It's been pretty quiet in our little corner of the US, but now things are picking up a bit. The holiday season is in full swing. We've just had Halloween, Thanksgiving is right around the corner and all the shops scoured their warehouses for Christmas decorations weeks ago. I have to admit that I'm not one for all this jolliness. Halloween especially scares me. In the Netherlands there's a similar tradition called Sint Maarten, but it doesn't quite have the same following as Halloween here. Last year was the first year I got to endure the local Halloween festivities. At 4 o clock the doorbell rang. Kids dressed up as spidermans and pirates were holding up their bags for the candy that I did not have. Parents were looming in the background with double frowns on their faces. The first frown said "Don't touch our kids!" and the second one said "What? No candy? Outrageous!". Meanwhile Maria was racing home with newly purchased bags of candy. Once she got home I cowered in the corner and let her take over. She has much more experience with this and even engaged the little ones in some harmless banter that seemed to lighten the frowns on the parent's faces a bit.
Oh, almost forgot, the fact that one of the left over bits of candy broke a filling completed the traumatization process.
This year I was slightly better prepared. Bags of individually wrapped candy, check. Bowl for easy grabbing, check. Clocks synchronized, check. Maria was still not going to be home before 5:30 so that left me a good 90 minutes of dealing with looming parents in the fading daylight. I decided to take the initiative and not let the kids grab but just dump a handful of candies into their bags. My first clue that this approach was flawed was a fairy walking away with a whispered "Wow!". The parents were not going to like this. When maria came home and took over she did the same and got a complaint from a tiny Dracula that she was making his pumpkin too heavy. The looming and frowning seemed to drown out what was left of the daylight at the that point. Maybe we need to book a vacation next year around Halloween.
