SAMHAIN

Samhain is tonight. And my son Iain is by my side. My parents, ashen-faced, told me that every fifty years, all the little children of Neamh would vanish. I'm sure I believed it until I was twelve. After that, it was hard to hold back laughter when they said it.

As I stood in my mom's farmhouse, looking at her and my dad's severe expressions, I understood how deeply they believed this shit. I took a deep breath, unintentionally savoring the smell of my mom's chocolate chip pancakes, and tried not to let them get to me. I was their only daughter. A sibling would have really taken some of this heat off me. One more night. Just one more night of this, and it would end.

Neamh, our town's name, means "heaven" in Gaelic. The immigrants from Scotland who founded the town in 1920 could be taken as melodramatic, except it kind of really was. You could walk down our little main street and think it was 1982. There's one Blockbuster left in the world. It's in Bend, Oregon. Blockbuster would be considered too gauche in Neamh. We have "Uncle Dave's Video Palace." It sounds like a place you go to get molested. But yeah, they still have actual physical media there. Simply upgrading to DVD players took Neamh about ten years longer than the rest of America.

Anyway, like I said, Samhain is tonight. See, Samhain is a Gaelic festival, that's where it comes from. You call it Halloween, now. But it started as an end of harvest festival, cattle were slaughtered and needed to last through the winter. It was a scary time for ye olde Gaelic folk, and, like a lot of people, they turned to magical pseudo-religious nonsense. My parents among them.

All of this — it's why my mom's holding Iain's hand and has clearly been crying, and why my dad isn't talking. The drone of zippy children's cartoons on the TV mocks us. Drop offs at my parents are usually chatty and peppy. This one's like a wake. It's easier to put your faith in something you can understand with a grade-school education, than spend the time figuring out why Neamh is the way it is. If I believed what they do, I'd be scared shitless, too.

My parents don't own a computer. They don't have Wi-Fi at their house, something I always bemoan during drop offs, as my cell signal sucks at their farmhouse. Today, I was hoping to get a text back from my friend, another young mother who exists in the real world, instead of the Scots-Gaelic dreamtime shenanigan most of Neamh lives in. The Internet has been a serious problem for Neamh. That's why some people, like me and my friend, grew a brain.

My parents wanted me to abort Iain. The kid who is currently nonsensically yelling "I got you!" and chasing my mom around the kitchen island. They didn't want me to suffer the pain of losing my child at Samhain. And now that Samhain is upon us, even in the midst of her terror, my mom is smiling and playing along with Iain.

I wouldn't have had the abortion anyway, but I sure as hell was not going to do it after my husband Daniel died. His son was going to live. And he did. Iain was born a healthy nine-pound baby boy. I saw Daniel in his eyes. And sometimes, it was like he wasn't really gone.

They had the same spirit, playful and sunny. Iain, from the time he was a baby in his crib, would wake up singing to himself. He was so fucking wonderful it made me want to drive directly into oncoming traffic. As a single mom, he was always with me, or with my parents. My heart often felt like it would burst as he raced to hug me every single time I left their house and returned, even if I were only gone for five minutes. When I come to pick him up this afternoon, I know for a fact he will drop whatever toy he's playing with, and sprint across the entire house to greet me. Kids are awesome like that.

So, tonight is Samhain. This morning, I'm still dropping Iain at my mom's, before going to work. My mom looks so pale. She hugs me too tight as I bid her goodbye. We haven't talked about Samhain in years. Both my parents know I don't want to hear any more of their bullshit. So, it just is, in the air, a thing we've agreed to allow to live between us, unspoken.