Almost 35 years ago, my mom made a choice that has had an outsized impact on my life and my memories. My siblings and I still talk about it fondly. My brother, who would've been about four at the time, includes the night in his earliest memories. I was the middle child of three, with my sister five years older and my brother five years younger, so this could be the strongest, earliest memory the three of us share.
Mom made a haunted house.
And not just any haunted house. I might say this was the best homemade haunted house ever created. The Taj Mahal of haunted houses.
Our backyard contained an old but large garage that sat empty. The perfect canvas. Mom took black plastic and staple-gunned a path. You’d walk in from the outside and it’d immediately be dark—almost pitch black. You’d follow the length of the garage and then make a 180 and come back down the hall. (I think we ran an old Halloween sounds tape on a battery-powered cassette player as you turned that corner.) A black light provided bearings as you saw some Halloween masks on the plastic wall. But Mom made that wall to include a gap so that someone could be hiding behind it and give a jump scare as you came down.
You’d take a right and begin snaking your way in the dark past a friendly motion-activated spider toward a brighter room—the “shop” in the back corner of the garage. Aunt Laurie stood inside with a very fake-looking “body” (probably newspaper-stuffed clothes) and a bunch of cooked spaghetti, if I remember correctly, like she was doing surgery on a cadaver.
As you finished, you had to climb outside through what used to be a window that we called the “trap door” because of the plywood that covered it. You’d hear groans awaiting you on the other side, where Uncle Jon provided the final scare.
Perfection.
A lot of us want to be a good parent, or a good spouse, or a good friend. We try—sometimes really hard—to prove that desire to ourselves and those around us. We read books on it. We go to conferences. We create accountability groups and masterminds for just that purpose. With all the energy and effort we know how to give, we try to be our best for the people in our lives.
As far as I know, Mom had no such strategy. Instead, she made a haunted house. It was the first and last haunted house she ever made. And it became, to borrow from Inside Out, a core memory.
Like it or not, regardless of what the advice books tell us or our pastors preach, we get memorialized in our relationships for seemingly random decisions we made 35 years ago. The decision is part of a larger ecosystem of choices we make and convictions we have, yes, but we can’t really force one memory to stick out more than another.1
The Heath brothers, in their book The Power of Moments, and other behavioral scientists might call it the peak-end rule. That’s the idea that we often remember experiences by the peak moment (good or bad) and the ending (also good or bad). It’s a helpful concept—and a book I recommend—but the rule doesn’t explain October of 1992. My mom wasn’t focused on trying to prove anything or craft some magic moment we’d remember.
Why did it matter so much? Why did we care?
You could say it was because Mom did something unexpected. It wasn’t her normal lane, so it stands out. You could say it was related to the sacrifice. Mom and Dad both worked full-time, so the extra effort took energy. But all the parents I know make sacrifices. Fun? It certainly was. But theme parks are fun, too, and our one or two family trips to a theme park don’t have the same formative space in my heart.
No. I think it was a different word: grace.
I know not all my readers would include “grace” and “Halloween” in the same sentence.
Grace has a lot of definitions. “Unmerited favor” gets used in my circles. You can also speak about “getting what you don’t deserve,” “undeserved good,” or something to that effect.
So why do I view Mom’s haunted house as a type of grace? Because we experienced a completely unexpected and extravagant expression of nothing more than her love. I haven’t mentioned this but the whole point of the haunted house was actually for my sister. She was throwing a party for classmates and Mom made it 100% extra. The entire event displayed an over-the-top kindness, motivated by a special love, that was built to be enjoyed by others.2
I’ve never forgotten—we’ve never forgotten—and I’ve always enjoyed Halloween.
Reminds me of Mom.
What’s the memory that sticks with you—the one that has had outsized influence in how you view someone or something? Why do you think that is?
The reality cuts both ways, too. While I’m sharing about the positive side, I know the opposite reality. We can make decisions that create harmful memories for those in our lives. I’ve been there with the kids, said something I immediately regretted, and thought, “Well, that’s gonna stick with them.”
As I think of it, you could add that the giver has nothing to prove. That is, Mom wasn’t trying to use this to level up as a parent. She wasn’t trying to get her kids to love her more. She was secure. And when you’re secure, you can give freely.