octoberthoughtspdx

It’s nearing midnight. I just went to a grocery store because I needed staples: milk, cereal, sale-priced Halloween candy.

Our October time is drawing to a close. There’s still baseball. There are still leaves on the trees. It feels unfinished but, no, I’m not stretching this out the next three weeks to the next new moon.

We move into the dark month of November in a few minutes. We should take this time to remember our ancestors and our dearly departed. We should continue the good works they left behind.

We will continue in these dark times to gather our loved ones close. There is strength in our number.

Here at the tail end of October, we speak of how this is the time of year when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest.

But I learned something today.

There’s a calendar called the Coligny calendar that some witchy folks use.

A bronze tablet outlining the Coligny was found in France about 125 years ago, but it is believed the calendar was used roughly 2000 years ago. It’s a lunisolar calendar using a five year cycle of 12 months with 29 or 30 days. Every two and a half years, it added a 13th month in order to align with the solar year.

Those who use it now interpret it as saying that veil is thinnest near the second new moon after the autumn equinox. This year, that new moon is November 20, nearly three weeks after Halloween. With all due respect to those who abide by that calendar and the more widely used ones, I see this as free rein to carry on with our Halloween festivities just a bit longer.

There’s so much ground we haven’t covered, so many Octobery things we’ve skipped over that it only makes sense to just add three weeks.

There are two weather phenomena that, despite not being unique to October, deserve thought in this calendar square: wind and fog.

Typically, the winds grow wild here at the west end of the Columbia River Gorge this time of year. We get gusty and sometimes sustained winds the local meteorologists decided years ago would be called The Cohos. No one calls them this. But, as with everything else in the world, they are not really behaving as normal this year and we’ve only seen them one or two days thus far.

The other, slightly more cooperative weather phenomena is the fog. She was here this morning, a thick shroud of cold damp that hides all the mysteries of the season and also most of the garbage truck that was parked across Burnside at about 25th early this morning. Be careful out there, friends. There’s no telling what else she conceals.

We’re doing our big Halloween thing at work tomorrow. I do not have a costume.

My mom and grandma made costumes for me when I was little. I was a tiny pink ballerina with black stars and sparkles (one of our first forays into eyelash glue as face adhesive), a white elephant (I was a weird kid), Sylvester the cat.

But once I got out of elementary school, I lost my costume tolerance. I’m just not good at it. I don’t like a lot of makeup. Props are an irritation. I wish I could be one of those people who gets into character and stays there all day.

So I fall back on the semi-goth parts of my wardrobe. If all else fails, wear black. Try to look mysterious or something. Maybe add a tiara. Or horns.

Someone on BlueSky said today is National Black Cat Day. I have no idea if that’s true, but it feels like it could be.

So, say hello to your black cats for me. And your orange cats, too, or whatever color cats you might share your life with.

Or if you have some other type of familiar, tell them I said hi, too.

We’re far enough into October that I cannot remember what we’ve covered and what’s left to be said.

This is further complicated by the haphazard way I’ve gone about it this year after several years of not doing it at all. But we continue.

October is for the Hollywood monsters. It is for Nosferatu across the decades. It is for the many actors who have played Dracula, Frankenstein and his Bride, the Mummy, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

It is for all the werewolves and all the actors who played them, from Michael J. Fox to Michael Landon.

It’s for every iteration of the Munsters and the Addams Family. It is for the Canadian television series Lost Girl, for Charmed, and Angel, and Buffy, and Supernatural. It’s for Warehouse 13 and the X-Files.

It’s for Halloweentown.

And The Craft.

And Hocus Pocus.

And for Practical Magic.

It’s for everyone who has committed a monster or a scare to film, including my friend Bird who is actually the Blair Witch, though we do not talk about it.

We’re running out of days. Do you have your trick-or-treat candy? Do you have your costume picked out? Have you draped your mirrors to prevent…crossover?

I ran out of time AGAIN this year to create my yard monster, but there are plenty of other places around that are fully prepped and decked out in their holiday finest. If you’re in Portland, you still have time to cruise by the Davis Graveyard (https://davisgraveyard.com) or the house I have been for years referring to as the House of Crap (51st & NE Alameda). This year, I was made aware of the Roseway Cemetery (https://www.rosewaycemetery.com/show-dates). I might try to check that out tomorrow if the current weather calms down.

On my way out to the coast yesterday, I saw plenty of decorated yards. Those giant Home Depot skeletons are doing some work. But the most sinister decor I think I’ve ever seen was super simple and likely an accessible build for most of us.

Let’s be real: very few of us are out there building headstones out of drywall putty or whatever. Not everyone has the cash flow for a yard full of inflatable dragons.

Out on 99 toward the coast, Mcminville-ish if I remember correctly, there is a circle of four or five cloaked figures. One has tall horns. That’s it. These eerie, ephemeral forms. No bodies to be seen. No faces. just standing there.

You know they’re up to something.

There was a week in October that was blurry as it happened and has grown progressively more faint. I feel blessed to have been there for it, but I don’t ever want to do it again.

It was just happenstance that I saw a post on Facebook. I don’t spend a lot of time there anymore. But I saw it and I was immediately in the car, on the road, at the hospital. Security made me wait even though I had the room number. I waited a long time and then I just started walking. It seemed unlikely that the guard, who was eating something that might have been a burrito bowl, would come after me.

I found the longest possible way to get to the room. Angie’s mom was the only one there with her. It was after 9 on a Thursday night. “Cousin Kristen. How did you get here? Nobody has your number. We wanted to call you…”

***

Angie was sick for nearly a year before she told me. She told me when I called to break the news that Carrie had passed. She hadn’t told me before because she’d seen how I, and the people around me, had processed Kevin’s death. What a shitty, shitty maze to navigate.

I made her promise to tell me everything, to let me know or to have someone else let me know when she was in the hospital so I could bring her magazines and popsicles and do whatever else I could do. She told me once but told me not to come. From then on, I would find out after the fact that she’d been in the hospital for a week, for ten days, for whatever. Always in the vaguest terms.

We were able to drive north for a few hours in the summer two years ago to see old friends play music in a church parking lot. When they asked about her cancer, she said simply, resignedly, “It’s going to shorten my life.” I did not ask for more detail. She would tell me what she wanted me to know. She would tell me what she thought I could handle.

While I was driving too fast all over the Bay Area in the rental Mustang after her brother’s wedding a month later, she had to leave to come home for a chemo treatment. I wish she could have stayed. I wish she could have gone to Santa Cruz with me, to go back to a restaurant we went to decades ago to watch the sunset over the ocean.

***

So, the post on Facebook took me by surprise. I was not prepared. I was not anywhere near ready to say goodbye.

In the days that followed, people filed into the room and out of the room. Sometimes a few at a time, speaking in whispers. Other times, boisterous laughter that I was sure was going to get some of us asked to leave. Aunts, uncles, cousins, loved ones. Drifting through tears to find coffee, or the salad bar in the basement cafeteria. Returning to find more cousins telling stories of when they were little, making cookies with Angie at Christmas.

As I said above, most of it is a blur now. What I remember are the ebbs and flows of people and laughter and silence. I cried until I couldn’t cry anymore and passed the box of tissue to someone else. I spent time with adults who were kids the last time I saw them. I hugged strangers I’d only previously known through photos on Angie’s Facebook page. Her dad and I talked about the crystals her stepmom had given her to carry, hoping they would bring her healing or comfort or something.

I knew she carried them, and I know she did so not just for what they might bring her, but for the comfort they might bring the person who gave them to her. “Nothing to lose by putting them in my pocket,” she’d told me. I wonder what happened to them.

Late at night, when it was just the smaller circle of family, we talked about music and the cabin at Rockaway. I heard stories I hadn’t heard before, and repeats of some I never want to forget.

When I left on that last night, I told I’d see her the next day. Her brother Joe called me two hours later to tell me she’d gone.

She left no instructions for what we should do next. We decided early in the week that cremation was probably best and the pastor at our church set the wheels in motion for a memorial service on Veteran’s Day.

When I say that week in October was a blur, the two weeks that followed are every bit as incomplete for me. At some point, Joe asked me to write an obituary. I already had most of it in my head.

Her memorial was an incredible remembrance of her. I’ve been to memorials before where the person officiating does not know the decedent, but Angie had been a huge part of this church long after I’d stopped going and the pastors know her well. Her brother spoke on behalf of the family and I’ve never been prouder of him.

I tried to sit in the back, as had been our custom, but the pastor made Annette and I move up front with the family. Only not quite with the family because there was SO MUCH family, so we were off to the side in our own row. I’m sure Angie was laughing at how awkward this was. I’m a good Lutheran. I sit in the back so I can bring my coffee with me and not cause too much disruption. I have no doubt that Angie raised Annette to be the same. But there we were in the front of the sanctuary anyway.

We went up for communion, which was also awkward with so many people who were either out of practice or just unfamiliar with the custom. With front row seats, the traffic pattern watching was top notch. IYKYK

Afterward, we gathered in the fellowship hall, family, coworkers, friends old and new. I desperately hope she understood even a fraction of the impact her life made on all of us.

It’s been a year now. A year and a few hours. None of us will ever be the same.

I drove out to the coast today, taking the same roads we took so many times. I stopped at a casino she liked, drove through the town where her family has their beach cabin. I talked to her along the way and laughed about the time we saw a guy in a serape walking a pack mule along 101 just south of Garibaldi. “Did you see that?” she’d asked so many years ago. “Oh, good,” I answered. “I thought I was seeing things.”

I will miss her forever. My friend, my chosen sister.

If I ever attain great wealth, there will be signs.

And one of them is the Williams Sonoma caramel apple. This year, it sells for $35.95 plus shipping.

For one apple.

I am too cheap to spring for a $36 apple. But someday…maybe.

Apples are abundant this time of year, central to every farm stand and harvest festival.

Apples are symbols of fertility, knowledge, and immortality depending on whose folklore you’re reading.

And with apple season, my mom and I begin taking about making the apple cake. This conversation starts in August and ends when one of us makes the cake. We really want this cake. Neither of us wants to make it. It’s kind of a pain in the ass and weighs about as much as a small car. But it’s a breakfast, lunch, and dinner cake. You will want to eat this three times a day until it’s gone.

As written by my mom and kept safely in my email under the heading “Rice Veracruz.” My notes are in italics. Welcome to the family.

AUNT CELIA’S GERMAN APPLE CAKE

2 cups white sugar

¾ cup shortening (not oil)

2 large eggs (I use three eggs.)

3 cups flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla (plus a splash if you like vanilla)

4-5 apples, peeled and chopped

1 cup chopped walnuts (and maybe a little more, or you can leave them out)

 

Topping:

1 cube melted butter

2 tablespoons flour (I always forget the flour. It’s fine.)

8 tablespoons brown sugar

 

In a very large bowl, cream together sugar, shortening and eggs.  In a separate bowl, whisk flour, soda, cinnamon and salt until well blended.  Add dry mixture to creamed ingredients, add vanilla and stir together (this is more like a thick dough than a batter.  I’m a very careless measurer and I never sift anything.)  Add apples and nuts and stir to evenly distribute.  Lightly press into well greased 11” x 13” baking pan.

Melt butter in microwave.  Stir in flour and brown sugar until well blended.  Pour mixture over top of cake.  There’s never enough to cover completely, but it gives the cake a kind of cobbled look.

Bake cake at 375 approximately 35-45 minutes or until the cake is golden brown and edges pull from side of pan.  This is a hard cake to test because the apples keep it very moist, but pay special attention to the center are of the cake to make sure it gets done. (This sometimes takes well over an hour and you have to cover it with foil so the top doesn’t burn. It all depends on how much moisture your apples release as the cake bakes.)

Any type of apple will do.  Red Delicious make a very mild flavored cake.  Granny Smiths are tart and terrific – but whatever is readily available is okay.

Orange and black plastic spider rings. These were a key component of the Halloweens of my youth.

These were the spiders strung on fishing line at the Greatest Halloween Party Ever. My mom clipped the ring part off of them and glued the spiders to her face with eyelash glue when she was the carnival witch. They were in every trick-or-treat haul. They decorated cupcakes and cellophane treat bags.

They’re currently on sale at Michael’s. $1.49 for a bag of 24 in a wide variety of colors. Amazon will sell you 120 of the original black and orange for about $9. Use this information as you will.