During the late afternoon of Halloween, as neighbors were arranging treat tables in their driveways, there was some fuss among the grownups on the grass island in the middle of the court. It was covered in mushroom fairy rings. They were much smaller than the one Sue and I found in Saginaw Forest, which was twenty-some feet across. The ones on the court were about a tenth that size, but there were so many of them! Some of them even overlapped each other, forming mushroom Venn diagrams. In ones and twos and threes, the adults strolled out to the island to exclaim over them. Not so much the children–they were getting ready for their big night.
When, at last, dusk arrived, the kids appeared in far higher numbers than they did last year, that first Halloween during CoVid. They were jubilant. The 2021 protocol relieved them of the onus of going up on people’s porches and interacting with strange adults–activities that slow a kid down. Having treat tables on people’s driveways is a much more efficient way to gather one’s bounty. Adults who wanted to see your costume would be out by their tables, and they would say nice things any way, without the sidewalk-to-porch-and-back travel time. It was terrific to see so many smiling children.
This year’s Halloween decorations were the greatest ever. Most of them were up weeks ago, but some new entries and finishing touches were added on the Big Day, like one yard’s legion of person-sized ghosts. And the sound effects. There were light shows, as there were in years past. But these were not just projected images of whimsical ghosts flitting about on garage doors, but skulls and enormous, angry, bloodshot eyes.
Overall, there were nice touches of originality, like a skeletal, black-hooded Death, swinging on a swing. Ten-foot-tall bushes arrayed as ghosts. And a young man who, like his bicycle, was covered in fairy lights. The boy had dressed himself first in a whole-body-including-the-head white coverall, so he was quite the eerie sight as he cycled slowly through the neighborhood.
More adults wore costumes this Halloween than in years past, whether to stroll along in their children’s wake or to stay at home watching the costumed parade pass by. One of our neighbors sported a whole-head werewolf mask as he sat in a camp chair by his treat table. Quite a few adults could be found standing over firepits they had moved temporarily to the driveway, so they could keep warm while supervising. And when darkness fell, it found them still outdoors, joined around the firepits by adult neighbors with warming beverages.
I’d noticed, the morning of Halloween, that someone had decorated Sugarbush woods. Small ghosts hung by the path, and an enormous simulated spiderweb overlay a group of saplings. What I didn’t know until later was that someone or someones had lined the paths with luminaria. A couple neighbors and I went to the woods in the after-dark drizzle to experience the decorations. They were wonderful, emphasizing curves in the paths that go largely unnoticed during the day, and far enough apart to add just the right touch of other-worldly unfamiliarity.
After the Big Day, we had a hard frost, followed by a sunny still morning. The combination severs that now-tenuous bond of leaf and tree. The morning sun reaches the leaves, and they fall straight down to form pools of color around the tree trunks. As the dog and I travel the paths and sidewalks, we wade through pools of color, while more color drops around us, whisks against my jacket, lands on the dog’s fur. A pool of scarlet and apricot and peach leads to another like it or to a pool of gold and green. It’s sad to see the leaves come down, but their beauty is undiminished. Walks now are like moving through a line in a favorite hymn, “Love Divine.” The leaves are “changed from glory into glory.”
We lifted our voices with the choir’s to sing that hymn last Saturday at Christ Church Grosse Pointe. The occasion was the memorial service for my aunt and uncle. Norah and Jack met at that church, lo, these many years ago. Now their ashes are interred in the church’s rose garden columbarium. They were extraordinary people, both–and like the leaves, glorious. The hardest part of the service for me was the commendation. The leaves in their autumn splendor, Norah and Jack, and “All of us,” says the commendation, “go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”
5 November 2021