I Missed My Kids’ ‘Last Halloween’

As a mom, there are many experiences for which people simply can’t prepare you.

Childbirth comes to mind.

I was told that contractions felt like “really bad menstrual cramps.” What contractions actually feel like? Committing hara-kiri with a knife just dull enough not to kill you but just sharp enough to make you rethink every choice that got you to that moment.

Then there’s leaving the hospital with a newborn when you’ve never so much as changed a diaper and are still wondering, So, when will her neck start working?

Of course, there are the beautiful, ineffable firsts: The first time your baby smiles at you, the first time you hear her laugh, the first steps she takes before she falls giggling into your open arms.

And the… less appetizing… firsts: The first time your kid gets lice. The first time your kid gets Hand, Foot, Mouth. The first time your kid gets pinworms. The second time your kid gets pinworms. The third time your kid gets pinworms. You get the idea.

Motherhood is obsessed with firsts. We photograph them, write them down, text them to grandparents, and post them online so people we haven’t spoken to since high school can give us a virtual thumbs up.

Lasts get no such attention.

Nobody takes a picture of the last time you carry your child. Mostly because you don’t know it’s the last time. Also because you’re probably telling your child, “My back hurts, and you’re perfectly capable of walking!”

Nobody posts the last time your child crawls into your bed after a nightmare. Nobody texts the grandparents about the last time your child trick-or-treats with you.

Because by the time you realize any of these things have happened for the last time, it’s too late.

Halloween was one of these for me.

I grew up in New York City in a 43-story apartment building, where Halloween meant riding elevators and knocking on doors with a printed list of “participating” neighbors. It was efficient, climate-controlled, and almost completely devoid of magic.

We didn’t run down tree-lined streets in packs, ringing doorbells, leaves crunching under our feet like the kids in the movies. That was pure Hollywood fantasy to me. I thought I wanted E.T. Halloween. Apparently, I just wanted suburbs.

So, when my husband and I got pregnant with our first child, we moved to a house in Hancock Park in Los Angeles. Not exactly the suburbs — but for a born-and-bred city girl, close enough.

We brought our daughter home from the hospital on October 31, 2009, at the height of the swine flu epidemic. Doctors — and grandparents — warned us about germy kids around a newborn, so we turned off our porch light and taped a sign to the door: “Happy Halloween! Please come back next year.”

And they did.

The next Halloween, our daughter was dressed as a ladybug, too young to trick-or-treat but exactly the right age for us to take an obscene amount of photos. By 2011, she was a princess with a plastic pumpkin and a squad of toddler princess friends. I was pregnant with our second, and friends gathered at our house, parents filling roadie cups with wine and following our tiny royalty from house to house.

It was pure magic — my suburban(ish) Halloween fantasy come true.

Soon we had two kids and a new tradition: the big neighborhood photo in our front yard. Every year, more families joined. My parents flew out from New York for my daughter’s birthday and stayed for Halloween to hand out candy (though we learned the hard way that my dad should never be trusted with that much chocolate).

Every October 1, we pulled the Halloween décor bins out of the garage, bought new cobwebs and skeletons, and spent the afternoon turning the house into a haunted wonderland. Our kids loved making the house “creepy” for an entire month.

For over a decade, Halloween was my Super Bowl, the heartbeat of our family calendar — the night that defined our neighborhood, our friendships, and our kids’ childhoods.

Cut to Halloween 2025.

When my husband finally retrieved the bin of decorations from the garage — a task I had been requesting since Labor Day — I opened it to find the literal (and figurative) ghosts of our Halloweens past: Costumes our kids had outgrown, headless witch décor, battery-dead mechanical spiders, a smoke machine that never worked but that we kept “just in case,” and plastic crows that had somehow lost their feet.

At two o’clock that afternoon, I started decorating the front yard.

Alone.

I asked my kids to help, but my son (13) was playing video games with friends, and my daughter (16) was getting ready to go out. They were both going to parties. Neither of them would trick-or-treat that night.

My parents, now in their 80s, skipped their annual Halloween trip. Another neighbor with younger kids hosted the annual neighborhood photo. I didn’t go.

For the first time in 16 years, my husband and I were home alone on Halloween, passing out candy to other people’s kids.

I still loved seeing the costumes and the chaos and how grown-up our neighbors’ babies and kids were getting. But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t sting. The sticky hands, the plastic pumpkins, the wine-in-a-roadie walks with parent-friends — somehow that part was over for us just as we were getting the hang of it.

I realized that I’d somehow missed our “last Halloween.”

I’ve never been one of those moms who begs time to slow down. I don’t judge those moms at all; it’s just not my vibe. I’ve loved watching my kids grow up. And I like teenagers. They sleep late. They dress themselves. They get their own snacks.

But maybe — just this one night — I wished I could rewind.

Just for an hour. Or two.

So they could be little again. So I could walk beside them in the dark. So I could hold their chocolatey hands between doorbells, run after them, pocket their wrappers and half-eaten Tootsie Rolls. So I could pick them up and carry them when they got scared or tired, and feel their soft arms tight around my neck.

Sixteen years earlier, we turned off the porch light because we had just brought our newborn daughter home from the hospital. She was tiny and helpless, and our job was to keep her safe.

Now she was 16 and at a Halloween party with her friends. Keeping her safe meant something entirely different. It meant letting her go, trusting her to make good choices, and hoping we’d given her enough to find her way home.

As I reached for the porch light switch, my phone buzzed with a text from my daughter.

I love you, Mom. I will always be trick or treating with you in my heart.

I left the light on. I knew she would turn it off when she got home. And I’d be waiting up until she did.

Jordan Roter is a screenwriter, TV writer, producer and author of the novel MOMS LIKE US. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, kids, and their dog, Alfie.