What a difference New England makes. Yesterday, I wrote about the
early Halloween Season drought I experienced while traveling in sterile D.C. and the apparent tropics of Denver. What I didn’t tell you is that the second my car spun out of the Boston Logan parking garage sometime around midnight last night, I was greeted by a giant billboard that said, “Pumpkin’ at Dunkin’.” I’m not demanding. That’s all I was looking for from Denver and D.C.
This morning when I got up, I saw little bits of Halloween leaking into the house. We haven’t decorated yet, but I noticed small things that I’ve never seen before, precursors to a fully immersive Halloween house, no doubt pulled from consignment store shelves by Lindsey or given to us by family in my absence. There was a witch hanging on the pantry door. A jack-o-lantern ornament on one of our potted plants. My infant was suddenly wearing
Halloween shoes (I don’t think she’s ever worn
any shoes before). And standing on the library mantel was a foot-tall, light-up skeleton that talks and sings and drinks “spooky juice.” He’s my new drinking buddy, and I’ll introduce you to him soon.
“But, sure,” you say, “That’s your house. It doesn’t prove any points. It probably looks at least slightly Halloweenic in May.” And you’re right. But it wasn’t just my house and Boston’s highway billboards. On my way to the post office today (after throwing on my first cardigan of the season because it was downright chilly), I saw a Frankenstein scarecrow anchored to a mailbox and learned that my town of Nashua had put up Halloween banners on all the light posts. Salem doesn’t even have their banners up yet. New England know when it’s its best self.
But the most Halloween thing we did today was paint the pale yellow doors on our jet-black house purple. Even the little one above the garage.
We’re that neighbor now.
