This is myfavoritetime of year.
The entire parking lot is lined with vehicles all decorated and ready for Trunk-or-Treat today. The sun is shining, setting the gold and scarlet and fluorescent orange leaves in the trees to blazing brilliantly.
The temperatures cooperated, thank God. It’s a comfortable sixty-five degree day, and I couldn’t have wished for a more beautiful afternoon for our biggest event of the fall season. Always the last Saturday before Halloween, the event is earlier in the afternoon than the city’s organized Trick-or-Treatingdowntown, which takes place in the evening on Halloween night. This year, it happens to be the same day.
We started it when Darci’s kids were little, and little three-year-old Graysen had gotten lost in the throng of people. Darci and Nolan had both been beside themselves with terror. Darci had insisted we needed a different option for families with small children.
So, Bliss Garden’s Trunk-or-Treat was born.
Nine years later, it’s grown into our most anticipated event each year.
The tractor is ready with the trailer piled high with hay-bales for the hayride. The corn maze is set. Tessa’s pumpkin and apple pie donuts are fresh out of the oven. Mom has made a metric ton of her famous apple cider—both chilled and hot—and our resident ‘mob boss’, aka Grandma Jude, is overseeing that the pumpkin stand is well stocked for any last-minute pumpkin purchases.
Tessa, dressed as a Renaissance-Esque woodland fairy, complete with giant Organza fairy wings and glitter freckles dusted across her cheeks and nose, rushes into the main barn. She’s carrying in another massive baker’s box that I know is filled to the brim with her homemade donuts.
Sienna has her camera looped around her neck, ready as our event photographer for the day. Charcoal black fabric swirls around her, fashioned into a toga across her body. The material shimmers and glitters in the sunlight. A blue wig fashioned into a Grecian updo with gold threaded into it covers her chestnut brown hair, with electric blue lipstick painted on her lips. She makes the perfect Hades from the animated Hercules.
Mom is dressed as Rosie the Riveter—the same as every year—red bandana tied around her head and fire-engine red lipstick in place. She and Darci are standing out in the parking lot, greeting all our volunteers and Trunk-or-Treat participants. Darci’sorange and black striped tights disappear beneath a black tulle tutu skirt, and a cropped jean jacket covers her arms. Her short dark hair is wavy down to her shoulders, and a black, feather-trimmed witch hat is on her head.
I had gone all out on an authentic, custom designed and fitted Princess Peach costume with white satin gloves that go up to just above my elbows. It’s so fun.
I reach down and adjust the big skirt around my legs, the crinoline beneath the pink satin swishing as I walk. The skirt is removable… and I have a surprise under it later for Zach.
Including thigh-high-white stockings and an extremely short skirt that leaves absolutelynothingto the imagination.
PrincessPeachis in the house, sir.
My blond hair is left down, cascading over my shoulders and down my back. I’d teased and curled the crap out of it, making it bigger than ever, and a gold tiara sits atop my head.
I can’t wait for Zach and the girls to get here.
This will be the first time I’m introducing them to everyone.
Grandma Jude included.
I’m more nervous for them to meet my grandma than anyone else in my family.
What if Grandma Jude sees something in Zach that I don’t? What if Willow is right, and my picker reallyisbroken?
“Oh God, Grandma Jude found the firefighters,” Sienna calls to Tessa and I, and we both drop what we’re doing to race to the barn doors.
Sure enough, down the winding pathway to the parking lot and just to the left, where the Petoskey Fire Department have set up one of their smaller Bush Rig trucks decked out in full Halloween décor, is our grandma chatting with three of the department’s firemen. The three men are nearly doubled over, laughing at something our feral granny has said that we can’t hear from way up here.
“Should we rescue them?” Sienna asks out of the corner of her mouth, only half joking.
Tessa snorts. “Who would we even call?More firefighters?”
I shake my head, practically wheezing with laughter. “I know they say never leave a man behind, but they’d probably sacrifice these guys to Grandma Jude.”
Sienna cackles, “That’s the slogan for theArmy, Lou.”
Oh, right. Two in, two out. “Look, I was close! It’s the same principle!”
“Ohmygod I’m dead,” Tessa laughs, rolling her eyes. She’s wearing contacts today instead of her usual fire engine red framed glasses. It’s always jarring to see her without her classic red frames. “I’m going to go see if I can herd Jude away from them.”
As she flits down the pathway toward them, I turn to Sienna. “So, is Connor going to be here later?”
Fiddling with a setting on her camera, she hedges, “Uhh, probably not. You know him. Always go, go, go for work…”
