Call me a pagan, but Halloween is my favorite holiday.  The veil between the worlds grows thin in late autumn, and stillness descends on the land.  There’s a sense of anticipation in the dusky shadows, the flickering pumpkins.  For one night, we can transform ourselves into anything.

Oct 31, 2007

I love dressing up.  Halloween is the only time an adult can legitimately walk down the street as a panther, a wizard, or Paris Hilton. 

Even better, expectations are low.  There’s no stress of present-buying or elaborate cooking, no traveling or extended-family dynamics.  Just grab a few bags of candy at the drugstore, carve a pumpkin, and create a clever, adorable, well-executed costume for your child.

I wish I were a mother who could whip up a beautiful deer costume with a glue-gun, brown felt, and pipe cleaners.  I wish I were queen of the sewing machine.  But I lack the skills and patience for handmade kid outfits– and selfishly, I’d rather work on my own get-up.

My last pre-Mommy Halloween was five years ago.  I went to an unforgettable party as Madonna circa 1983:  clad in lace gloves, mesh tank top, crucifixes, rubber bracelets, cut-off tights and teased hair.  I danced for hours in a candle-lit church in a throng of fairies, wolves, and Martians.   An enormous papier-mache bat hung from the cathedral ceiling-its wings flapped when our vampy hostess pulled a string.  A Tall Drink of Water chatted with a gangster over apple martinis.  Anything was possible.

A year later, my husband and I stayed home on Halloween, shell-shocked with exhaustion.  We were only ourselves, trading off our colicky two-month-old-(who we didn’t dare zip into a baby panda costume).  We managed a bag of candy, but no jack o’ lantern.  Three neighbor kids stopped by, and we closed up shop at 8 o’clock, headed to bed for another broken night of sleep.

Hope returned the following year.  I dug around in my costume trunk and found a pair of red cowboy boots.  Into these I tucked tight jeans, then snapped up a plaid shirt and cinched on a horseshoe belt.   With a straw hat I was a Cowgirl, accompanied by a toddling leopard and Pancho Villa, the Mexican freedom fighter.  Our family of three made our trick-or-treating debut, strolling with friends down a moonlit dirt road.  My whiskered 14-month-old ran at top speed behind the big kids for nearly a mile.

Already she sensed the mysterious energy of All Hallows.  A breeze swirled in wood-smoke and dead leaves, evoking my childhood Halloweens.  I remember the exhilaration of dressing up as a gypsy and roaming our neighborhood in disguise.  Streetlamps cast shadows on bands of children running the sidewalks- smurfs and ghosts, witches and butterflies, Ronald Reagans and R2D2s, all set free. 

We were hungry for freedom more than any candy.  Daylight rules were suspended and boundaries blurred as parents let down their guard.  The night was one long high, culminating in the glory of unpacking our loot.  I was a hoarder, not an eater, and I kept my Nestle Crunches for weeks to taunt my brothers, saving the candy till it grew stale and existed more as symbolic treasure than edible treat.

“Halloween was an excuse to wear a weapon,” recalls my husband.  Thus he became a knight, a Viking, a logger, Rambo, Davy Crockett–anything where he could legally carry something dangerous around the neighborhood. 

In contrast, I relished the chance to dress up pretty and even sexy, trying on fantasy female identities.  Long before I was Madonna, I was Wendy from Peter Pan, a mermaid, a princess, a flapper, a French Maid. 

My first Halloween as mother of two, I transformed my worn-out self into a Mama Kitty in a leopard-print mini-dress, mask and claws.  I found a black cat costume for my 2-year-old and a penguin zip-up fleece for my new infant.  Tragically, the toddler got the flu on October 30, and we never made it off the porch on Halloween.  There’s a photo of me posing in sexy cat garb, holding a wailing penguin in red-faced colic mode while a sick kitty sulks at my side.

Oct 31, 2008

Last year we simply recycled these outfits (minus the baby penguin). We marched as a family of cats in the downtown parade and it felt like a significant victory.  Out of the Baby Cave, back into the holiday high-life.

This fall I’ve been hoping for an invitation to an outrageous, adult-only Halloween party.  Since that’s not forthcoming, my two-year-old and I are going to be pink fairies.  My oldest is determined to be a deer, though I’ve suggested a less complicated costume.

“Are you SURE you don’t want to be a dancer?” I say, thinking of the skirts and leotards crumpled in our dress-up box.  But she insists on a deer, her favorite animal.  Mothering guilt joins forces with my inner perfectionist to set an impossible standard:  a hand-sewn white-tailed deer suit, realistic antlers on top. 

Oct 31, 2008

But my child doesn’t care, as long as she looks vaguely doe-like.  She has a vivid imagination and low expectations.   Time for me to let go, stop obsessing, and savor autumn’s big treat.

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