Halloween is a pagan holiday whose icons mostly stem from the realms of demonology and superstition, but Mormons nonetheless celebrate it with gusto because we, like the broader public, recognize the health benefits of loading our children up to the eyeballs in sugar just before the onset of flu season, as well as the psychological satisfaction that comes to parents who abuse their authority (under cloak of tradition) by dressing their children in humiliating garb and snapping hosts of pictures for purposes of future blackmail. What fun!
So much fun, indeed, that we celebrated this venerable absurdity on three successive days.
But I get ahead of myself. On Monday Julia made her return to the Worthington Hooker School (Lia hasn’t quite made the leap of gracing our bumper with a “Proud Hooker Mom” sticker, but there’s time) after a weeklong absence. I could only raise an askance eyebrow when a little boy with a suspiciously hip name (Cody, I think) let forth a cry of exultation when he saw Julia, then ran into the classroom to share his joy with the teacher. “Mrs. Checko! Mrs. Checko! Julia’s back! Julia’s back!”
Wednesday morning Eli had her triennial appointment with the eye doctor. She liked riding the bus with me and then riding on my shoulders through the rain as we walked from the bus stop to the eye doctor’s office. Her glasses are working splendidly, we learned, and there is no foreseeable need for future surgery or a return to the dreaded patching.
(By the way, when we were in Utah Eli looked through my baby picture book. She found a picture of a 4- or 5-year old me at Christmastime, my tongue wildly protruding in defiance of the camera, endlessly diverting. She tells me some ten times a day that I was “so cute when you were a baby” and then promises, this Christmas, to stick her tongue out at me.)
On Thursday Lia’s New York grandparents, Jerry and JoAnn Suttner, came down to see us on the tail end of their annual autumnal leaf tour. They accompanied Lia and the littler girls to the Hooker School for Julia’s class’s costume parade. Julia was (sigh/yawn) a princess. Eli apparently found the procession boring. In any case she sought to enliven things by making whatever object came to hand the object of a wondrous fit. She wanted to dress up too; she didn’t want to wear her princess dress over her clothes (as every little girl in Julia’s class did wear her dress—all, of course, were princesses—given the southerly-creeping temperatures outside); she didn’t like that everyone was speaking English; she didn’t like the color puce (which no one was wearing); she abominated the mask of an errant Power Ranger; she execrated the smell of the grass; she loathed the fact that it was not yet noon—everything was a fresh sources of repugnance, a fresh cause for a fresh fit. And what avulsive fits they were!
“Is she always like this?” Lia’s grandfather gently asked. “Oh no,” Lia said hurriedly. “She knows you’re here, so she’s on her best behavior.”
In the afternoon the whole crew rode out to Norton Brother’s to pick apples. The trip was a smashing success, though everyone’s heart stopped for a moment when Grandpa Jerry slipped on a wet spot of ground and tumbled down a small hill. But Jerry got up, brushed away some dirt and mud, and pressed onward on his apple-picking mission, thankfully none the worse for the wear.
When the company returned home I was waiting for them. Grandpa Jerry then took Lia and Katharine out grocery shopping, while JoAnn and I supervised (i.e. conducted, after the girls inevitably grew bored) the serious business of carving the pumpkins. The results were spectacular.

After Lia and Grandpa Jerry returned all seven of us piled into the van and we drove a stretch to the north of us for dinner at the cleverly titled, “Aunt Chilada’s.” Katharine slept while the rest of us feasted in contented peace (though Eli’s peace is always a bit wiggly). It was a nice end to a great visit. We’re very glad the grand-Suttners could come.
Friday evening was the ward Halloween party. Lia had talked big all week about going to the party un-costumed but then at the last minute she donned her dirndl, smeared her upper lip white with baby powder, and emerged in glory declaring herself Heidi Klum, the German model of “Got Milk?” fame. Now I was left to cobble together a costume for myself. But what? Materials were scanty and time was short. What could I do? In accordance with my native decisive temperament (friends called me “The Decider” in the pre-Bush years; now it seems a slander) I resolved to be Bronco Mendenhall. I threw on my favorite BYU football sweater (just like Bronco’s) and then, despairing for want of a BYU hat, I turned our Rosetta Stone ear phones into a makeshift headset. I was ready, and we were off. Katharine, by the way, was a ladybug. We tried to upgrade the girls’ costumes from princesses to musketeers, but they lost their nerve at the last minute.
As we made our grand entrance at the Church, Lia was acclaimed by a host of smiling admirers. “Ah!” they thundered in chorus. “Heidi Klum! How clever!!!” (Lia tore out a picture of Ms. Klum from “Family Fun,” an officious monthly magazine from who knows where, to prove the authenticity of her costume to bemused skeptics; there weren’t any.) My costume was less successful. One brother in the ward—a Ute fan, by the way—muttered unenthusiastically: “Uh, are you supposed to be Bronco?” The others all thought I was a sportscaster. Russ Farr even insisted that, contrary to original intent, I was actually Craig Bolerjack.
Later, as we waited outside for the fire trucks (who could have anticipated, given that the young women had made of the primary room a smoke-filled haunted house, that the fire alarm would have gone off?), it dawned on me that at the BYU-Penn State game on Halloween 1992 (a triumphant 31-17 Cougar victory—and it wasn’t as close as the score indicated), spirited souls had distributed paper masks of LaVell Edwards attached to popsicle sticks. That night, and for two years thereafter, my best friend and I trick-or-treated as Coach Edwards. I reflected that I had not donned a Halloween costume since 1994, and here I was, fifteen years later, a BYU football coach again. A sign? A portent? Let every reader decide for herself.
By the time Halloween actually arrived we were exhausted from surfeit of celebration. But traditions must be honored, and Lia took the girls trick-or-treating while I stayed home to handle whatever trick-or-treaters dared to come our way. This I did by turning off every light in the house and slinking into a corner to read David Copperfield by candlelight (well, almost). Thus the evening passed away, most of the world giving nary a thought to the 492nd anniversary of Mr. Luther’s ninety-five-pronged blast of defiance (protest, at least; defiance came later). But the kids had a good time, and isn’t that, in the end, what Halloween is all about?