ETA: Thanks so much to the ever-helpful soul for the update about how the rest of Halloween played out on Great Big Sea Day 2008. Context is everything. Too bad you can't get your head wrapped around the admittedly dizzying fact that both are, and all is, True.
The decent weather has held here in St. John's for Halloween 2009, a very good thing for all the little ones and all the big ones alike. The rush seems to have ended, or at the very least slowed, so we're settling in for a late supper and the Habs game (and it is so the Habs game, not otherwise), with plans for a jaunt down to Erin's a bit later on to catch Kalem's latest band. It's been a nice Halloween - much better than last year's, when I was sitting here on serious post-surgical pain meds, as I can just barely recall. I hope this Halloween is more of what Alan was longing for last year, substantially more of what he desires in the here and now. I hope it's every good thing he deserves.
Bit of a day filled with mixed emotions, really. Beautiful weather, lovely city, effectively a sold out show on GBS Day, and I was dying to go home. I’ve had my share of tinges of homesickness but I can honestly say, for the first time in my professional career, I would have cancelled a big show to fly home yesterday to join the Halloweening.
Spent the whole day Skyping home and receiving emailed photos of my son Henry and all the neighbourhood kids in full regalia. They were having a ball and I wanted to be there so bad that it actually hurt.
By late afternoon, I decided to go for a run to clear my head and get myself in the right frame of mind to do the concert justice. Mistake. I ended up getting lost and by dusk I found myself in a residential area where dozens of Dad’s led their little Thomas the Tank Engines and Pirates and such around by hand as they Trick or Treated up and down the perfect fall Vermont streets. Jaysus, it was depressing. I ran to the end of one perfect Halloween scene and in an effort to discretely get away, I smacked right into some post on the corner. To make a bad situation worse, I look up to see what has clobbered me, and it was a sign that read “Henry St.”
Wow, I should be home. - Alan Doyle, November 1, 2008 journal entry
Welcome - and well come - home this All Hallow's Eve, dear man. May your treats be abundant and generously shared with love and laughter and delight. Last October 31st was 'Great Big Sea Day,' but today can be your 'Alan Doyle Family Day.' Now that's a Happy Halloween.
Alan has beautiful weather again for this Home Halloween, bright and clear and sunny today and supposed to stay nice late enough to give all this year's little Thomas the Tank Engines and Pirates (and their Dads, one Grateful Dad in particular) excellent trick-or-treating conditions. It's so gorgeous out there that I'm hoping to get myself out for a walk before time to come back and share the treat-handing-out duties. There's been lots of talk around town that Flu Fears might put a damper on this year's festivities; I hope not, for the sake of all the little ones, most of all for the sake of one very sweet Dad who missed out on all the fun last year and thus deserves a double portion this year.
I've worked on more of the Westhampton show photos off and on over the past few days, and there's a good-sized batch more or less ready to put up here. And after thinking and thinking and thinking about it, I'm going to respond to a pile of outraged emails I've gotten about the most recent verse of The OKP Blues, probably not an expected response, maybe not even an appreciated response. But an honest one, for as much as that's worth.
This latest tussle - as much as I know about it, that is, which is all secondhand, since I (rather gladly, I must confess) missed seeing any of it firsthand before it all was predicatbly deleted - connects rather neatly to something personal I've been struggling to get worked out and it even gives a bit of perspective on the determined commenter who still has ample animosity to spew (in email now, since comments remain disabled here). After doing that thinking and thinking and thinking, it has occurred to me that all these things originate in one fundamental issue: How we deal with the choices others make that we wish - for whatever reasons, with varying intensities - they had not made. And how we in turn choose to respond to those choices.
In the amount of time it's taken me to write this, interrupted by two fairly short phone calls, the clouds have started to roll in and the wind is getting stiffer. Still excellent Halloween weather by Newfoundland standards (it's not snowing, after all), and still excellent walking weather too; I think I am going to get out while the getting is still good and do just that, saving the photos and responses for later and keeping my hopes high and my fingers crossed that the weather holds this way long enough for all of those little Tank Engines and Pirates to have themselves a grand time Halloweening. And that goes double for one very Deserving Dad.
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