Trick or treat, Mrs. Pratt...

                        Last night was the first night in thirteen years that I didn't take a costumed McMonkey down a sidewalk, in search of candy that their mom wouldn't let them gorge themselves on...

                  It started small; a single stroller rolling up broken sidewalks in Whitehall, then an hour long trip to Grandma Jill's house, so she could use her granny superpowers to veto our common sense and fill our tiny terrors with chocolate.

                                        A happier ended version of " Hansel and Gretal"...

                                  

                                       They never tell new parents about these " last rites"...

                        

                If someone told me, as I pushed a small wheeled stroller over giant curbs, into deep pot holes, filled with freezing water, as its gentle, fragile frozen surface inevitably cut thru my thin socks and skin, simultaneously soaking my sneaker, that I would ever miss this, I would have laughed...

                           

                       I have pictures in my mind of long gone Halloweens, of my two older brothers and I, traipsing up our dead end street, house by house, until we arrived at Mrs. Pratts house. 

                     She would invite us into her house and talk to us; ask questions about those things important to the first generation of Jay St. McMonkeys...

                      We grew up climbing the giant pine trees that fenced in her property. We raked humongous piles of pine needles to jump into and had great and fierce wars using the pine cones from those trees, like grenades...

                               When we got older, sometimes we laughed at her warnings about life.

               " Don't smoke cigarettes because they will lead you to beer and beer will lead you to liquor. Pretty soon you'll be smoking marijuana and getting into hard drugs. So don't smoke cigarettes "...

                                We thought she was completely clueless, but like most from her generation, she hit the nail right on the head.

                                                She must have had a crystal ball...

                                                               ...or a Bible....

                                  Little did I know that she had a lot of indirect, but intimate exposure to boozing and drug addiction. Not personal use, but she knew the patterns, from many that she loved...

                                     So when we moved into town, every Halloween we brought our own tiny tribe up the street and to her house....

                           And every time, she invited them, my Wonderful Wife and me, into her home; we talked about our boys and the boys my brothers and I used to be.

                            We talked about the coincidence that our boys are so close in age, looks and temperament to the kids long since grown...

                    The last time we went to visit her, we had lost all track of time and it was well past 9:00 p.m.

                                                     We almost didn't go...

                                 Three tired and cranky children trudged behind two crankier and more tired parents, who were half hoping it was too late, and that the knock on the door might be ignored.

                       On the first knock she came, looking concerned, panicked and relieved.

                    " I thought you weren't going to come. I turned the light off so the teenagers wouldn't knock, but I sat here hoping that you didn't get busy, that you didn't forget"...

                        We went into her house and she loaded the kids up with the rest of the candy that was left in her bowl. We talked again about the time my brothers and I showed up wearing the matching Indian outfits my mother had sewn; the same story we shared with each other, year after year..

                     " Somewhere, I know I still have the picture", she always said...

                                                I don't think she ever found it.

                                 Early on, in the next year, Mrs. Pratt passed away.

                         It didn't seem long until one of our McMonkeys was asking to go with his own friends, trick or treating.

                                    Eventually, last night, they all had places to go...

                        And for a moment, I think I know some of what Mrs. Pratt felt, when she thought no one was coming...

                                   To realize that our time to see all those moments of our children growing up, have speedily begun passing away. We will still have cross country meets and dinners home, but from this point on, the moments we are present, witnessing their " new first steps", will be fewer and farrer between, most to be recalled to us in stories from them, after the fact...

                                                                    If at all...

                            I joked to my Wonderful Wife that now, we were the " new" Mrs. Pratt...

                                         We would be the ones waiting and hoping...

                   I was kidding at the time, but when I drove to another neighborhood north, this morning, to pick up my eldest and she drove east, to another town, picking up our youngest, that phrase came back into my thoughts, much less comically...

                                   We are given compressed moments of our children's lives that begin dissolving in a time-release process that we can never encapsulate again.

                                                                   "Trick or Treat"

                                                                I think I get it now...