The other day it occurred to me that we may have entered a new era. Halloween is less than a week away, and usually, by now, the pumpkins are carved and on the door step and fake cobwebs droop from our porch railing. In past years, the girls have decided on their costumes by mid September  and my mother has flown up at least once for a weekend of fitting and sewing.

But not this year.

For the first time since the girls have been alive, Halloween’s approach finds us almost completely unprepared. No pumkins, no costumes, no strings of orange lights laced in the windows. There’s a part of me that couldn’t be happier, because you know what? Halloween is a pain in the butt. It’s not like Christmas which is supposed to be all about the joy of giving. It isn’t even like Thanksgiving or Easter, when at least you’ve got refrigerator full good leftovers for all the hours you’ve spent slaving away in the kitchen. Halloween is a complete wash for me, a whole lot of work for very little reward. Besides, I don’t like to costume parties and it drives me nuts to spend all that cash on candy only to have them it in the cabinet growing stale until I finally toss it a year later. Okay, every once in a while, I see some dressed in a costume I think is pretty clever, but that’s about it. To my mind, there are only three things that make Halloween worth the effort:

1) I get to watch “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!” which I’ve watched every year since I was a kid

2)  I get to peek in people’s houses when they open the door to hand out candy

3) my girls give me all their mini-Milkyways.

But even those pleasures are fleeting. Last year, the girls asked that I wait out on the sidewalk while they went to people’s doors, which put an end to my peeking, and they both squirrreled their candy away in their rooms  which mean no Milkyways for me.

Until today, I thought I was alone in my secret hatred. Then I heard W admit to another parent that he has to stifle a gag reflex every time he helps the girls carve their pumpkins.

Since school started, we’ve been terribly busy. In addition to the usual fall hustle and bustle–back to school nights, weekend soccer games, homework and after school activities–we’ve added the high school application process. It’s been a little crazy. So I wasn’t broken hearted when, last week, I noticed we hadn’t launched into the regular Halloween prep. I thought maybe we’d entered a new era. H had already informed me that she was going to a friend’s house to make her costume and that she didn’t need me to shadow her Halloween night. She wanted me to drop her off at Robin William’s house and she and her friends would make their way home. They had cell phones if the ran into trouble. C still wanted us to tag along while she trick-or-treated, but since she was going to be a Hippie, she thought she’d use my costume from a couple years ago. One quick trip to Goodwill for go-go boots and she’d be done.

But just as I was starting to feel a little guilty for being so willing to say goodbye to our Halloween traditions, the girls realized they didn’t have any pumpkins. So this morning I took them to the pumpkin patch. It wasn’t so bad. In ten minutes they’d chosen their pumpkins. They didn’t want to go through the haunted house. They wanted to go to the mall.

So it seems that we’re on the brink of a new era . . . sort of. Yes, the girls still want us to help around the edges. They still need us to drive them to Goodwill and light the candles to put in their pumpkins once they’re carved. But a couple of years from now, neither of them will bother to ask for our input. W and I will wait up worrying whether they’re home from a party.

So I suppose I’d better these last years while they’re still around.