I’m staying in this weekend. This weekend, which is one of my favorite weekend of the whole year. Normally I would position myself outside somewhere to watch little kids shuffle through fallen leaves dressed as robots or M&M’s or fuzzy little animals.
I’d watch the expressions on their faces, some excited, some expectant, some horrified and some genuinely confused as little pieces of candy get tossed into their bags.
I love Halloween because it reminds me of all of my Halloweens. It’s the fun holiday. The holiday that usually doesn’t come with family spats or tiring road trips to whoever’s house for a long day of family catchup where nobody wins and everyone comes home exhausted. On Halloween you just come home with candy.
But I’m staying in. I’m not out on a friend’s porch or out enjoying the best part of the holiday, the part where you dress up like you’re reliving your kid days but drink adult beverages until you can’t stomach anymore.
Nope. I’m in. I’m in because lately everything seems to be blur. So I’m making an effort to slow it down. Though it all still seems like a blur. Just in slow motion.
And somewhere between cooking up some dinner and cleaning the kitchen I realized I almost let this holiday rush by without watching one of my traditional seasonal films, “Practical Magic.”
Not the most artfully done cinematic feature, no.
About ten minutes into it, though, I’m back in Pittsburgh. I can taste the city on my tongue. It tastes like steel dust, bitter and dark gray. I shiver against memories of a torrential rain storm that left me soaked clean through to the skin, a winter storm that blanketed the city – leaving just me and a homeless man daring to brave the streets long before dawn. Me on my way to work. He, lost.
I’d been so lost myself, so alone the only place that gave me comfort was the library next door. “Practical Magic” by Alice Hoffman had been on display because previews for the movie had started to show up in theaters. I picked it up and lost myself in it.
I read it once. Then twice. Then three times. First, the book is far better than the movie. I let the return time lapse and the library charged me late fees. They racked up as I kept the book close. I feasted on every paragraph. Heavily detailed, the words were delicious and descriptive. They were like candy.
Better.
They were like caramels.
I identified with the dutiful but incredibly doubtful Sally, who always followed the rules and felt even her own heart wasn’t a safe bet. A far cry from the adventurous and vibrant life of her sister, Gillian.
Sans a sister, tonight, while watching, I think of my best friend and miss her so much it makes me ache and I start to wish I had gone out to be around the noise.
When the movie ends, I grab my copy from the stacks. Of all my books its spine is the most worn. Its pages are bent where I’d marked all my favorite spots with paper clips. Some pages have markings where I read and reread over passages like:
They both always wished for the same thing when they were sitting on the roof of the aunts’ house on those hot, lonely nights. Sometime in the future, when they were both all grown up, they wanted to look up at the stars and not be afraid. This is the night they had wished for. This is that future right now. And they can stay out as long as they want to, they can remain on the lawn until every star has faded and still be there to watch the perfect blue sky at noon.”
It all means more to me now than it did in that little studio apartment in a city I have no desire to return to again. Where everything tasted despondent and desolate. But that’s how most things go. It all means more later on. Once it’s all changed. Once the sky brims with color even on stormy days and the colors of the leaves will lift any spirit.
This is me, staying in. I am in but the mind is living it up. It makes me nervous and twitchy to not be doing a million things at once. To not be filling every second. Living in the moment is for suckers. Doing so opens the door to missing out on actually being that moment. Fluid and fleeting.
I flip through the old pages and read. I won’t do any more tonight, though there is plenty left to be done.
Instead I’ll remember a younger me who flipped through an ordinary book one fall afternoon and wanted to write paragraphs that read like lyrics, stories that stick with you long after they’re done.
Here’s to those moments … and of course, midnight margaritas.
