We'll get back into it, eventually.
So here we were, another COVID Halloween upon us. For the first time seemingly ever, my husband was off for the occasion. Figures that this would happen when we wouldn’t be going out.
Even as COVID-19 cases start to plateau in the US, my family is still being as safe as we can when it comes to avoiding exposure. We’re vaccinated and have started to venture out more but are still very cognizant that our daughter is prone to upper respiratory issues and that we have older folks living with us by way of my in-laws.
I’ve had to be creative, like we all have over the past seventeen months with our children – Easter egg hunt throughout our front and backyard, holiday craft projects, so on and so forth. Last year instead of trick-or-treating, I created a scavenger hunt throughout the house for my daughter which ultimately led to a bucket of candy. She loved it and I scored some Cool Mom points. This year, I decided to take her out to a few trunk or treats. Not as much exposure as going door-to-door but still some risk. I considered this progress, but my kid? Not happy.
Let’s get to the reasons behind sitting out for a second year.
No, it wasn’t the fact that Halloween fell on a Sunday this year, which was a real cause of debate on my neighborhood’s Facebook group. It was kind of lame in general, but I didn’t have an issue with it being ‘celebrated’ on that particular day. The meanings behind some of the celebrations that we observe, like Halloween and handful of others, have changed drastically from their originations of rituals and ceremonies. That’s a whole other conversation.
Reason #1
I’m not sold on it being safe yet. Plain and simple. I just wasn’t ready for my child to have that amount of exposure. When you stop to think about it, some of the things we did pre-pandemic cause major questions now (like how did we ever eat cake that someone just blew their germs all over?) and this one gives me pause. You’re talking about going to multiple’s people’s homes, whose hygiene we can’t be sure of, to dig in bowls of candy that not only has the resident touched but other children that came before us as well.
Then, there’s the problem of social distancing. Kids are excitable by nature, so maintaining distance when stepping onto a porch or stoop would prove difficult. All it takes is getting close to that one resident holding out a candy bowl while they gush about how cute your little one’s Paw Patrol costume is and now the child has come away with germ droplets just itching to be rubbed into an eye or wiped into a nose so that the offending microbes can invade and wreak havoc. Distancing would also be problematic in the event that we were to run into friends; we tended to travel the streets as a group on this one night per year and it would take some effort to dissuade that. It all just sounds like a good way to pass along germs, COVID or no COVID.
What I do like is that the one trunk or treat we’ve been to (the second was postponed until the end of this week) was handled pretty well and I’m hoping this next one will follow suit and provide little pre-packaged assorted bags of candy. I’m much more comfortable with this method than the whole dig-your-grubby-unsanitized-hand-into-the-bowl scenario. I’d like to imagine that the event planners packing the candy sanitized prior to and often during the bagging process. Hopefully.
Reason #2
I was tired from the events of the weekend. My legs were still sore from a ten-interval running workout I had done on Friday. The idea of walking around our sizeable neighborhood, with all its courts and cul-de-sacs, carrying whichever part of my kid’s costume that she inevitably would want to discard half-way through the festivities along with her first candy bucket in case it got filled up and she had to move on to a bag, did not sound particularly appealing.
My calves were already tight no matter how much stretching and massaging I had done for the previous day and a half, and I just didn’t want to have to drag myself home in further discomfort at the end of the evening. So instead, I relaxed in an Epsom salt bath with a glass of wine.
Reason #3
Did I already mention that we have one trunk or treat under our belts and will be attending another shortly? I thought the whole point behind trick or treat was getting candy, which my kid already got a good haul of and is set to get another in a few days. Does the door-to-door experience really heighten the experience that much more?
Anyway.
I explained to my daughter that I wasn’t comfortable with trick or treating this year, but that we could aim for next year.
The fact that our doorbell rang twice that evening (even though the front light was off) didn’t help matters, however, I did note that there were no hordes of children out and about like in years past. Which means that clearly, I wasn’t the only one to have made the decision to sit this one out, no matter how much my kid tried to tell me differently.
I may have lost the Cool Mom points that I won last year, but there’s always next year.
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