I remember when we moved into our first single-family home. Family members who were "in the know" discovered the property and had helped my parents to make it happen. It was on the other side of town and needed A LOT of work, but it was a generous offer that allowed our family of six to move out of a single trailer and into a larger space- four bedrooms, a den, dining room and a living room and even our own fenced yard. We were excited, but only at first.
You see, a motorcycle gang had previously resided on the property and although it was summertime when we acquired it, it looked very much like a "Halloween House". With only one other house beside it, it was removed from the rest of the neighborhood. There were holes in the doors and spray paint on the walls. The old wooden floors were stripped of their finish. The fence, doors and shutters were painted black. And the property was completely over-grown. The steps creaked. There were mice. And across the street, there was even a cemetery. "This is where we are going to live… in a Halloween House?" My 6-year-old brain tried to wrap my head around it. "What was wrong with the trailer park?"
It took a village to clean that place up and make it our own. Long days with the blood, sweat and tears of many a good soul turned that sad-looking property into one that we could be proud of. Lots of elbow grease, new carpet, fresh paint, even some new plumbing, and the broken black and white house turned to a sunny white and baby blue cottage. And there were azaleas, and lilies and tulips to boot. And right in the very front of the property, just behind the fence, sat the most-wonderful oak tree with the most- perfect branches for climbing. My father attached a small swing to it for my baby sister.
Irony would have it, that when we got all moved in … we missed our trailer; the kids did anyway. My parents couldn't believe, after all the effort that went into restoring the property, that we were asking to "move back to the trailer park?!" I had gotten used to sleeping in the living room there. We were all so close together. It was cozy. Sleeping in my bed in the "new room", I felt so far away from everyone; even though my parents' door was just a few feet from my own. My brothers were now on an entirely different floor. This house sounded different. My siblings and I missed the instant community and playmates that waited just outside those aluminum steps on the cement patio that we had learned to walk on. This house was more removed and there weren't many kids in the area. It was just the four of us now, to make play with one another. We had out-grown the trailer and my parents knew that. It was time to move-on and make a new place feel like home.
In September, we started at a new school; a private school that was academically challenging and required that we wear uniforms. It wasn't an easy transition – to leave our friends, a community where we could have 'the run of the place' and a school where we were "comfortable." Even though we weren't getting what we needed from school or life, we didn't know it back then. My parents were wise to make the move, even though we hated it.
That fall wasn't a fun time for us. So in an effort to jazz things up a bit, my father, forever the Halloween King, spent one weekend in October constructing a "Halloween Hunt" (as we used to call it). He had done it the year prior, in the trailer, and we loved it. He planted clues throughout the place, scavenger-hunt style, which would ultimately lead us to a "treasure box" filled with small toys and candy. But this house was bigger with a much greater potential for hiding clues and decorating. And so, the Halloween King took us on a spectacular hunt around the house, back into the dark den, down into the unfinished basement, outside facing the tombstones, into the yard covered in orange and yellow leaves … all in search of our treasure. And with that, and time of course, we grew to love our new home. You see, despite all the effort that went into repairing that house, it didn't feel like the perfect house … until … it became Our Halloween House.
And no matter our ages or life's happenings, the Halloween festivities and the 'Halloween Hunts' continued, each year becoming more and more elaborate. And just when Dad would say "Guys, I don't think I can do it this year," our disappointed faces would give him the motivation to pull it off, yet again. One year there were clues attached to the fallen leaves, nailed to the ground. Later, when we were older, the hunt led us into the cemetery that we had grown so accustomed to living next to. And with little money but a whole lot of creativity, he always found a way to make our homemade costume ideas come to fruition. From our earliest years, through high school and even into college, we always dressed-up and we never repeated a costume idea. In our family, it didn't matter how old you were, fantasy always resided there.
When we left the house and started families of our own, the 'Halloween Hunts' stopped but an 'All Hallows' Eve Bash' replaced it. Instead of spending days typing-up clues and putting together a hunt, my father spent days making invitations and putting together goody bags for the trick-or-treaters. It took him an entire month to decorate the house! And while few trick or treaters came to our house in my youth, because of its location on the outskirts of the neighborhood, as the decorations grew, so did the numbers of visitors, up to the hundreds. Many came by car just to knock on the door of the "Halloween House". The celebration of the season never faltered. Even into his sixties, my father climbed into that tree to hang lighted plastic jack-o-lanterns that became a signature landmark every fall. The front yard became a cemetery of its own (faux of course), growing bigger every year. The lights that covered the house and the yard got brighter too; even brighter than at Christmas. Our empty bedrooms were filled with boxes of Halloween decorations. My mother's curio cabinets, left behind with the divorce, were filled with monster collectibles. And the den became a permanent set-up for a Halloween village.
Having moved out of my hometown when I started my family, if ever I had a patient or ran into someone who said that they lived there, I'd tell them that that was where I grew up. They'd ask where I went to school and what neighborhood I lived in. Then, I'd ask them if they knew "The Halloween House". Everyone always did. "That's my house," I'd tell them, "My Dad, the Halloween king, still lives there. Stop by sometime, he'd love to show you the inside." For however impressive the outside was, the inside had even more. It was a Halloween lover's paradise. And everyone who drove-by it was impressed and they were even more impressed to meet someone who once called it "home."
Life is a series of choices and circumstances, some of which we can control and others, which we can't. Life would have it that 'Our Halloween House' would fall into a similar state of disrepair that we once found it in. And my father would find himself making the hard transition that we once did, thirty years prior. This time, it's the kids who know it's time to move on. And as we learned in our youth, just because "it's time", doesn't make it easy. Like the avocado-green aluminum trailer, our Halloween House had its place and its time, but its era is now over.
It is fitting that our good-bye party there falls on the weekend before the infamous holiday. No decorations this year, those are all packed away. No lighted jack-o-lanterns, no Halloween village. This year, it's like a true haunted house. And really, the decorations aren't needed. It already looks spooky enough. But the people will still come. The kitchen, with its roof caving in, will still smell of mulling spices. Old Halloween tunes will still play through the open windows and a fire pit will still warm cold toes. Out back, my pets are still buried. And in the front, still stands the most-perfect tree with the most-perfect branches for climbing. I'll hoist my kids up into it and tell them, once again, which branch "belonged" to me and which ones belonged to their aunt and uncles. Its orange and yellow leaves will once again cover the ground and I will remember the way it used to be.
Good-byes are always bittersweet. You couldn't pay me enough to rehab that house again. And just as the house has changed, I'm removed from that town now too and it no longer feels like 'home'. Many of my memories there are not good ones. And the house was never a perfect one. It was always drafty and always creaked, but it was our house. It gave us a place to lay our heads and call our own. It gave us a yard to play in and a tree to climb. The community pool is where we became avid swimmers and the school that we once hated was just the beginning of a most appreciated journey upwards in academia.
There is more story to be told, many more chapters of life still to be written. It is with a sigh of relief but also angst that we turn the page of that chapter of our lives and look ahead to new adventures. But you can be sure that it's a chapter that will never be forgotten. Like all things in life, things change, but Halloween will always be celebrated. Until I'm old and gray … when the weather turns cooler and the leaves change, when candy corn appears on the shelves of stores and children begin to imagine what they will reinvent themselves as for the night of trick or treat, I'll always recall my youth and what Halloween was like with a Dad who was is the 'Halloween King' and the magic that the season held, living in "Our Halloween House."
