Hello, readers! As I mentioned a few weeks ago, posts will continue to be sporadic for a while as I get used to the routine (or lack-there-of) of being a new mom.
For the meantime, though, please enjoy a re-posting of a blog I wrote right around this time 3 years ago:
How many of you remember what you went as for Halloween when you were kids? How many different years' costumes can you name? I'm going to make a go for ALL of them (at least up to senior year in high school).
2 years old - Smurfette
3 - Minie Mouse
4 - Cinderella
5 - Dorothy
6 - a bride
7 - an Amish girl
8- black cat
9 - black cat again. I don't remember why I was a black cat 2 years in a row, but it was the closest to "something scary" my mom would let me be until I was older.
10 - gypsy
11 - a vampire! Finally!
12 or 13 - a butterfly. Whichever year I was a butterfly was the year it snowed. On Halloween. In metro Atlanta. The butterfly costume quickly turned into "Elizabeth in her green parka." Don't remember what I was the other year.
14 - Egyptian. I was quick to point out at the Drama club Halloween party that I was not Cleopatra, as I didn't consider her to be a "real" Egyptian due to her Greek ancestry (I was weird about stuff like that at that age). Not that I, as a re-headed Celto-Ukrainian have any business being picky about who's a "real" Egyptian...
15 - Spanish Renaissance Princess
16 - Salem Witch. I won the Drama club Halloween contest with this costume.
17 - Juliet. Not entirely dissimilar to age 15, but it was a different dress...
In all honesty, 15, 16, and 17 may not actually be in order. I went to the Drama Club Halloween party every year, and also chaperoned my younger sister and her best friend trick-or-treating.
I always tried to have a cool costume every year after that, working or not, going to a party or not. Some years in college I lucked out in that Halloween would fall in the middle of the week and the weekends on both sides ended up having some costume extravaganza to go to. Sometimes I had a costume for each party. But then, I was a theatre major and a costume nerd and could usually "throw something together" that was at least as good as something you could buy.
Halloween 2014 stands out as one of my favorite costume experiences. I was a children's librarian at the time, and I went as Elsa from Frozen. I tell you what, kids know exactly what you're doing if you have even the most vague representation of a costume. I had a platinum blonde wig that I had braided, and a vaguely blueish satin(ish) dress. And every kid (except one) who came into that children's department that day stopped in their tracks and said in whispered awe, "It's ELSA!" (The one kid who did not told his awed 6 year old sister, "That's not Elsa, that's just a grownup.") Oddly enough, this was the second Halloween I can remember that it snowed... Maybe I should be more careful with my costume selection.
But the things I remember most about Halloween as a kid, was the feeling that anything could happen. Those chilly, cloudy nights out walking through the dark neighborhood, I would look up at the sky and see faint ghosts in swirling patterns. Most other nights I knew that wasn't a ghost, but rather a search light from a concert or a car lot. But on Halloween, it was a ghost. On Halloween, that empty house down the street might really be haunted. On Halloween that neighbor that likes to dress up like a scarecrow and sit on the front porch to startle trick-or-treaters might actually be an evil scarecrow come to life that would come get you.
Certain nights hold magic. Halloween is one of them. Christmas is another. On Christmas as a kid, that flashing red light in the sky isn't a plane - it's Rudolph. The fireplace making a thump isn't the flue cooling off and contracting - it's Santa. And I really believed for many years that if I sprinkled glitter on the Christmas tree and the nutcracker collection that one of these days they would magically transform and take me to a magical land... I believed this probably 'til I was way older than I should have.
But my point is, there is something very magical about Fall. (Yes, I know Christmas Day itself is about 4 days into Winter, but most of that buildup, most of that magical transformation is in Fall.) And there is something amazing about kids; they believe. They want to believe. They love to believe. And that is awesome.
Please comment with your favorite Halloween memory, costume, or story, and share with someone who believes in the magic : )