I Get Half The Halloween. Here's How I Make It Count

There's a built-in coziness this time of year that calls to so many of us moms. Yes, there's pumpkin-flavored everything lining the shelves at Trader Joe's and Target. Yes, there's the #PSL at Starbucks that probably funds a small nation or two every fall.. Fall stirs up a cozy craving in most of us, and it delivers.

Tucked into this season is what my 7-year-old calls the "second best holiday." The one where you get to try on a new persona and be Batman or Taylor Swift for the night. The one where candy is served for dinner, dessert, and breakfast the morning after. Just my house? I thought not.

There's so much to love about fall. And as a co-parent who shares custody, there's also so much to feel and acknowledge. The good and the hard.

I could sit in the hard. I won't pretend it isn't there, but I can also sip my PSL and smile, because co-parenting gives me something I didn't expect: time. Time to pause and plan, and to map out exactly what I want this season to look like when my kids are with me.

Fewer days doesn't mean less magic. It means intentional magic.

And it doesn't take much. With the weather showing off here in Utah, my husband and I take the kids to the nearby park with a picnic. I tuck plastic spiders into the food containers and name the dinner "Arachnafoodia." In my tumbler? Wine. I call it "Bat Blood." I think I'm so clever. At 12, 10 and 7, my (step) kids do too. For now. I'm soaking it up.

And at home, I set out pre-made Halloween crafts and allow glitter to spill all over.

The kids head to their dad's house every other weekend. That used to feel like an ending;now I try to see it as intermission.

Those weekends give me time to scrape the glitter off the table, scrub the goo out of the rug, and plan our next seasonal adventure or two. I fold the laundry, clean the bathrooms and light a candle.

So when the kids come back through that door, I'm not catching up. I'm ready. Ready to be all in.

A quick Google search turns up a whole list of Halloween festivals and community events. Our favorite is Cornbelly's, a giant fall festival where the kids squeal at the pig races, squeeze our hands a little tighter in the haunted houses, get absurdly expensive face paintings, and beg for "just one more" treat. It costs roughly what you'd pay for a night at a five-star hotel. And it's one of those memories we refuse to pass up.

Co-parenting has certainly taught me that you don't get every moment anymore, so you make the ones you do get count.

Which brings me to the "second best holiday" itself, because as October 31 creeps closer, reality creeps in with it.

There's an ache that comes with the co-parenting calendar. That moment you look at the dates and realize the big night isn't yours this year. You make the best of it. You do what you can to ignore it or make it hurt a little less. My husband and I head to friends' parties, eat chili, sip wine, and hang out with other grown-ups. We even dress up.

But on the drive there and the drive home, you won't catch me looking down those spooky neighborhood streets, counting all the Minions and KPop Demon Hunters.

My mom heart can't take it. Because somewhere in that parade of trick-or-treaters are my two other hearts. Walking door to door, asking for candy and holding someone else's hand.

Here’s the thing I keep coming back to: both things are true.

I miss them fiercely on that night and they are loved, safe, and having the time of their lives.

Co-parenting doesn't mean loving your kids half the time. It means loving them all of the time, and only getting to show up for some of it.

So to the mom sitting in a car on Halloween night, costume on, heart somewhere else: I see you. The grief is real and so is the magic you've been building all month long.

Your kids won't remember whose calendar Halloween landed on. They'll remember Arachnafoodia, the Bat Blood, and the glitter that never fully came out of the rug (yay!). And even if you don’t have the capacity for the whimsy, they’ll remember that fall with you felt like home. And that’s all I could ever hope for.

Meg Raby is a mom, children's author of the My Brother Otto series, and Autistic residing in Salt Lake City where you can find her playing and working with neurodivergent children as a Speech Language Pathologist and friend, or writing and planning big things in the second booth at her local coffee shop that overlooks the Wasatch Mountains while sipping on her Americano. Meg believes the essence of life is to understand, love and welcome others (aka, to give a damn about humans).