Mary van Balen

PHOTOS:Mary van Balen
I live in the house where she and dad raised my four silblings and me. I sit on their couch, launder clothes in the washer she'd used for years and gaze out the dining room window, watching squirrels scamper up and down the grand pin oak in the front yard. Just like mom did, and her mother before her. Over the past two years since she died, many things remind me of her and I miss her face, her hugs, her love.

Thanksgiving preparations put an ache in my heart, a deep-down "missing mom" that lingered over dinner and remained as I fell into bed.

I used her rolling pin to make pie crusts.

"There's nothing to making a pie crust," she always said. Her mother, Becky, who lived with us, had said the same thing. I believed them and have made my own pastry since I could reach the counter. With every handful of flour, every pass of the rolling pin over the dough, I thought of her and tried to put as much love as she had done into each pie.

"Mom," I said, "I could use one of your smiles, or comments that everything will be fine. Read More 

Yesterday, between grading stacks of tests and reflection papers, I took a walk around the neighborhood. The sky was October blue, and the stunning orange sugar maple leaves brought me to a stop. Overwhelming beauty moved my heart to reverence and thanksgiving for such gifts. Perhaps this prayerful interlude made the intrusion of tacky plastic Halloween decoration more jarring than they would have been if I had come upon them first.

House after house displayed an array of "decorations." Strings of plastic ghosts and pumpkins that light up at night strung over bushes, along porch overhangs, and between branches; a variety of creatures looking as if they were struggling to emerge from their graves; headstones, gauzy fake cobwebs in a variety of colors; witches and ghosts swinging from trees.

I was reminded of a similar blight on the landscape while driving thougth a small town. A giant inflatable spider hovered over an assortment of ghosts, zombies, and skeletons. On the left of the yard was a small pool and fountain of questionable taste at its best. For Halloween the water is died red and gushes out of a skull's mouth.

What happened to Halloween? Is it card companies or manufacturers of cheap plastic throwaways that drive this excess? Occasionally, between "Halloweened houses" a porch would be decorated with pumpkins or gourds, nature's contribution to the season. But on the street I walked, natural displays were the exception.

I am reminded of a professor who taught education courses when I was studying to become an elementary teacher. She had been a British Headmistress of an infant school in London. She was always amazed at the American fascination with holiday decorations and themed work she observed in our schools.

"Every year, turkeys, hearts, ghosts and witches," she would muse. "Why? There is no 'meat' in them for study. Year after year students can count on doing the same thing." She shook her head. "Only in America."

A victim of breast cancer, she passed away a number of years ago. She would have shared my dismay at the trend of draping one's home with plastic and lights, in your face tacky that distracts from the true beauty of the season.

Why not take time to marvel with a child at the exquisite artistry of a spider web or the wonder of changing leaves? Why are we such eager consumers, willing to buy the silliest things that will end up in a landfill in a week or two? It is easy. It is fast. Faster than making homemade costumes, carving jack-o-lanterns, reading stories and poems, or taking walks through a pumpkin patch.

We are a drive-through consumeristic society and gullible enough to think supporting more disposable junk somehow makes a holiday more fun and exciting. We are on clutter overload and so are the children. Enough plastic lights and headstones and no one takes notice.

What if the money spent across this nation on holiday gewgaw was spent instead on food, schools, or dare I say it...taxes...that might make a positive difference for someone? The thought entered my mind but left as I turned a corner to see yet another Frankenstein emerging from someone's lawn. Read More