August is a month that seems completely relentless, it’s like Sunday but of the whole year.

Plus the high temperatures make time feel like it’s slowing down. My body is in shock by September 1st, it’s as if someone hit an off switch, the heat disappears, and there is no gradual transition from Summer to Fall, it’s instant. The trees are bare, the grass is dead, flowers are dried up and the nights creep up on you before dinner time. The temperature drops so drastically that it kills all the insects outside. It’s probably the only upside of this rapid weather change, all the mosquitoes are banished back to hell. The smell in the air is also melancholic, it awakens the sadness in my soul. This environment is hard to exist in when nature all around me is dead or dying. The dark gray skies also send threats of rain at any given moment. 

I also realize that October is upon us, in America I would always get sad around October, but at least I could distract myself by putting up Halloween decorations and planning on my multiple elaborate costumes. Plus all the adorable trick-or-treaters to look forward to. And the changing of the leaves!!! My God how I miss this phenomenon, I took it for granted for sure. Italy lacks the changing of the leaves, it has no such thing.

In Italy 10 years ago no one even knew what Halloween was, ever since then I have died on the inside a little bit every single year. It is the ONE thing that I miss about ‘American culture’. A few years ago a neighbor caught wind of my sadness and decided she was going to have a ‘Halloween dinner’ I perked up a bit and rummaged around the house because where I come from anything that has to do with Halloween involves dressing up right?!–Wrong! I found a giant banana costume that I insisted my husband wear, and my little boy and I dressed up as guys from the band KISS, (we were actually ‘French KISS’) full face paint and all. We showed up to the dinner and no one else was dressed up. I was horrified and pissed off! Who TF throws a Halloween dinner party and doesn’t dress up?!??!!? Or even have decorations or candy for Freddy Kruger’s sake?! 

Italians are clueless to Halloween culture and it has been a hard pill to have to swallow. Each year the town strip has started passing out candy to little kids, and it’s slowly growing. But for me, it’s a total letdown, I try to explain to my oldest son what Halloween was like for me as a child growing up in America. I keep promising that I will take him to New York or Boston for Halloween to do actual trick or treating, he would absolutely flip and I would love nothing more than to be the one to show him what Halloween in America is all about. Without fail as my luck would have it I always have some sort of crazy “surprise expense” or a “permit of stay” issue that holds us back from flying across the Atlantic to experience a “magical Halloween”. I have lost count of how many times I have broken my promise to him. I’m too scared to even bring it up this year, currently I simultaneously have both problems, lucky me huh?! And now it seems a little more impossible since we have a little brother in the mix. When you become a parent the weirdest things will become your life’s mission. I wish I could begin to explain what I am feeling at this very moment, I can’t… all I can say is that it doesn’t feel good.

The first time a good friend of mine brought up Halloween she wrote in a text message with the spelling “Alowen” perplexed I asked her what on earth she was talking about. Then I noticed signs around town and memes with the hashtag “Alowen”… It cheered me up about an inch, the inch that stabbed my heart that Halloween couldn’t even have correct spelling in the country I now reside in.

I pray for a miracle or to win the lottery, a great sum of cash would solve all of my current issues right this very moment. And instead of cashing in on a “Christmas miracle” this year I will pray and try my hardest to manifest a “Halloween Miracle”. Maybe by the grace of the Pumpkin King we can make it to America and finally experience the REAL Halloween! Happy Autumn everyone!