First Person is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.
Illustration by Mary Kirkpatrick
This year I am pulling my skeleton out of the closet where he has been languishing for the last two years. Since pandemic restrictions will not cancel trick-or-treating this year, he can return to his deckchair on our front lawn and welcome children on Halloween night. I have missed this celebration and I am looking forward to the fun and chaos of decorating, handing out candy and – most importantly – helping with the making of costumes.
My daughter has four boys and their imaginations run to excess in preparation for Halloween. Fortunately, their mother is up for any challenge. I am merely the assistant, and I will try not to disappoint. This year there will be only three costumes to construct, and I am a little sad. I guess her oldest feels that being a teenager is scary enough.
There is little sewing involved in their choices this year. I will not have to struggle with cat tails, dragon spikes or bat wings. But just when I was learning the names of his cartoon favourites, our six-year-old has left them behind and I am forced to learn of the heroes that live within video games. He has announced that he will be Diamond Armour Steve, a character from Minecraft. Steve is a shade of teal that does not seem to exist outside of the online game, however. We must mix dyes to create the closest hue. This is a level of science that I will leave to my daughter. I am told that my colour-defining skills are weak at best and that following my “that’s good enough” style of costume-making will not create a believable character. Once we have dyed a T-shirt the proper shade of teal, we must apply a stiffer material inside the shirt to give it a boxy look. Diamond Armour Steve will not be quite as scary should he decide to invade his parents’ sleep in full costume this year. A couple of years ago when he was four, he woke up in the dark, dressed up in his bat costume, raced to their room and hissed loudly in their ears at 2 a.m.
Our eight-year-old grandson wants to be a Rubik’s Cube this year, a costume that is fraught with construction problems. My daughter has built three boxes with holes in the middle where he must fit. Now we are challenged with holding them together enough that he can walk but the cube can still turn. This is a level of engineering that exceeds my Halloween costume-making history.
Our 10 year old has decided that he will be Lamelo Ball, an NBA player. Now, this is something I can visualize, and I am grateful. Considering the prohibitive cost of an official basketball jersey, we are opting to sew a close facsimile. The basketball prop is easy to find.
No one wants to be a ghost anymore. When my children were young, I threw sheets over their heads, cut out holes for eyes and told them they were scary ghosts, then pushed them out the door with their father to go trick or treating. Ghosts fit any type of weather. On a frosty night, they sometimes wore a snow suit under the sheet. When it was warm, they wore pyjamas so we could quickly whisk them off to bed when the evening was done. Although a ghost was my favourite choice, I did create a Smurf outfit but all I remember of it now is that my daughter’s neck was blue tinged for three days afterward.
But even my paltry efforts were more sophisticated than those of the mothers of my childhood. Ghosts were popular back then, too. Since bedsheets were all white in the fifties; we had a simple, ready-made costume at hand. When we tired of being a ghost, we would root through our parent’s closets for something suitable to wear. Our mother’s old party dresses transformed us into princesses; our father’s pants, with a little straw leaking from our sleeves and a stick up our back, turned us into scarecrows. We were sometimes allowed to buy plastic masks that fit over our faces and seriously obstructed our vision. Nobody worried much about safety in the fifties.
Now parents monitor Halloween more closely. They wait at the end of the driveway to make sure their little ones are safe. Children arrive as princesses, superheroes, animals, even pumpkins and hotdogs, but I have not seen a ghost in years.
I am looking forward to the end of Hallowe’en evening when a tired and cranky Diamond Armour Steve, a stumbling Rubik’s Cube and an excited NBA star will arrive at my door for one last treat.
When they empty their bags of loot on the floor, and a parent makes sure nothing harmful lurks inside, the trading will begin. How many candy kisses equal a small package of smarties? Nearby, a lanky teen will be hovering, ready to pounce on the candy given any opportunity. The next morning the bags will hang just out of reach in the kitchen pantry, for a parent to mete out gradually over the next few weeks. Several treats will inevitably disappear into the mouths of adults.
Watching these negotiations, I will remember my own pure joy on Halloween. The costumes may be more sophisticated, the event more supervised, but the excitement of that wild run through the darkness, the manic screaming of “trick or treat” never really changes.
Holly Kritsch lives in Ottawa.