Agent Halloween

We live in a small country named as Georgia. Yes ,you can read again, and yes “country” is written there. We are somewhere at the very crossroads of Europe and Asia. For those who have never been here I would love to say ,that it is the one very beautiful place of the earth, where you might find lot of nice and interesting people.At least this is what we think about our homeland.

We live in suburb area of Tbilisi, Capital city of Georgia.

My story began 10 years ago, when I got married, became the mother and got bunch of the new neighbors.I could barely memorize all of the new faces around me ,so i just used to greet everyone who looked at my direction in the yard( I tried to be polite).

 Autumn is warm here, with lot of golden leaves; shiny, sunny weather and almost no pumpkin heads during the Halloween period ; not because we do not have any pumpkins, the deal is , Halloween is almost not celebrated in Georgia. Here is a brief part from the long history of Georgia: The country accepted Christianity  back in 4^th century, most of the barely 4 millions of citizens of Georgia are orthodox Christians. Georgians love to party, but it is also very conservative country. It means all the non-orthodox traditions are just imported from other cultures and not always successfully.

 We have never celebrated Halloween in my childhood. Or I may say, I barely knew about this holiday back in those days. Some of our other holidays where also not that much celebrated by children.There was huge economic crisis in our country.We remember our birthday parties, with lot of our parents friends gathered to celebrate;they also placed children's’ special table somewhere in the corner,so we could also enjoy our time quietly.It might sound pathetically, but these are the funniest childhood memories for most of Georgians of my generation now.

 Now , lot of things are different. There are the things like children's’ rights , entertaining centers and more American movies. Our children's birthday party, Santa claus stories and presents are real and more affordable now.

 10 years ago I was a home-stay mom, and I used to give private lessons in English to the youngest children. It literally meant there were bunch of the children around me all the time.

At one of those beautiful, golden warm autumn day, my little students gave me very important question: Why do we not celebrate Halloween in Georgia?

 My answer was dry, I just murmured something like :because we do not have that type of holiday in Georgia; Anyway as an young enthusiastic English teacher I've decided to adopt the new tradition and make halloween our own holiday now.

 Children got excited to party, in the huge difference with the most of their parents. Some of them even found celebrating Halloween demonic, and obsoletely against of the ideas of orthodox Christianity. Here is a fact about 10 years younger me: I was eager to convince the people to accept my ideas and I still had the young spirit to argue with people, to prove them wrong.

 Finally, they have all agreed, Halloween could be fun. I took the responsibility to organize the really lame ( but still memorable) party for them. We have decorated our apartment with pumpkin heads ( which we found obviously more difficult, than people who have ever crafted the pumpkin heads ).Our guests were 3 supermen, 3 ghosts , 4 princesses and our dog, that just represented the stinky smell.

 The hardest, yet very traditional and important task was to knock on neighbors’ doors to ask them for treat. I have tried to convince some of them the day before,to give the children treats, even though they might look weird. One of them has not opened the door for me, 4 others in my building gave me the bunch of the moral lessons, some of them have already known about my weird idea and accepted the news smiling, yet giving me the look.

 So , finally the day had come.

Our neighbors were very curious about situation. So here comes the English language teacher, with supermen,princesses,ghosts and last but not the least stinky dog. We have knocked on our first door, I have exhaled realizing the huge thing I was dealing with and our first hostess, Manana has opened the door. She is a middle-aged woman, mother of 2 kids (those two will probably never be my students ). She smiled at us, and gave the children treats in a very graceful manner. I bet she was very proud of herself. And I need to admit, I was very proud of her too.

 The next door was never opened for us. We have just heard the sound of immediately switched of TV and this is where I felt like a naughty child again.

  Children went crazy with happiness and plenty of sugar they got for few seconds.

We finally made a decision to knock on the door , that we found the most suitable for Halloween. For all of us, especially for me this was the door originaly invented for Halloween.

The door and the apartment behind that door,belonged to our neighbor Anatol.He was the most interesting person for me in our dense neighborhood. Old man used to live all alone in the house filled with the smell of nicotine and old books. He always greeted the neighbors, but he was highly introverted person. He never gave the long speech to anybody. Every single morning he used to wake up early, and slowly walked around the small square near our home;Probably he tried to stay healthy. People said he used to have the family, wife and two kids ,who apparently left him for Russia. They also said he was deeply educated person , but nobody would say for sure where he used to work. We have even assumed our own most acceptable version of Anatol’s job , we made the decision that this lonely old man was not just a lonely old man. He was the secret agent 007 in our mind.

 So finally, with the deepest breath inhaled, together with princesses, supermen , ghosts and 1 stinky dog we have knocked on his door. After the long pause, we heard someone coughing , and grandpa Anatol has opened his door for us. This was the moment of the day when I found the kindest smile on someones face. He started laughing ,and his laugh was so contagious and pure, that he made all of us happiest in that moment.He had no treats ( cigarettes would not be acceptable choice for any of us), but he said the words no other person did that day: Happy halloween everyone!

 5 year ago our grandpa Anatol died. His family sold his house with cheapest price possible.The new owner decided to throw his books away and this is how I got so many Russian books in my library.

Now everything is different again. Halloween is not that weird any more for Georgians. And I know , that except all the fun this holiday has a deep meaning of remembering the dead.At least for me and my students it will always be the day to remember the person, who will always be the greatest secret agent for us, hiding the secret of being the super grandpa from everyone.