Halloween

This blog has never been a journal, a record of all the daily "adventures and frustrations of life and motherhood for an expat in Turkey." But when I returned to the internet after my three-week 'cleanse' and saw that several of the bloggers I follow had posted about Halloween, I was overcome with a sense of 'Oops.'

How could I not have written anything about my children's first official Halloween, since the challenge of maintaining Canadian traditions for my kids here in Turkey is something I grapple with every few months? I felt it six months ago at Easter, then last month at Thanksgiving; both times I was 'saved' when friends invited us to celebrate with them, thus eliminating the stress of sourcing turkey and ham, chocolate bunnies and Easter egg dye.

I almost missed Halloween this year, swamped by the craziness that comes with two children under the age of two, a husband who works in another city and is therefore away Monday through Friday, and still being nanniless. But in the last minute a friend picked up a Superman costume for my two-year-old at a nearby party store and more than enough chocolates for the twenty-five trick-or-treaters we were expecting, and we took our kids around to the dozen or so homes here on campus that were participating.

It was better than I could have hoped: the crisp fall weather, the darkness (daylight savings time had just ended), people's decorations and costumes ... Somehow the atmosphere of the evening was exactly as it had been on my own Halloweens as a kid.