For 7 years, I’ve lived in a “border” neighborhood. Just a few blocks south is full of wealthy White people with tidy yards, cobblestone streets, and brick tudors built in the 1930s. Just a few blocks north is some public housing, a stigmatized and mostly African-American neighborhood, and the “big scary street” where drive by shootings happen. In between, my neighborhood, is solidly working class and integrated. There are young professionals and families like ours with young kids, as well as older folks who have lived here for years. Though there are a few that I wish would clean up their yards a bit or put on a new coat of paint, most of the houses are fairly well kept. We have friendly relationships with all the folks around us, we are conveniently located, and our monthly mortgage payment is less than what we pay for our one kid to attend full-time Montessori preschool. So why did we spend 2 hours after DD went to bed night last night looking at houses online and making promises to budget more carefully to get out of credit card debt so we can move?

DH works until 6pm on Sunday nights, so DD and I rushed to make jack-o-lantern shaped pizzas, eat  dinner, light our pumpkin and all our outdoor halloween candles, and get her all dressed by the time he pulled into the driveway. Then we waited for some trick o’ treaters to knock on the door. And waited. Finally, a princess and a skeleton arrived and we unloaded 3 pieces of candy each. Okay, here we go! Or not. Another 15 minutes went by and we had no more knocks at the door. Just then, DH drove into the driveway and DD jumped up and down with excitement about getting to start trick o’ treating! We snapped a few pics of the Little Mermaid on the porch and then set out. She skipped ahead of me, singing, “halloween! trick o’ treat!” all the way down the block in search of a house with a porch light on. Literally, all the way down the block. Past a dozen or so dark houses on each side of the street. Finally, the neighborhood watch guy’s house had its light on. YIPPEE! After hitting exactly one other house on the next block, we headed home. While we were gone, DH had answered the door to one group of trick o’ treaters. We decided to leave our candy on the front step and head out to friends’ houses. After our experience, you could easily think that trick o’ treating was a dead tradition. Our daughter visited TWO houses in our neighborhood.

We drove the few blocks south and were transported into another world. Hundreds, literally HUNDREDS of children and parents swarmed this neighborhood. Our friends (a couple in their late 50s with grown children) were sitting on their porch enjoying wine and their fire pit and dispensing bucketfuls of candy. On their street, there were maybe 2 houses with porch lights out. We then drove to another friend’s house who lived in a similar neighborhood. A single 35 year old woman with no kids, she answered the door dressed as Princess Leia, while her dog was dressed as a fairy. DD visited about a dozen houses on the block and was happy with her loot. While we visited with Princess Leia and friends for about an hour, the doorbell rang no less than 30 times. Many of the visitors were probably my neighbors, as we all seem to have abandoned our neighborhood in favor of “destination trick o’ treating.” WHY?

My mom and I argued this morning about this, and she thinks that it’s just too dangerous for older people or young people alone to be answering the door on Halloween night. This fear persists despite the fact that our newspaper this morning reported no crime to speak of last night, which seems to be the case in general, according to this Wall Street Journal article. Kids are much more likely to be hit by a car on Halloween than to be harmed by a stranger. My mom’s neighborhood in another state has plenty of action on Halloween night, but she told me she’d just as soon have the tradition die because it’s kind of scary. I couldn’t disagree more. It’s not about the candy. What I experienced in those other neighborhoods last night felt like community. It felt like grown ups putting aside their schedules and their normal activities to make something fun happen for children. It felt neighborly. I actually even felt a little teary last night as I witnessed the discrepancy between these two worlds that existed only blocks apart. In one world, the local kids (and plenty of outsiders) are embraced and given candy, and in the other world, the local kids are feared.

So DH and I were searching online for houses last night. Maybe we should stay and fight for our little piece of the world. But it feels a lot easier to just jump ship to a place where people aren’t party poops. I want DD to live on a block where she can trick o’ treat, ride her bike, and where people decorate their houses for Christmas. I’ll gladly buy $100 worth of Halloween candy to hand out to kids who drive over from my former neighborhood be a part of a place like this. But I wish I didn’t feel like I had to.