Candy or Trouble!

Trine needs to rest with Maddie as much as possible (we entered Week 30 yesterday), so she wasn’t able to join Molli Malou and me on Halloween. Ex-step-cousin Nikolai was celebrating his 40th birthday with a big Halloween Birthday party. Molli Malou wanted to wear the new penguin costume from the Lees, but she wanted her face painted tigerish and insisted on bringing her tiger costume in case she needed it later. (“But Daddy,” she whispered to me confidentially as I packed the tiger suit into a bag, “no one can ever see me in it.”)

She’s always had some kind of secret thing with that tiger suit… maybe when she grows up she can tell us what the hell she’s been thinking.

I didn’t have much time between getting home from work and rushing off to the party (it was a Friday night), so I made my face up like Frankenstein’s monster, pulled on a black tee and a too-small suit jacket, and off we went.

(Click on the picture for a video of Molli Malou telling us what she’ll say when she rings a doorbell!)

(This was the weekend Gert moved out, so he was home and let me use his old GPS. I’d never driven with one before. Neither had Molli Malou. When we pulled out of the driveway and the thing suddenly announced in a crisp American accent, “Tun right in 19 meters. Turn right now,” Molli Malou and I both started laughing uproariously. I glanced back at Molli Malou, and she was twisting around in her child seat trying to see the invisible woman. I tried to explain the technology with a combination of technical realism and child-friendly shortcuts. “But where IS she?” Molli Malou kept asking. “How can she SEE us?”)

Nikolai and Linda had gone all out, and I’m embarrassed to say it was actually one of the most, if not the most, impressive Halloween parties I’d ever been to. Their house is way off the street at the end of string of rowhouses, so there’s a long and narrow sidewalk leading from the sidewalk to their front yard. It was of course dark when we got there, and the walk had been draped with arching boughs that were strung with cobwebs. Candles were set in the earth a regular intervals, and some kind of shining skull soundmaker moaned piteously into the cold night air. I was impressed; Molli Malou was terrified. She froze in her tracks and wouldn’t budge further.

I explained it was just for fun, laughed out loud until I could coax a little nervous laughter out of her, then we took two steps down the path before she shrieked and leaped into my arms. I carried her a few yards, and as soon as we navigated through the boughs she let me set her down again. Ahead there was only the yard, which I could now see had been set up with gravestones, creepy crawlies, and more candles. There was even an upended coffin, I think. I persuaded Molli Malou to appreciate the quality of it all and she was coming around to my way of seeing things when a skull-faced scarecrow leaped out at us from behind something and shouted “Boo!”

If she hadn’t been so scared of the path, that may well have been the last we ever saw of Molli Malou: she turned to run, realized the escape route was just as scary, and so leaped into my arms, cowering, burying her face in my shoulder.

The house was done up to the Hollywood nines. We entered and Molli Malou clung to me desperately. I tried to greet people, but honestly couldn’t recognize anybody. I was the most recognizable person there, probably. So Molli Malou entered a darkened house full of strangers in dark clothes with terrible faces, many of them with blood dripping from their lips.

It took her about twenty minutes to warm to the party, but warm to it she did (I think it gave her more confidence to change into the tiger suit from the penguin outfit).

She was the youngest child there not requiring constant adult supervision (ie, the youngest non-toddler), so the other kids took a kind of collective responsibility for her during and after dinner (a dish with no real American equivalent, but kind of like beans and franks without the beans but with added little meat stuff bobbing around with the franks; Nikolai introduced it as something like ghost eyeballs, witch brains, etc, but by then it could do nothing to deter Molli Malou’s appetite.)

The big adventure came after dinner: trick or treating! (In Danish the kids apparently say, “Slik eller ballade!” which translates to “Candy or Trouble!”)

I asked Nikolai if trick or treating was common in his neighborhood.

“No,” he said, “but we’re working on it.”

I went along with my camera and to hold Molli Malou’s hand… she was by far the youngest of the bunch. There were only 2-3 other adults and about 10 kids. At the first house they were told there was no candy, so the homeowners simply gave out a bunch of coins.

Molli Malou cam running across the lawn to me after collecting her money, tears streaming down her face.

“We didn’t get any candy!” she cried.

I assured her she could spend her money on candy the next day, and she was ready to join the kids in queue at the next house.

Here, the owner opened the door, looked over the costumed kids, and said “That’s fine,” then shut the door in their faces.

Molli Malou stormed back to me this time, all rage instead of sorrow.

“She was a not very nice lady,” Molli Malou said. “We don’t like her, Daddy.”

These kids weren’t dumb, and at subsequent houses they made sure to have Molli Malou front and center before they rang the bell. They milked her cuteness for all it was worth.

We went to about fifteen more houses before Molli Malou was shivering so badly I decided we had to give up. It was also long past her bedtime. In all I think she got two lollipops, a couple of caramels, and some gummi candies. About what an enterprising American kid could have gotten in one handful at one house circa the early 1970s, if memory serves. Also about 8 crowns ($1.25ish) And it took nearly an hour to obtain it, and only about one in three homes had even opened their doors to us.

She giggled again at “the lady” as we drove back home, but only for a few minutes… by the time we hit the highway she was fast asleep, and her first real Halloween was a memory.

Gert moved out two weekends ago. Benny & Kim came to help. The container was the biggest I’d ever seen parked on a suburban street and I was sure we couldn’t fill it, but in the end it was crammed completely full and there were still a few things that couldn’t fit.

While packing the plants, one plant ended up looking so much like Sideshow Bob that I had to take a picture (if you have to ask, you’ll never understand):

The house sure emptied out! Here’s the “solarium” area that was previously a pile of Morfar’s furniture surrounded by a jungle of flora:

Here’s a shot looking into our new bedroom:

And a shot looking toward the fireplace, taken from where our heads will be lying (more or less) on our actual bed:

And here’s the foyer, which has been almost impassably stuffed with boxes since the day we moved in this August:

So since then and for the next 4-5 days we’re bracing for the arrival of our American stuff. The container arrives in the port of Denmark on the 15th, but we’re not sure when it’ll actually arrive at our door. We’re excited to be getting all that furniture and stuff, but also resigned to the fact (based on our quick inspection this summer) that a lot of it is either (a) useless or (b) ruined or (c) electronically inappropriate for Europe. So there will probably be a lot of dump runs in our future.

Just to keep up to date: a few shots from Trine and Molli Malou’s trip to the woods last weekend.

And an anecdote to close on:

Trine had just stepped out of the shower this morning when Molli Malou came to her and said, “Mor, there’s a man here with a package.”

Later she pieced together what had happened.

Molli Malou had been watching children’s tv while Trine showered, and there’d been a ring at the door.

Molli Malou had gone to the front door, seen (through the glass foyer walls) someone standing outside, and had opened the door for him.

“Come in,” she said.

The man came in and asked if he her mother or father were home.

“My daddy’s at work,” she said. “But my mor is in the shower.” And then she’d gone scampering off for Trine.

It’s clear we need to have a talk little talk about opening the door to strangers, and how much information we give them. We’re not quite sure how to approach it without (a) leaving things so vague she just keeps letting anyone in, or (b) scaring her so badly she never opens the door for anyone ever again and demands a deadbolt on her bedroom door. Suggestions welcome.

In any case, we figure if she’s grown up enough to answer the door, she’s long past grown up enough to answer the phone. So if you happen to call, don’t be surprised if she answers!