While this is written a week before Hallowe’en, I know no one will come to our house. The Grant girls used to, but they are grown now. As a lure to come back the following year, we always promised them scholarships to Harvard, but I think they saw through that ruse.
This would be a good Hallowe’en to be visited by ghouls and ghosts because the Mohs surgery I’ve had lately has prompted Mary to sing “My Funny Frankenstein” from time to time. There could be worse things. To be 82 1/2 and still playing tennis three times a week and continuing to misspell the names of high school athletes is not so bad. My big fear remains cognitive decline, which is why I’m always furiously doing crossword puzzles. Whenever Mary remarks that I may be overdoing it, I tell her in no uncertain terms, as if I were stepping off a helicopter at the Town Airport, that my time is valuable.
Hallowe’en and the Days of the Dead that follow it are interesting. The Europeans put sweets out on their porches to placate the spirits who were abroad on All Hallows Eve, but the Mexicans, with their decorated altars and calaveras welcomed them in. I say let them come in too, our forebears, on both sides of the family. Now that would be a party. I could tell my mother that I’d finally published a book, not a novel, as she’d hoped, but a book of essays — a book of unfailing good humor in which, whenever I’m a little down, I take refuge.
My father would be glad to see that I’m happy — not only engaged, as Aristotle defined happiness, but happily married to boot. I know this bliss is not unending. I know what love is — it’s heartbreak. So be it then.
Mary would love to see her mother again. They were as thick as thieves. I’ve never seen a mother and daughter so close — a delight to see. Her father, on bended knee, arms raised, would be singing, as he used to do at Melvyn’s in Palm Springs, “Swanee, how I love ya, how I love ya/ My dear old Swanee . . . ” And my stepfather would be bemoaning just about everything, not least our continued residence within the exclusion zone of The New York Times.
We would tell him that everything was still going to hell in a handbag to put him at ease, as did Social Security, though he railed against that socialist program for many years — even vowing to send the checks back to the government, which, once they began coming in, he didn’t.
How many have thought the end times were upon us over the ages? Quite a few, I’ll bet.
Incredulous as our Hallowe’en visitants might be, I’d like to reassure them that life persists, and that they should feel free to help themselves to as many Snickers bars as they want.