I thought today would be a good day for staying dry indoors and listen to the CBC on the radio. As it turned out it was also a good day for watching a sea lion swallow a fish whole below me as I wrote todays blog. (click here to see sea lion video)

On Thursdays my favorite show is on CBC radio… This is that..  Those of you who know the show, and know me ….will understand my choice. After that show, the The Vinyl Cafe replayed a couple of Halloween stories from Dave’s past.. Made me think of our previous Halloweens.

E and I started dating in October.. Our first Halloween was our third date.  I was a good sport and dressed up as a sailor and he was a tube of toothpaste.. (Crest)… the next year he was a witch and I was a clown.

We were married by our third Halloween and I didn’t need to keep up the pretense any longer. E was getting into his costume before we headed to a party in West Van. When he came into the bedroom to check on my progress he found me in bed… “I hate Halloween”, I confessed … “I don’t want to wear a costume” … “I want to stay home” … “Isn’t there a movie we could watch here in front of the fire?”  He sighed… We stayed home.

Luckily our children came along and we were able to enjoy Halloween together through them.. I just think Halloween is for kids. Adults dressing in costumes just doesn’t make sense to me.. Cute little kids dressing up in funny costumes with bright red lipstick carrying plastic swords. That makes sense to me.. I loved opening the door to sweet little faces eager for their treats. Always so polite with their thank you’s.. We would have scary music playing through the windows and the requisite decorated pumpkins (three) on the porch. When the kids came home from trick or treating with their Dad there were always stories of the scariest house or the house with the best candy..

I remember as a kid standing on the porch of the house across from Maple Grove Park where the Dad (who I adored).. would make us sing for our treats.. We could never think of a song to sing so would always sing Jingle Bells.. E and I didn’t make the princesses and batmans who came to our door perform  tricks for their treats. We just handed over the loot.. I looked forward to the smiles on their faces.

Our first Halloween in Suburbia I was on maternity leave with our daughter. I thought I would try my hand at domesticity and sew costumes for the boys…. It was the days when the movie Land Before Time was popular… I sewed matching dinosaur costumes for our sons. They were the first things I had sewn since Mrs. G. failed me in Sewing 8 for my shoddy half slip… By the next Halloween I was back to work with no time for home sewn costumes.. E and I invented costumes with clothing we found in our closets or last minute trips to the thrift store.

My favorite was the year E cut a hockey stick in half. attached it to a brace that hung over the shoulders of the boys under their old referee jerseys… He then broke another stick and drilled it into either side of a hockey helmet.                      

Tomorrow night we will probably be sitting by the fire watching a movie like we did in ’82. We have no scary music or pumpkins. There are only two trick or treaters living on this island and tomorrow night we are hoping they come to our door. I am grateful for the memories of those times with the kids. I am also grateful that E still choses watching a movie in front of the fire with me over going to

a Halloween party.