Halloween? Not scary. But this one night sure was. | Opinion
With deathly decorations and general ghoulishness, Halloween is scary to some but not to me, and it never will be. This is because years ago in the dead of night, I was shaken to my core by the unlikeliest of sources. Now, no hellish hobgoblins horrify me on All Hallows Eve.
As background, I believe parents are endowed with certain superpowers. Mine are three. First, I can pinpoint the exact temperature in my house at all times. Second, my sense of hearing generally is the envy of wolves. Third, when I’m terrified, it almost — key word — never shows.
In place of outbursts, I do what my five kids call a “dad-flinch.” It’s barely visible, but that’s only because for a millisecond every single muscle in my body twitches simultaneously. This seems a small price to pay for appearing cool as Michael Corleone when struck dumb with fear.
Fourteen years ago, when my daughter Hope was four, something spooked her in the night. I don’t recall what it was, but she slinked downstairs to visit with her parents. Not even the creaky wooden floor outside our bedroom door betrayed her impossibly light-footed approach.
Though she moved as quietly as a merciful angel, Hope brought with her no tidings, glad or otherwise. Instead, with a middle child’s politeness she made nary a sound and, upon arrival, seemed content just to be in proximity of her sleeping mom and dad for a beat or two.
Though Hope had outfoxed my vaunted hearing, she could not evade my preternatural sense, deep though I was in slumber, that I was being watched. Detection of her presence, while not instantaneous, eventually did kick in for me. This knack for light sleeping is no accident.
The talent, adjacent to my hearing prowess but not quite a superpower, comes from a childhood spent sharing a bedroom with my younger brother, Jack. As kids, Jack loved little more than rousing me from sleep with a violent rattle of my bed frame, a flashlight to my face and a terror-inducing “get off the train tracks” cri de coeur.
My roguish kid brother, in other words, cured me of any propensity for deep sleep. This is why, sensing my daughter’s presence, I instinctively opened my eyes. There in the doorway, pixie-small with icy blond locks and wraithlike in her luminescent bedclothes, silently stood Hope.
The haunting vision of a small child in white bracketed by the negative space of a completely darkened hallway was terror incarnate. All that was missing on her was a Victorian bonnet, or the ability to glide across the floor. It was, quite simply, more than my homeostatic tendencies could endure.
After a decade of Stoic parenting, my dad-flinch wall finally was breached. Years of bottled-up terror overtook me. I screamed like there was no tomorrow: In that moment, I was confident there was none. Medical students in the hopefully distant future might someday study my ticker and say to one another “something terrified this chap around 2009.”
Fortunately, Hope now knows that yes, patience is a virtue, but a gentle shoulder tap is preferable to a silent “Boo Radley” stare when waking someone. Aesop said good things come in small packages. As my sweet Hope taught me years ago, terrifying things can, too.
Mike Kerrigan is an attorney in Charlotte and a regular contributer to the Opinion pages.
