Everyone cares about Christmas. And I think, Christmas is all right. I like giving gifts, watching Hallmark Christmas movies and the baby Jesus in the manger, but it’s not Halloween.
Halloween, as I’ve said before, is the best holiday of the year. I adore the scent of leaves and fall, pumpkin drinks and candy. Best of all, goth culture is celebrated. It’s cool to be a witch. I adore the idea of costuming and transformation. It’s fun. There’s an element of play, but also of drama.
This year, Southern California Edison (“SCE”) killed Halloween for me. They might as well have put a dagger in Jack Skellington’s heart. It was the nightmare before Halloween.
They kept turning the power off the two weeks before Halloween due to winds. What was odd was that everyone had power all around us except for our small enclave of a community in unincorporated San Bernardino. North Fontana had power. Even Devore had power. But not us. Our food spoiled and spoiled again. We stopped buying groceries and existed on fast food. If we were too lazy to leave the house, we grilled toast in a pan after lighting the pilot with a match.
Then, SCE turned the power off again on October 29th, two days before Halloween. The winds were pretty strong that day, but I scowled and stomped through the house getting ready for work in the dark.
The next night I fretted. It was the 30th, a mere day before Halloween. Still no power.
“They have to turn it on by Halloween,” I said to Adrian with a squeal of unhappiness as I munched fries from McDonalds for dinner. “Or they will kill Halloween! And what will we do with all of this damn candy?”
The morning of the 31st came and fires raged in Southern California. I got dressed in the dark and went to court early with witch earrings dangling for a hearing on a medication issue. But the bus bringing the client from the state hospital broke down so my hearing got continued. I went to my other department and finished my calendar bemoaning the power outage. “It just doesn’t feel like Halloween.”
Early afternoon at work, I got a fire alert text and raced home. Luckily, the fire was miles and miles away off the 18 freeway. I took my mother in law to an appointment and drove by the pumpkin patch which was empty and forlorn. The winds whipping my hair, I saw the twenty dollar price tags and walked out and bought a pumpkin at Ralph’s for a steal at 99 cents.
I came home and used the last of my phone battery to play Halloween songs while carving my pumpkin. At four pm, I gave up and texted my mom to stay home.
Teary eyed, I sat my pumpkin on the mantle. His crooked grin mocked me. Adrian says I carve like a school kid.
All I wanted was to do our yearly tradition. Every year, my mom comes over in her witch hat and Halloween appliqué vest. We stuff our faces with pizza and when dusk comes, we fill up our witchy wine goblets and sit in the front of the house on patio chairs playing music with a big bowl of candy to hand out. We have our private committee of two judging the costumes. “That princess was cute,” my mom will say. “I liked the Dalmatian,” I’ll reply.
My mom always talks too much to the kids. “You’re scaring them,” I’ll say. She’ll cackle and laugh.
But this year, no. Alas, I sat in the house with the gas fire in the fireplace debating with Adrian when the power would go back on and whether we needed to buy a generator. By seven pm, I gave up and went to get Chinese food. On the way back, I saw a straggle of teenagers with sacks walking the blocks. The whole neighborhood was pitch black.
Walking into my house, I sighed. “This sucks.” I ate an egg roll by the light of our lantern, then went upstairs. Too depressed to even wash my face, I wiped off my eyeliner with a wipe and took a swig of Benadryl.
“Screw Edison,” I muttered while I dozed off to sleep with my husband snoring beside me. The wind whispered back a “woooooooooooo”. I shivered.
The power came on at 2 am. The day after Halloween.
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