middle schooler—has been invited to a party in a much more lively neighborhood on Halloween.

However, there are a few perks to the modern neighborhood where people don’t live by the old rules. One of our neighbors today sent a note to our neighborhood email list and made an offer: Not only will they be open for candy for the kids, not only will they have wine flowing for the parents… they will even welcome adults without kids for a spot of socializing.

I plan to take them up on their offer. It’ll be so sad to miss walking down our dark street at night. I have to admit, however, that I might stop off at a few houses just to say hi. And perhaps, to suggest that neighborhood block party we always talk about but never get around to.

Maybe, if I feel really sentimental, I’ll carve the pumpkin that my 15-year-old hasn’t gotten around to carving. There it sits on our steps, a natural pumpkin face surrounded by his sister’s carved ones. It’s a sign of the times.

Next thing I know, they’ll be in college and I’ll be wondering where the years went.