A couple of nights ago we took Sasha “trick or treating” for the first time.  When I was a child, I loved Halloween.  As a parent, I enjoyed it again through my children.  To see them having so much fun dressing up in their carefully chosen costumes and going from house to house filling their bags with goodies always amused me.  But Lauri and I have been deprived of this parental bliss the last couple of years as our other children have outgrown the annual ritual.  But now that Sasha is with us, we again hit the streets.  Before we could do so, however, we had to practice the traditional phrase, “trick or treat!”

“Twik or …” she would say in her heavily accented English.  The tr sound is troublesome for her.

“No,” Lauri and I would say.  “It is trick or treat.”

“Twik o’ twik,” she tried again.  We laughed and on it went.

Finally, we thought that we had it down.  She repeated it over and over again.  Putting on her leopard outfit complete with cat-like ears, we joined the hordes of parents and children already making the rounds.  As we walked through the neighborhood Sasha watched the many elaborately costumed figures go by—superheroes, princesses, ghouls, and so on.  (Our favorite was a Sumo wrestler.)  Making her way up the sidewalk to one home, she stood in line waiting her turn behind the children who were already at the door.

Finally reaching the front of the line, we heard the woman of the house ask with a hearty laugh, “‘Twik o’ twik’?  Is this your first time trick or treating, darlin’?”

From the lawn I said, “Well, as a matter of fact it is her first time.”

The woman looked at Sasha who, at eleven, hardly seemed like she would be a beginner.  Sasha, oblivious to these proceedings, looked delightedly in her pail at the plunder and scooted off of the porch to the next house.

“It’s ‘trick or treat’ Sasha,” Lauri said.

“Twik or tweet,” she repeated.  Oh, well …