Saints and thanks

October came to the door costumed and asking for candy, and it seems that I wasn't all that ready. School started, and Q and The Boy held our hands across the streets and rode on our shoulders to their new classrooms. Then we started to make those trips in long sleeves, then jackets, and then the classrooms weren't new. We've even unhangered the heavy coats a few times, left little of our faces for the wind to bother. I went back to work, part-time, here in the city, started over if not upward. And there were lessons in tennis and gymnastics and ballet and chess (which I'll no doubt have something to say about all of that at some point). We gained an hour. Somehow I lost a month.

Much happened, of course. We planned and re-planned costumes: Q went as the witch Kiki from the Miyazaki movie Kiki's Delivery Service, and she was a ringer for the role. The Boy, after no small amount of anguish, settled upon a traditional skeleton with a mask scary enough to make him lift it at the first mirror — just to check, I suppose, that he was still flesh under that menacing bone. The old costumes — like the old fears — usually prove the best. I'd say he made all those inevitable Jedis jealous.

We also fetched pumpkins and cut heads, and the day we did it rained cold. We first went out to a nearby restaurant to meet some old friends in town for the morning, and my lovely wife stayed and caught up while the kids and I went to a local market. We looked over the pumpkins while under our umbrellas. Q and The Boy each went with squat and round, while I picked an especially thick-stemmed one. The thirty pounds of pumpkin didn't go home easily, but we made it.

We've always loved Halloween, as most kids and parents do, and fall in New York tends to remind us why we put up with this city. But October is a tough month now, one I found myself wanting to let lie unwrapped in the bottom of my trick bag. I like to pretend, and I don't mind the company of ghosts. But sometimes it's enough to work the carving knife, to clear seeds and pulp, to make room for a candle.

With October behind us, here's to the month of saints and the week of thanks.