Unexpected Joy in the Scary
“OOh look at that house,” Elliott points to the front door of the neighbor’s home as we walk by. Through the window a life-size witch with a protruding warty nose and a luring grin stares with her beady green eyes. I shudder while the kids stare with delighted fascination.
It’s “recess” time. Which just means we are out for a walk in between google meeting times for the two distance learners, one mine and one a neighbor friend with which we share school duties a couple days a week. It’s the middle of October so Halloween decorations are beginning to pop up in yards. Once upon a time I thought October decorating meant cute pumpkins and charming scarecrows. It seems more and more the macabre has made it’s way into the decorating schemas.
“Come on. The next house is AWESOME!” Elliott guides the way on his scooter a few houses down. I see “awesome” means dementors dangling from trees and zombie arms reaching up from the earth. They ooh and ahh as our walk carries along this haunted candy cane lane until we return home to log in for more school work. (Depending on how you look at it, that last part could sound just as gruesome as our walk.)
“When are you putting up your decorations?” the five year old friend asks. I look to the pumpkins sitting on our stoop and the mums in the planters.
“You mean the pumpkins? We have some. Inside the house, too.”
“No I mean the spooky ones.” He drags out his “oo”s, like he needs to scare me to get me to understand.
“Well, we don’t really have anything like that.” I respond, trying not to take offense by the Halloween patrol.
“WHAT? You don’t? WHY NOT?”
Ok, now I feel judged.
“I don’t know. I guess I don’t really like the scary decorations.”
Behind his mask all I can see are his eyes. But it’s enough to get his point across. He thinks I’ve gone batty, or not batty enough, I suppose.
He returns to his screen but the conversation remains in my head most of the afternoon. It is ridiculous to let the opinion of a five year old haunt me, but I can’t help but wonder. Why don’t I like the scary?
I avoided the spooky and eerie as a child. I thought Fantasia was a scary movie. Reading about Mary Anne breaking up with Logan was horrific enough, I didn’t need to read Goosebumps. And playing hide and seek with the potential of someone popping out was enough to make me high pitch scream and nearly pee my pants every time.
Things changed, though, when I entered high school. I grew up in the era of the Scream Trilogy, Blair Witch Project, and I Know What You Did Last Summer. At sleepovers we rented old movies our parents wouldn’t let us watch like Carrie and Nightmare on Elm Street and Silence of the Lambs. I loved it, and then I hated it, and then when it was all over I loved it again.
I know this tracks with child development at this age. I know that it is common to spend the teenage years seeking thrills, testing boundaries, all in the search of gaining independence and confidence. But as I look back I notice another influence—I never faced the scary alone. In a movie theatre, in our basement family room, in the empty storefront turned haunted house, I always had a pack of girlfriends with which to link arms. I always had a friend screaming along with me. We went in together and we came out together. And then we spent the rest of the night high on the adrenalin rush and giddy relief that our lives were far more ordinary than the characters on screen. It’s funny how looking back at that scary only makes me grin.
It’s Instagram that gets me next—two different accounts showcasing their homes with bats flying out from the fireplace. That’s so cute, I think.
Cute. Bats. What a ridiculous statement. Creatures in the hideous rodent family that fly erratically and are frequently known to carry rabies. There is nothing cute about that. But here in this space next to the family portraits and the curated bookshelf they look charming. I bookmark the pictures.
Then as I scroll Pinterest hunting for October cocktail inspiration for this account, cobwebs and spiders and bugs crawling out of wine glasses caught my attention. For a person who loves camping, digging in the dirt, and even putting my own worms on a fishing pole (although don’t make me gut the fish), I really don’t like bugs, especially the cockroach kind. But here I am again, smiling at the six legged scurrying creatures on display ON PURPOSE in this person’s home.
Maybe it was the side eye from the kindergartner. Maybe it was the sly grip of influence we all know social media has on our behavior (talk about spooky.) But suddenly I find myself hunting around in our basement for a stack of black construction paper and a bag of spider webs leftover from a Charlotte’s web costume years ago.
“Mom, what is all this?” Elliott finds me on the floor with my printer and a pile of supplies.
“Bats. I’m going to cut them out and hang them on the wall. What do you think?”
“REALLY? Cool!” There’s that judging shock from a five year old again. Are they all like this? “Can I help?”
I hand him the scissors and we cut our way through 40 little bats before tapping them on the wall. Caroline discovers me next pulling spider webs around my cocktail bar and adding spindly plastic bugs. “Ooh, I want some of this to decorate the Harry Potter Castle!” For the rest of the morning, a festive atmosphere guides our work as we add bats and bugs around the house, the Harry Potter soundtrack keeping us company in the background, like we were the equivalent of jolly Halloween elves. (What is the equivalent? Ghouls?) (Not even sure what a ghoul is.) (Just googled it. Doesn’t sound pleasant. Maybe we’ll stick with Halloween elves.) When we stop for lunch, you can sense collective joy over the new layer of spook to our home.
Maybe that five year old captain of the Halloween Patrol was on to something.
Throughout the week, the bats keep us company as we pile on the couch to read another stack of fall books picked up from the library. Meal time is accompanied by twinkling lights woven between the webs, sparkling like stars lighting up a Halloween night. It doesn’t make me cringe or shudder or hide. It makes me smile. Something I once thought too scary is now unexpectedly bringing me joy.
It causes me to wonder, if droves of winged rodents and stringy webs of cockroaches can brighten my day, could there be other fears I keep locked away that might actually bring me joy?
And I don’t mean more scary movies or horror books. I mean the things in my life I avoid because of fear—fear of failure, fear of the unknown, fear of rejection. Essays I don’t submit because I’m certain I’m not good enough. Goals I don’t follow through on because I don’t know how they will end. Research I don’t do on future career opportunities because it is easier to continue doing what I know how to do in my own quiet world. It is scary out there. I don’t like the scary.
The thing is, as I look back, I have already done some of those things I call “scary.” I have submitted the essays I never dreamed would get published, and they did. I changed vocation without knowing where I was going, and I discovered a new passion and strength. I set out to run races that seemed impossible for my non athletic body, and I crossed the finish line. And every time, I was surprised by the joy of it all. Certainly in a year filled with uncertain fear, there has been unexpected joy to be found there, too. Maybe I’m not as scared as I once thought.
But I know I never did any of that alone. I told friends, I found support groups, I spoke with trusted people who have done the scary thing before. Which leads me to wonder, what if I don’t have to do the scary alone? What if I brought others into my fears? And what if they said “I’m scared, too. Let’s do this together.” Like a morning spent adding Halloween fun to our home, maybe there might be some unexpected joy to discover in this new kind of scary. I suppose this is me saying come along with me. I’m going to try to face some of my fears. I’m going to say them out loud. But only if you do, too.
I’m excited to show our neighbor friend the new decorations we added to our house. It probably won’t be spoooooky enough for him. But that’s okay. It’s a start. Small steps to the scary is more my speed. Who knows. Maybe next year we’ll add zombie hands.
Image created by @phoenixfeatherscalligraphy for C+C, 2020
This post was written as part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to read the next post in this series "Unexpected Joy.”
PS. If you want to follow along with me and my exploration of scary, sign up for the Raise & Shine Letter . It comes out monthly, I promise it isn’t scary, just updates on what I’m doing, what I love, and maybe, now that I’m being brave, even what scares me.