Chris Shulgan: Halloween Reflections

In 2008, Toronto’s Scotiabank Waterfront Marathon happened on the last weekend in September. I ran it. I did OK, coming in just north of my target of 3:30. My son, his mom and my newborn baby daughter came out to watch me run it. I appreciated the support the way you do when you’re hurting in the final kilometres of a marathon and then you see your little boy holding a sign that says, “Go Daddy go!” It helped, you know? It actually helped. It spurred me on, the thought that my boy loved me.

But maybe I didn’t fully grasp how much he loved me, until a week after the marathon, in early October, when his mom and I asked him what he wanted to be for Halloween. “I want to be a runner,” he said. Amid the context of Halloween costumes, the answer confused me a little. Like what sort of runner? But we talked to him about it, and gradually it became clear that he wanted to be a runner like the ones he saw in the marathon. He wanted to be a runner, like me.

People have several different phases of Halloween costumes through their lives, don’t they. When you’re older you want to be something that’s clever, that shows others how well-versed you are in pop culture. How you get it. But for kids, and especially for young kids, Halloween costumes are pure wish fulfillment. You pick your costume based on what you want to be—in life. And in 2008, when he was two-years-old, my boy wanted to be me. I still marvel over that, seven years later. It’s one of my favourite photos.

By Chris Shulgan