Setting: October 2025 — Halloween Bingo Night at the community center, where the prizes were small and the meltdowns were mighty.
Halloween Bingo Night both started and ended as a complete shitshow.
Caleb, dressed as a hot dog, began unraveling in the very first round. The first and second numbers called weren’t on his board, and that was enough to tip him over. By the third, he was crying, his little face poking out of the foam bun like a weepy frankfurter.
Not to be outdone, Holden, a bright orange Flamin’ Hot Cheetos bag, started slamming his fist on the table whenever he didn’t have a number. His costume was so long he nearly tripped over it twice, which honestly felt like foreshadowing.
Eventually, everyone did win something, and the tears temporarily dried up. Holden hit the snack table like he’d been fasting for days: four cookies, two bags of chips, and whatever else he could stack on his plate. Later, they went trick-or-treating around the building, the crowed marching straight through a Zumba class before I accidentally led them the wrong way a moment later. When we finally made it back to the last trick-or-treat station at the front desk, Holden spotted their leftover glow sticks and helped himself to roughly half of them, because he was last and there were “plenty left.”
By the time the raffle drawing rolled around, he’d somehow managed to turn in both sides of his ticket — because, naturally, he hadn’t listened — and was furious when he didn’t win. I shot my mom a look, exasperated. This is what happens when we try to do something fun.
When it was finally over, we herded everyone to the car. I opened Holden’s door after he'd gotten in to hand him his glow sticks, not realizing he was leaning against it from inside. He tumbled straight out onto the pavement, screaming, clutching his hand like it had fallen off. Once we finally got him back in, he sniffled from the back seat, mourning his lost squishy eyeball toy, a casualty of his dramatic exit.
On the drive home, glow sticks still flashing in the back seat, I thought about how nights like this always end the same: messy, loud, and weirdly sweet. My mom and I swore we wouldn’t be back for the November Bingo session, but somewhere between the crumbs and the crying, I realized something: motherhood isn’t made of quiet nights and tidy memories. It’s made of the crying, collapsing, snack-covered kind — and if chaos counts as love, we’re rich in it.
This post is part of my One-Minute Memoir series — short reflections on small moments that still manage to say something big.
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