Trick or Treat?

Surely the energy will run out on the dressing up, knocking doors and asking for candy, won't it? As a culture, we've long since dispensed of the practice of offering the "trick" and merely gone for the "treat." These days, the "trick" takes much too much effort in a hectic, non-stop culture to work very hard on a "trick" and so the "treat" is an easy payoff... about $2.50 per bag as I figure it. A couple bags will "git er done."

At this point in the lives of my two kids, the candy isn't even a motivation anymore. It is merely about being with friends, dressing up and living out the last years of adolescence. As a parent, it is strange to watch the whole process begin to go away. Cute little girls once dressed as princesses or ladybugs or fairies have given way to young women, dressed as women, playing out one of the last chapters of childhood. It seems like only yesterday...

Long after the door-to-door candy runs are a thing of the past, costumes will still be worn. Their mother and I went to a business event this past weekend. Everyone was festively festooned... some costumes were surely rented and I'm guessing for a handsome price, too. One doesn't come decked out to the nines as the Pope without shelling out some cash! Our "candy" that night? A fully catered meal from Culpeppers... a regularly featured restauant in "D" Magazine and an upper-crust Dallas favorite. If you haven't had the stuffed crab legs, well... "trick or treat" for those and take the trick if you have to!

I believe there is still some innocence left in my girls... the younger dressed tonight as a football player complete with glare block on her cheeks. Oh, she could have been "Miss Arizona" or "Miss Texas" like her big sister and close neighbor friend, but she's still hanging more closely to her youth. But for all of them, it is a process of moving on that even they don't really recognize. One day they will realize it though, and everything will have changed. Good thing I imagine. Life will be complicated soon enough, they need not rush for the world pushes them fast enough.

Today, circumstances called for me to look again into the mirror of self-reflection. Do we ever stop growing up? My adolescent growing pains were painful (leg cramps were the worst!). Spiritual growing pains are nonetheless severe even in mid-life. By now, (for the most part) our behaviors themselves are mostly righteous and good. What is really painful is when we begin looking at our true self and try to ascertain the deepest portions of who we are. If we are willing to go there, it won't be long before we long for childhood again, the days where merely wearing a costume would change our dispositions and (for a moment) we could be someone else. Adults can still pick some good costumes.

Getting to the depths of who we really are is what growing up is really all about. We may wander for a long time, "costumed" and falling victim to the "trick." Or, we can remove the mask, resist the denial, wrestle with the truth and perhaps, through it all, find the "treat."

We never stop growing up, do we?

Trick or treat?

Yes, trick or treat!