Day of the Dead

I have come to love Halloween. This was the time of the ancient British New Year - a time to tie up loose ends and put things to rest for the winter. Despite our essentially christian culture, the ancient traditions persist. Halloween is replete with carved pumpkins, candles, fires and trick-or-treating across North America. People are drawn without even really knowing why.

Our Halloween this year included this carved pumpkin which Rhiannon did entirely by herself. Daddy was a little disappointed to have been fired from his job... next year we'll have to get him his own pumpkin, I think.

Here are my trick-or-treaters on their way out. Rhiannon had been planning her cowgirl costume since stampede time when Sheila sent her this hat from Calgary.

Earlier in the day we met with friends over a fire where we let go of things that weren't serving us, invited new things in and ate hotdogs and made pull taffy.

Yesterday we celebrated the Day of the Dead. This is our display in the middle of our kitchen table. There are pictures of our grandmothers, Dean's grandfather and cousin, and beloved pets - Buck, Darion and Brownie and pictures of lambs we loved and then ate to symbolize all the animals that give up their lives for our nutrition.



And I included knitting needles because it was my Gram who taught me how to knit. In fact, she helped me work on a project with that very yarn. And there are 2 silver spoons there - one from my Gram's silver and one from her mother's. Her mother, my great-grandma Scott died when I was 12 so I had a chance to know her. I loved her - I loved touching her old, soft, wrinkly skin on her arms. And I used to have naps with her when I was very young and she used to take the hairpins out of her hairnet and put them in those little shoes while she napped. And that is her biscuit cutter, too that Gram gave me after she died.

So we thought of our dead loved ones yesterday and we felt them near us.