Still My Favorite Season

     My wife and I were recently discussing stages of life. There's your childhood as you look forward to becoming a teenager and more freedom as you learn to drive. Then there comes the independence of turning 21 and planning your future. Once you're settled, you look forward to marriage and possibly raising a family. From there it's a long road as middle age awaits but eventually you look forward to seeing your children move off on their own and having the house to yourself. Then on to retirement.

     But now, as both my wife and I entered that retirement stage some years ago, I asked her what stage of life now do we have to look forward to. After some thought, I proposed that it might be a time of retrospection and looking back after our travels and our time spent watching grandchildren.

     Not that I don't do some looking back already when I have the time. Just now I was reading past blogs I've written over the last 14 years. Much has changed in those past 14 years but one thing that certainly hasn't is my fondness for all things Halloween. Almost every year an October blog has featured a Halloween picture or story of some sort.

     This year I raised five pumpkins in my backyard garden . . .

. . . purchased a skeleton from Costco, watched my favorite zombie movie, visited the Bewitching Peddlers show in Marshall, Michigan and bought a package of over 180 candy bars for the trick-or-treaters.

     And it's not even October! The stores got to love an early shopper like myself.

     I've also infected my nearly three-year-old grandson with my enthusiasm for the spooky season. He loves my pumpkins in the back yard. Before he left after his usual Tuesday with grandma and grandpa last week, I saw him go into the back yard and give the biggest pumpkin there a hug. Though he speaks excitedly about ghosts, skeletons, zombies and “witces”, pumpkins are his favorite.

     Check out this picture.

     We were at a bakery where we said he could have any pastry he wanted. His favorite donut with sprinkles was in the display case as were others rich with cream and frosting. He picked out a pumpkin cookie, which he only nibbled at. Grandpa helped him to finish it.

     To entertain him one day, I got out my bin of Halloween props. He loved going through the fake spiders, skeletons and ghosts though I grabbed from him a make-up kit.

     “Is it dangerous?” he asked.

     In a grandpa's eyes, a three-year-old with a packet of face-paints and smudge rubs? Yeah, let's say it could be trouble. But if he were disappointed, perhaps I made up for it by signing him up for a pre-school pumpkin hunt that's supposed to take place in a few weeks.

     And it's not even October.