They Don’t Make Skeletons…

…like they used to. Was in Central Park Friday night around 8pm, looking for bats with my three year old. Long story.

But anyway, we’re cruising along when we hear the unmistakable thump of a bass line. We head towards the music, when suddenly we see the pathways in the park are on fire.

Lining every pathway as far as you can see are glowing jack o’ lanterns.

Volunteers had carved over 10,000 ‘jacks for the Central Park Halloween fair. So we’re walking along this fire-orange pathway of smiling, grinning, cackling pumpkins.

We make our way to the outdoor stage where a DJ is pumping out tunes that would make a skeleton’s bones rattle.

Its so loud, Ella and I can’t even hear each other. So we grab hands and start dancing. The music is absolutely jamming, we’re dancing and laughing our goblin-butts off hysterically.

Then Ella stops, lets go of me and runs over to these two like, nine year olds dressed head-to-toe as~skeltons. They have mask-hoods and black body suits, the whole deal.

And Ella walks up to one, stops and puts her finger on its chest. Then just starts tracing along its bones. Rib bone to the hip bone, hip bone connects to the leg bone.

Then she takes ‘skel’s hand, turns to me and just beams like the sun, like “look dad, a real live skeleton”. Skel was cool, kind of stood there not exactly knowing what to do with this fascinated little three year old, but digging the attention anyway.

Then Ella laughed and ran off, running around in circles while the music played and I chased her and we giggled and I thought how cool is NYC?

Out of breath, we sat on a bench. Blanket of black night overhead. ‘Skel’s and goblins and zombies dressed up as exhausted parents danced and watched and did the spooky family-thing.

Then I noticed we were sitting just opposite a fifty foot high scaffolding rig that held hundreds of glowing ‘jacks. It was this five-story wall of fireballs.

And a big sign thanking the Sunshine Camp.

It’s an annual camp that hosts terminally ill kids and their families. So the Sunshine Volunteers has turned their altruism on Central Park donating their time and carving skills to trip-out the park for H’ween.

My stepmother (no, not an evil stepmother that’s fairy tales, this is a Halloween story) volunteers every year. Spends a few weeks in Maine with kids just like the two nine year old skeletons Ella was just tickling femur bones with.

But the Sunshine Camp kids are all in various states of terminal illness. So they’re living their own version of Halloween on kind of a daily basis.

But my step mom says the kids are amazing. They’re not despondent. They still have that kind of innocent wisdom that most of us have lost. Or never even knew we had.

And they spend these few precious weeks just hanging with their families instead of medical specialists. And they play silly games like Pin The Tail On The Donkey, instead of Pin The Five Year Old With Another I.V. Tube.

And they stare directly in to the face of their own reflection that’s slowly but surely starting to fade from life’s mirror, but their images are more present than ever.

And looking at this wall of jack-o-lanterns I could see every Sunshine kids face my stepmother’s ever talked about, looking back at me.

The Sunshine kids were smiling funny, wicked, playful fire-glow faces at me as I held Ella, who’d fallen asleep in my arms her own little skeleton curled up in to my coat blanketed against October’s bite.

And the more the pumpkin-sunshine kids smiled and glowed at us, the tighter I held on to my little skeleton.

And the jack-o-lantern kids whispered “Hold on Dana, hold on. And never let her go”.

Ella’s little heart thumped with life. And the music played so loud I couldn’t hear a thing.

Except the Sunshine Camp kids.

Yeah, they don’t make skeletons like they used to.

They make ‘em better.