But during the Halloween Season, it glows purple and green and finally has a real existence in the dark.
Today, on the first day of fall, after visiting a pair of Hollis, New Hampshire, farms for apples three ways (cider, cider donuts, and pies) to fuel the autumnal fires of our steam engines, we spent a few hours decorating the place. Somehow, all the decorations seemed to fit more naturally into the house than they ever have. Like the pumpkin patch was just extremely sincere this year.
Now I’ve got scarecrows and witches and phantoms outside my door, as well as the giant skeleton that my kids call Dean for some reason that I’ve forgotten guarding my porch. I can see his bony butt from where I sit writing this post, blocking my library window. It’s a sight I’ll see a lot for the next month and a half.
And while Dean rules the purple and green outside, the inside is warm and orange and lorded over by Big Face, my jack-o-lantern-headed scarecrow who warms the spot that the Christmas tree will fill in a couple of months. As always, I’ve disconnected his motion sensor because it gets annoying when he yells at me every time I pass him in the living room (even though it’s kind of funny to set his voice to French or Spanish). But his face still glows and beams like a grinning, orange moon in the corner.
Once everything was placed and plugged in, we jumped on the couch to experience that feeling of watching a spooky movie from inside a pumpkin. We chose ParaNorman as the movie to christen the newly transformed living room, and we watched it surrounded by jack-o’s and skeletons and monsters.
I love my black house. No matter what time of year. In winter the snow makes it monochrome like a sketch on a hand-drawn Christmas card. In spring all the giant pines and birches backdrop it like it’s a cozy little nest in their branches. In Summer, the bats and owls flit above it like they are guarding it from unseen forces. But in the Fall, in Autumn, it’s more than love, it’s more like a part of me. My carapace. Clavical Moundshroud.
