Halloween 2018. The end of an era. Well, perhaps Halloween 2017 was and I just didn’t know it. Last year was to be the last year my boy would go trick or treating. He didn’t want to go this year. These things happen: children grow up, stop doing childish things.
It’s the first time in better than 2 decades there aren’t any children in our lives to trick or treat. It’s one of those double edged swords of being a parent, I guess. The job description is to be there and raise them to be independent and strong and self sufficient…and if you do your job right, it stings a little. Maybe sometimes more than sting.
Stings for multiple reasons, really. Some of it is knowing they’re not little any more. Growing. No more Santa Claus. No more trick or treating. No more Easter bunny. I miss my kids as…well, kids. I miss the Christmas eves tracking Santa on NORAD Santa and getting excited seeing him get closer and racing home. The wonderment. All the firsts. They’re ten years apart; their childhoods intersected, but they were at different stages – always. I’ve had a trick or treater for the majority of my adult life.
And that’s probably the bigger part of it. It’s about me. I’m at an inflection point in my own life. It’s one more indication that I’m getting older. These little people I’ve helped raise, and raise well I think, aren’t little any more. They’re their own people. And maybe they’ll always “need” me, but they don’t need me. My hair is thinning. There’s a few more aches and pains than there has been previously. I’m still solidly middle age – there’s time on the clock – but I wonder if I haven’t spent a good amount of the opportunity I once had. I wouldn’t notice so much if it weren’t for these kids, I’m sure of that. I have a hard time reckoning the passage of time anymore: Something happened 5 years ago, last year, I don’t know. It seems like they’re the only things that keep me anchored in time, and yet because of that I notice how much has passed and fail to distinguish when events have come to pass.
I have an adult daughter. A college graduate no less. When did that happen? I’m thinking back to college visits and those were more than 5 years ago. More than 6 actually. Time is so ephemeral, so fleeting. And now, the boy is too old for trick or treating. He’s becoming an adult. My job is coming to a conclusion, yet not quite over. There’s still more to do, still time on the clock. I just don’t seem to know how modulate it’s passing.
So perhaps it’s just the inflection point. The pivot to what the next stage of our lives will look like, setting that stage. In a few years, the boy will be moving on to his next step; the first he will perceive as being moving on in his life. At the same time, we’ll be moving on the our next stage, perhaps one of the last transitions. LIfe does move fast, in a way I never appreciated until just now.
And so, as I wonder just how to end this, the boy comes downstairs to get a glass of water… My man-size child – now taller than me – wearing his Chewbacca union suit pajamas. So, maybe I’ve got a touch more time on the clock than I may have thought.
The number 47 is something called a “safe prime” number. Now, being a social science guy myself, I really can’t wrap my mind around the “safe prime” definition, other than to say it has something to do with other prime numbers – 2p+1 – and that its useful for cryptography. How? I cannot say. I’m just leaving it at “it’s a thing” and moving on. In some circles, it’s regarded as the quintessential random number – apparently when asked to pick a number at random, 
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