The air is cool tonight…

and children wander the streets in costume. The game is on TV but its just sound and noise. Everything that matters is far away and lost in time.

I’m back home, a child again in Wausau, running from house to house collecting candy. Laughter floats in the air and neighbors pretend they don’t know who we are. Tomorrow is school and stories of the collection, but tonight is about magic of a kind found only in an innocence lost and far away.

Too soon the world comes, a ghoul without a mask. Too soon cool nights become winter. Too soon we find ourselves far away from the child within. The world of deadlines and jobs and the knowledge of good and evil keeps pushing backward through time and we are caught up in it before we notice. The child, the hometown, the friends forever all gone.

It’s all I can do this Halloween night to stop from driving my car east and seeing if anyone is still home. A fool’s errand for sure because the world is the world and there are no magical nights left for anyone, even children. Yet for the sake for the sake of the dream. For the sake of the dream…