Maxime knows what it means to have an entire basket full of candies, that are all your own. He has experienced Trick or Treat a few times, maybe the first time around Gabriel's age.
But Gabriel did not know what it was like. He sure was excited about it. The whole thing, really. The costumes, the walking around in the scary night to scary houses (but with Mama and Papa, so things are not really that scary, and he is not worried at all, and he really does not need Mama and Papa to go with him, but we might as well go along anyway), and Bob and Olivia and Robert.
The sweet thing about Gabriel is that he calls all such events a "Fête". ("Celebration" in French). Whether it be a Thanksgiving dinner at our house, or in fact any dinner, or even a spartan tea and cake with a single invitee in the afternoon. He loves it when there are people around, all having fun, and smiling and being happy.
At first we were caught off guard by his magnanimous defintion of celebration. He would say: "Mama, when are we going to the Fête?", meaning a couple days from then, when we had all simply been invited to a friend's house for a soup and salad.
So, when Halloween night was preceeded by "How many days till the Fête?", we knew what he meant, and would smile together, at each other, me and Natalya, when he wasn't looking. (He dislikes it very much when his English or any language errors or foibles are made gest of, even in the light-hearted way that parents intend it. He is fiercely proud. Have I said this before about him? HAHAHAHAHA)
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So, the basket of candies. He dumps them out on the counter, quite understatedly, as if he does it every evening. Nonetheless, I know he is excited and intrigued inside. He looks at the candies. Olivia offers some suggestions of what is good. These he ignores.
Because ― Lo and Behold ― he has spotted a lollipop! That's it! He takes it quickly, removes the wrapper, and just before he eats it, the give-away smile erupts briefly on his face.
The thing is, we pretty much forbid lollipops, as they are particularly bad for teeth, and we already have enough difficulty limiting sweets (two maximum after dinner, sometimes negotiated to three), so he was (inside) surely jumping up and down that now he had his hands on a lollipop, and there was nothing Mama and Papa could, or would, do about it in these circumstances of a Fête.
The treasure
Contemplating
Chosen
*The lollipop*