Ok. It's official. I love Halloween again.

Ok. I stopped loving Halloween about twenty years ago. I know, I know, I sound like an epic party pooper, an old biddy lady who has given up on her childhood and become boring and slightly bitter. But after I turned 30, I gradually stopped embracing the mystery and tingly fear of the night, and starting thinking instead about how expensive candy is, and how noisy twelve-year-olds are and how parents, although cute while doting over their panda toddlers and pumpkin babies, made me feel lonely and childless as they walk away holding those chubby baby hands in their own.

So since I passed thirty, I still handed candy out - well, most years. And I sort of decorated; I bought the pumpkin, and sometimes, I made it into an actual Jack-O-Lantern. I helped my brother pass out candy at his home when I didn't have the "oomph" to do it in my own. I went to an occasional party or two; I didn't exactly turn my back on the holiday - I just lost the magic of it.

Until tonight.

I live in a regular residential area, but since our house was here before the rest of the residential complex, we have a 700-foot long, heavily wooded driveway with gravel instead of asphalt, potholes the size of small lakes, and undergrowth of ferns, bracken and wild grasses that makes the driveway its own ecosystem. And it is dark. Very, very dark.

Which has made it a perfect blank slate for a Halloween Path of Doom.

With a few well-placed plastic spiders, candles, and styrofoam tombstones, the driveway gave itself wholly into the drama of imagination. A rustling leaf became a hidden ghoul. A shadow across the gravel became the shape of a grasping hand. Those branches over there? A skeleton! That rock? A troll's head bursting out from the ground! The driveway took my cue  - "be scary and fun!" -  and effortlessly magnified it into magnificent goosebumpiness.

So, who dared to walk through the 700 feet of danger, thrills, and chills to get to the cotton-webbed house for the sumptous reward of a mini-Kit Kat? A middle-school giant walking taco. A three-foot tall Darth Vader. Cleopatra. A fifth-grader, now the walking dead. A bean-skinny shadow, who remained perfectly silent as he (she?) shook a silk pillowcase in my general direction. Two clowns, a princess, and that kid who always wears a white tee shirt. Balding dads with achingly adorable first graders, so proud of their courage, so greedy for a sweet.

I can't tell you what happened to me this evening between six-thirty and eight-thirty. Something tickled my soul and reawakened the giggly kid. Maybe it was the generosity of the exclamations of delight over my small contribution to the magic. Maybe it was my stepdaughter, dressed in nurse's scrubs, with her lovely face painted like a horrific bloodsucking zombie, shouting "HAH!" and laughing as she handed out candy. Maybe it was the parents who told me that when their kids are just a year or two older, they want to come hide in the driveway and shout "boo" to others who dare to come down it. Maybe it was the sweet scary kindness of the wild grass, the ferns, the rabbits and mice who live in this lovely driveway and let me play with them for this one night. Maybe it was the candlelight, shining off the potholes, puddly from this afternoon's rain. Maybe it was the moment that the five year old shouted, "WOW!" I don't know.

But tonight, I got the magic back, in one big flood of joy. And I still don't like Halloween.

I LOVE Halloween.

Anyone else out there envious?

Anyone else out there envious of this face?

This face is not contemplating the anticipated results of the presidential election.

This face is not concerned about global warming, or the Frankenstorm on the east coast.

This face is not registering concern over the suppression of basic human rights in Myanmar or China, or agonizing over the rampant violence in Syria, or twisting itself into a pretzel trying to understand the fall of the Euro.

This face does not care that Disney just bought Lucasfilms and therefore there will someday be a Star Wars Episode Twenty-Four, or that red dye 40 is still alive and well and sitting in your box of Skittles, or that Iran is working on developing its nuclear power or that Afghan teenaged girls are being shot at because they want a book, or that all the bees of the earth are mysteriously disappearing, or that Justin Bieber may release another album and barf on stage again.

This is just a sleepy face.

There are times when I am deeply envious of this face, for what it does not know.

And for what it does know.

Anyone out there agree?

So Are YOU Ready?

Nah. Me neither. Jon and I went to Winthrop, WA for our 5th anniversary. Which is an amazing thing, being both a confirmed lifelong bachelorette and being married to the love of my life for five years now. Just goes to show you - you can't really be prepared for anything.

I find this oddly comforting. I have been raised to be a very responsible adult. Responsible adults are prepared, like Boy Scouts. We make sure we're wearing clean underwear in the event of an accident. We floss. We pay our bills on time, and if we can't pay our bills on time, we pay them in the grace period. We look before we leap. We never fail to plan, because otherwise you are planning to fail. We invest. We have life insurance policies. We dust under the couch. We measure our words, think before we leap and save our pennies for a rainy day. We purchase canned food for the apocalypse when it is on sale, well before the zombies arrive. For heaven's sake, I'm freaking Catholic. I'm a responsible adult with a lovely patina of guilt.

Except that just below the well insured and suitably groomed adult surface lies the completely unprepared mess. At least, that's what's under my groomed surface. Look closely, and you will see some genuine sloth, a smattering of fear, a heaping tablespoon of righteous and completely ignorant indignation, and a gelatinous blob of apathy. And that's just under my right pit.

Confession is good for the soul, they say. Well, I suppose that's true, once you get past the disappointment of realizing that your sins are just as average as your virtues, and the Big Hairy Problems of Your Life are pretty much peach fuzz.

No, I am not prepared for the apocalypse. I am not even prepared for a good long hike. But I took the trek poles along, so I'd look like it. See? Pay no attention to the sweat caking my bangs to my forehead.

Something weird is happening to me. I am slowly becoming prepared to be unprepared. I think this might be why I didn't mind being out of breath and out of shape, yet still heading up a three mile hike with a 2800 ft. gain. In sandals. In the rain. It was hard, I was unprepared, and it was FUN.

I am learning that there is a lot of life I am not prepared for, and probably a whole lot more that I thought I was, but really wasn't. Finding Jon? Nope. Inheriting stepdaughters? Nope. Turning 50? GOD, no. Watching my anatomy slowly succumb to gravity? Nope, not that either.

There's gonna be a lot more I'm not ready for. Parents passing on. Grandkids. Health issues. Presidential elections. Dogs dying of old age. Dreams dying of old age. New dreams popping out like dandilions all over my nicely groomed lawn of expectation. Technological advances. Gas.

So what is the point of this rambling? I want very very very very much to have the honest humility to be completely unprepared for whatever comes next. I know for a fact I'd be terrified to be a huge success at something, much more than I would be to be a complete failure. But I'd like to be okay with being terrified, because it's a sure sign you weren't prepared. I want to let go of the last vestige of thinking I actually know what the heck is going on. Because if I truly believe that God is in charge of my life, then I have to assume that I am not. You can't have it both ways, after all.

I guess you could call it a prayer of surrender. But you could also call it just a reality check. In the end, I want to choose to trust in God and in my own complete lack of ability to fill His shoes. I want to be ok with going barefoot instead of trying to tie His sandals. I want to be a complete and authentic nimrod, going where the trail goes because that's where it goes. I want to do this new every day. Being unprepared like this means being open to surprise, amazement, embarassment, wonder, and awe. Kinda like finding yourself on the trail in sandals, in the rain, with a dopey smile.

I'll be passing on those canned goods for now. When when the zombies come, can I show up at your door? I'll lend you my cool trek poles.

If I remembered to bring them.