Halloween

Halloween in the 2nd grade is one of my happiest memories. It's not even a memory exactly, just a warm cloud of happy impressions. The only thing I remember with any distinctness is creating a kind of advent-calendar sort of haunted house out of construction paper. It may have even been the fourth grade. Whatever the case, ever since then, Halloween has been, with Christmas, the most affecting of the holidays for me.

This year my girlfriend and I passed on a couple more adult celebrations and visited my dad to carve jack-o-lanterns and hand out candy. It was not quite the magical night I hoped, not on a par with the Getty visit the week before. The weather was autumny but lacked the kinetic spark of a Santa Ana wind or the ambient infusion of a nice full -- or even well-placed crescent -- moon. And only 11 kids in 4 or 5 groups showed up to collect their candy.

But it was a fun Halloween. We did our jack-o-lanterns. We had piles of candy. I made margaritas and we watched The Departed on HBO. We played some Wii. It was a happy Halloween. It was a memorable Halloween.