Halloween Date

Honestly, I've tried not to spend too much thinking about what Halloween should have been this year.  Not that we would have taken Eliza trick-or-treating, but there would have been a fuzzy yellow duck costume.  We would have been able to attend the get-together that our friends had, everybody bringing their babies in costume.  We would have made crafty Halloween cards to send to family.  We would have gone to a pumpkin patch for a photo session.  We would have carved a jack-o-lantern and let Eliza touch the smushy insides (although, if she were anything like me, she wouldn't like to have gunk on her hands so that wouldn't have lasted long).

And so much for not thinking about it...

It's the downside of a vivid imagination.  I can see with such clarity how things would should have been.

Instead, we skipped Halloween this year.  No hanging out with the neighbors around a fire pit in the front yard.  No handing out candy to the kids who traipsed by.  (St. Louis tradition is that you have to tell a joke to get a piece of candy, so it makes the whole process a little more entertaining.)  We didn't get together with friends to watch Buffy and eat frito chili pie.  We didn't go to the elaborate costume party that someone in the English department always hosts.  We definitely skipped the Sunday afternoon kiddie-party with all our friends who have little ones.  We just wanted to avoid the whole thing.

So we went to dinner at a local brewery.  The only person dressed up was the hostess, who was a teenager wearing cat ears and a tail.  We sampled a flight of five beers, and I ate pretzels and salad and cheesy beer soup.  Then we went to the movies and (FINALLY) saw the Woody Allen movie Midnight in Paris, which you know that I totally and unabashedly loved.

We were that cheesy couple who squeezed each other's hands and grinned every time there was a familiar Paris landmark, somewhere that we'd visited together when we went for our anniversary trip a couple summers ago.  I laughed out loud at the way the character of Gil Pender and his fiancee's father-in-law "agree to disagree" about politics.  I was completely charmed by the literary references and the way Hemingway and the Fitzgeralds and Pablo Picasso all came to life.

After the movie, David commented on what a good night it was, and asked why we don't go out for Monday night date nights more often.  Maybe we need to start a new tradition, get the week off to a good start.

Halloween wasn't what it should have been.  But it was the best that we could do.  And for the millionth time, in the thick of this grief, in the flickering darkness of the movie theater, I was so glad to have David next to me.  I still can't think of anybody else that I'd rather go to the movies with, or go to Paris with, or make a baby with, taste microbrews with, or live through a heartbreak with, than that crazy guy I'm married to.