Those Cookies We Like!

Remember those cookies we liked so much, little sweetheart? We used to get a package of them at Safeway, over by the Marina, and then drive over to a lookout point, maybe near Ocean Beach and watch the surf and eat the cookies in the front seat of your car. 

They're almost like little pieces of white layer cake-  soft and chewy, and the frosting is always decorative for whatever holiday is near. Sometimes we'd get them in pink and red for Valentines Day or in green with shamrocks for St Paddy's. 

Well, I've got some and am having one (or two) for lunch dessert with my coffee right now and thinking of you! D'agostino's is a little NYC grocery chain and they do a few things like Safeway, incredibly. They have that charming little "thunderstorm" effect in the produce section that periodically waters the vegetables adding a little SFX of a thunderclap (in SF, Safeway also had a little flashing white light approximating lightning, too). And they have these cookies on some holidays. These ones are for Halloween, of course and have orange frosting with yellow and white sprinkles. Saving one for you! 

With all my love...

Halloween Eve

I've been working all night, little sweetheart, but just settling in to watch one of our favorite movies - "Let The Right One In", just now. It's a vampire movie and so kinda a Halloween one - your second favorite holiday after Christmas, I think - and I know few people agree with me but I also think of it as being a love story. Partly because you and I saw it for the first time together on your bed and also because it underlines my own journey - being found and saved by you. I'll be thinking of you tonight as I am always. I love you so and forever.

The Last Day of October

Little sweetheart, surely Christmas was your favorite holiday - you always spent it with your wonderful family and included me once we'd met and it was always glorious and fun. But I think a close second for you as a favorite was Halloween. 

For different reasons, of course, since they are vastly different occasions - just for a start Christmas spreading out over days if not a week and Halloween coning down to single night in October (just two weeks away from your birthday). 

What I think you liked most about Halloween was its theatricality. You weren't much of a horror film buff or anything but you loved the idea of costumes and fancy dress. And candy! Ha! You loved candy! There was something so very childlike - in the most charming way - about your continued love of the holiday. 

I'd kind of lost sight of it until we met. I wasn't much of one for parties or the parade (quite a famous and altogether fabulous one here in New York, downtown in The Village). But in 2008 I happened to be in LA. Old DC friends - they'd actually gone to ACT - had a theatre company there called The Road and they were doing two of my plays - Real Real Gone and Seven Pages Unsigned - in a twin bill. You would've been there too except that you were doing Rock n Roll at ACT and about to transfer the production to Boston's Huntington Theatre (where I would join you just before your birthday). 

You were packing up and flying to Boston just before I was finishing up in LA. My friends lived in Van Nuys so the airport in Burbank was closer and easier to travel to than LAX so that's where I departed from. It was October 31 - Halloween. When I arrived just before my fight, all the attendants were in costume and passing out candy - the atmosphere giddy and light. I couldn't wait to tell you about it and it was then that I truly wondered when on earth did I go off of Halloween? It was delightful! 

I needed you to show me. I needed you for so many things, little sweetheart. You brought such light and joy into my life. It's hard sometimes now to find it but if I think of you as you were and don't fall into despair over your absence, I do. I do find the joy that you shared with me. 

Happy Halloween, little sweetheart!