Hallowe’en is a big deal in San Diego, partly because it coincides closely with the Mexican Day of the Dead, celebrated on November 1 and 2. Hallowe’en decorations—witches, spiders, goblins, ghosts, zombies, skeletons, jack-o-lanterns, along with miles and miles of artificial webs—have been up in our 700-plus unit housing complex since at least early October. On my previous two Hallowe’ens here, though, I didn’t get any trick or treaters, while the son who lives with his family a few blocks away got swamped. Last year, after I expressed disappointment at our continuing dearth of costumed munchkins, he explained that I live on an “outer loop”—for all except immediate neighbors, getting to my house requires crossing a street. Parents with young kids want to avoid possible traffic hazards and so avoid us. By contrast, our son lives on an “inner loop,” where sidewalks connect most houses and the only internal crossings are of low-traffic alleys. People even come from other neighborhoods to trick or treat here, where treats are generous and danger is low.
Hallowe’en time can breed nostalgia. The weather cools. The days shorten. Leaves fall. As we prepare for a darker, chillier period ahead, we often look back on prior seasons, prior Hallowe’ens. I remember fondly an early Hallowe’en for our San Diego granddaughter: as a toddler, she was decked out as “a zombie snack,” much to her zombie-costumed parents’ and older brother’s amusement.
Lately it can seem that our world is getting darker, and not just from shortening days. There are too many wars, too many displacements, too many children going without the necessities of life, some deprived of life itself. I find it vital to donate whatever time and other resources I have available, to do whatever I can to encourage more generosity plus less broadly lethal responses to invasions or terror attacks. It’s also important for me to attend regularly to my mental health, to take “humor breaks,” and especially to pay attention to young children’s giggles.
In a recently accessed Wikipedia article, laughter researcher Robert Provine is quoted as saying: “Laughter is a mechanism everyone has; laughter is part of (a) universal human vocabulary. There are thousands of languages, hundreds of thousands of dialects, but everyone speaks laughter in pretty much the same way.”
Wikipedia continues: “Babies have the ability to laugh before they ever speak. Children who are born blind and deaf still retain the ability to laugh.” There are, of course, lots of kinds of laughter. Among adults lately, too often laughter can be derisive, even malicious—targeting a supposed foe through ridicule rather than expressing principled disagreement.
The giggles I relish have no target. They are instead an acknowledgment of the wonders of this world we live in, where unexpected beauty may creep up on us, or maybe just an older sibling bent on tickling our feet. Children’s giggles remind us that hope and love and caring still exist, however dark the conditions in too many places.
If you were graced with a bevy of young trick or treaters this Hallowe’en, I hope you got gifted with some childish giggles as you handed out treats. I hope perhaps you even shared a giggle or two at some of the more outlandish costumes. Giggling can be a life-affirming skill. Let’s practice as much as we can!
Jinny's Occasional Poems 