Halloween 2012: I Am Thankful

I started writing this last Thursday, on Bigger Picture day, and THIS is how long it's taken me to finish!  But I still had to share it :)

 

 

I'm usually lamenting our holidays in retrospect to some degree.  I blame the temper of an overtired toddler or the noise of an oversugared preschooler or the manners of an overindulged big kid. 

 

 

It all leaves me feeling like either my planning isn't good enough or my kids are too difficult.  I want it all to be perfect, because It's a holiday, dangit.  And holidays are where memories are captured.  THESE days will be remembered and laughed about and cherished.

 

 

Unless mama loses her cool, which has been happening with frustrating regularity. 

 

 

So I don't know what happened this year.  I really don't. 

 

There were frantic, irritated moments and the usual meltdowns about not being allowed to eat ALL THE CANDY.  There was a costume malfunction.  There was a refusal to wear the headpiece or carry the parasol (which cost an extra ten and twenty dollars each and were therefore representative of the crown jewels of Halloween).

 

Oddly enough, none of that really mattered.  It registered as normal and acceptable and right on my sliding scale of holiday magic. 

 

 

So when it came time to blow out the jack-o-lanterns and turn off the porch lights and revel in the craziness that was our neighborhood on Halloween night...

 

 

we were only left with thankfulness.  We ran out of candy after two hundred trick-or-treaters, our kids stayed up too late and ate too much sugar and were too shy to say thank you on more than one occasion.  There was an angry little boy who stomped away from our empty candy bowl.  There were late-night doorbell ringings past bedtime.  There was much, much, exhaustion. 

 

And it was all just right.  As it should be.

 

 

A holiday chock full of imperfections, that didn't measure up in all the right places, actually turned out to be cherishable after all.  It was amazing.  It was a relief. 

 

The only expectation I had was that it would be a wild ride.  Bumpy, curvy, sometimes speeding, sometimes crawling, and unquestionably wild.  And that made it perfect after all.