This one's for you, Mom. And, less directly, for me too.
We got the girls home late tonight, and they wanted me to cuddle with them. We moved the trundle right up against the daybed and I positioned myself diagonally between them. That way, both girls feel like mom is cuddling with them. In our case, cuddling means being horizontal in close proximity to them. The bar that marks the end of one bed and the beginning of another crosses between my shoulder blades. It's cold, but not too uncomfortable. I've figured out how to position myself across it so that my spine isn't resting there. At the same time, it probably keeps me from falling asleep between them, which I might otherwise. Motherhood is a tired, tired feeling. It's a fact of life on which I've got to choose, constantly, not to linger.
The silence takes shape between the three of us. In my mind, it arches again and again, riding on the steady, warm sounds of breaths as the little ones drift sleep-ward. Distantly, I can discern the sound of sirens: a lower tone, then a much higher one, which is almost how I might imagine a howling wolf to sound. Sirens are loud, meant to be heard. Meant to be noticed. Yet, from where I am, I have to concentrate to hear them. That's part of being in a city, though, isn't it? The sounds of trouble - crime, disaster, pain, and panic - the sounds that, of necessity, demand attention, somehow blend into the backdrop. They are, in a sense, a part of the silence. Isn't that a little bit macabre, in itself?
It's an appropriate thought for Halloween. And maybe, without realizing it, that's the point of the whole Halloween celebration. We are celebrating the fact that we live in a fallen world. We celebrate death, in a way, though I rather prefer the way Mexico does that, or at least the way it's portrayed in Coco (and yes, it seems that I get all my cultural awareness from Disney movies. What of it?), which is more a celebration of ancestry and of remembering. Why, coming back to America, since I can't speak for anywhere else in the world, all the blood and chainsaws and spiderwebs? Why all the laud for decay? I think it is simply that: we are celebrating the fallen world, the prevalence of mortality.
I'd best not linger on that thought either, because left just like that, I can't say I approve of it, but I rather like Halloween. Not the horror and shrieking and haunted-house Halloween, but the Halloween for kids. The pumpkins and the smell of fallen leaves, the chill breezes and costumes and the warm soup before heading out onto the lamp-lit streets. For me, Halloween is more a celebration of the turning of seasons. I never liked the zombie-bride costumes or the horror films. I'm a simple soul, I guess, and I'm more sensitive now than I ever was before, to sorrow and loss and death. I don't need a tryst with darkness, do I? I quite like the light.
Perhaps we could rather celebrate humanity, and how happiness thrives and love abounds, somehow weaving themselves around the through mortality. Perhaps, that's what we already do. In very much the same way that Christmas has different meanings for different people, from honoring vestigial pagan tradition to honoring the God who made them, the significance of Halloween, to a lesser degree might also be a matter of choice. But if it's going to be a celebration of human resilience and of the eternal and immortal bits that run through and string together fallible humanity, it's got to become so through deliberate, individual effort. How to make that happen, I don't know. Probably because it's getting late and I was tired to begin with, and I'm overthinking everything.
You're such a prude sometimes.
Yeah, I know.
