Category Archives: Community

Last night, we went through eleven bags of candy in two hours.

ELEVEN BAGS.

That’s somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred pieces of candy. Give or take.

“Wow!” you might be thinking “She lives in a really dense area! There must be tons of kids on her street!” That would be my first thought too, except that I live on my street and know all of the exactly four families with kids who live on our street.

My street has become a “Destination location” for Halloween. None of us are quite sure how we got this reputation – perhaps it’s because the local Walgreens is at the end of the street, or maybe it’s because the family across from us actually dedicates their entire living room to Halloween and gives each trick-or-treater at least a POUND of candy – but we are now the place to be. Starting at 5:30 last night, the cars started to pull up and park, and children who live as far as two miles away begin unloading out of their vehicles to collect the bounty of our street.

My first year in our house, I was annoyed. Where I grew up in Minnesota, you trick-or-treated on your own street, visiting your neighbors and people you knew. The idea of getting in a car to trick or treat totally defeated the purpose to me, and undermined the spirit of a neighborhood Halloween. My second year I was slightly less hostile, but still bewildered by the astonishing influx of kids I have never seen before calmly walking up and down my street, joyfully collecting candy from strangers.

I am now accustomed to the annual pilgrimage to our street, and have come to even grudgingly like the experience. On Halloween, we interact with families and kids we don’t see the rest of the year. We speak to families from South Providence, a nearby area that struggles with poverty and violence, who tell me they like to come to our street because it is safe. We speak to young mothers with their babies, out for the first time, and teenagers who are trick-or-treating before a big dance. There are people from literally everywhere at my door, and suddenly, I have the chance to interact with people who are not in my everyday life, but who are part of my community, who I pass on the street, and who are in the city I call home. Despite the two hundred rings of the doorbell, and constant barking of our dog, Kayla, I actually enjoyed last night. It was great to feel as though I was part of something bigger than myself – a community I didn’t even realize was out there.