Served the purpose for me
It's that confrontational time of year again. I say confrontational because I once joined my daughter at her townhouse complex in Johannesburg for Halloween festivities.
My granddaughter was almost three years old, and we thought a walk through the brightly lit complex would be fun during the night when all the homes had their trick-or-treat decorations up.
It was spectacular and each home seemed to surpass the previous one in design and effort. However, we arrived at one home where it seemed exceptionally dark and scary as there were no lights and no fun decorations up.
Most of the other homes had moms and dads and children waiting in the open garages with sweets, greetings, and laughter but not this home.
There was a teenage boy up on the garage roof and his sister going into the road and handing out notices of our premature demise should we continue with this satanical ritual. Well, I for one had never considered this side of the coin and most definitely felt terribly threatened. Not from the home of those people but from continuing in this ill-informed state of ignorance.
So, I googled as one does. It is a complex subject for each person to decide their own meaning. Then I moved on as I had no need to visit further Estates at Halloween, and in truth, I am a little unnerved by the confusion between good and bad.
This year, which is eleven years later I decided that as all my children were at their respective ‘other’ places and my husband and I were alone, I would spice up my It’s FOMO and make a pumpkin.
Admittedly it wasn’t anything like I had imagined as my knife craft work is at best putrid. Anyway, trusting that I would not be burnt at a stake for witchcraft, I defiantly placed the pumpkin up on our wall for all to see.
Now I see that there is a price to pay for ignorance as I am saddened by what I found this morning. I had placed a perfumed candle inside the pumpkin, and it did its work and glowed beautifully right through till this morning when it was still burning.
I took it down and to my horror, I found many burnt little bees on the inside. Clearly, they had followed the sweet, perfumed odor and gone into the pumpkin only to meet the flame. All that comes from the lesson of the Halloween warning is perhaps think about what you do in this life as it might have a profound effect on others and just don’t use a scented candle in a Pumpkin at Halloween.