Halloween Past and Present

The best Halloween costume I ever had was in my Senior year in college. I was working in the costume shop at the university theater for my work-study job, and I had access to all the "scrap" bins of fabric. There were six or eight oversized armoirs, one for each major color of the rainbow, plus one for neutrals. I was allowed to have what I liked from them on occasions like these, since the scraps were big enough to make sleeves or trim (or a miniskirt) but were never enough to make a whole costume for a play.

So, from the blue bin, I took a floor length, midnight blue velvet skirt -- extremely fitted in the waist and hips and slightly a-line (also, with several places on it where the velvet had been ironed or otherwise crushed beyond rescue, hence its location in the scrap bin); a piece of heavy, nubbly but glossy fabric in a medium blue color, a small piece of white satin, and several scraps of lace and netting in white, blue, and silver.

I put a big white satin star at the bottom of the inky blue skirt (covering the worst of the crush offenses), and added a six foot long narrow tail made of white tulle covered in silver polka dots. I wrapped this trailing train loosly around the back of the skirt, and carried the end of it over one arm. I draped the medium blue fabric in fanciful folds over the top half of my body, and tucked and sewed them, so that it looked more like a blue cloud than a blouse. It was held on by a white satin choker that radiated white satin stripes, and it had puffs of blue and silver lace around the shoulders. I tied lots of narrow, streaming ribbons of blue, silver, and white into my hair.

I was a shooting star.

While I have never before or since had a costume that beautiful, I have had several that were similarly creative. (I grew up in a costume-making family. I always had great parts in the high school drama club productions, not necessarily because I could act but because my mother would sew all the costumes for free.)

In sixth grade, my best friend and I were the headless horseman and his horse. We made a paper mache horse's head, with my mother's help, and a hinged board with cutouts at the front for the horse and in the middle for the rider to stand. We draped the board with brown fabric, put fake rider legs over its midsection, tied an opera cape around the top of my head, and dressed my friend (the horse's front end) all in brown. She had eye holes in the giant horse-head, which was fortunate, because I couldn't see a thing under my cape. (My orange candy-pumpkin was, of course, the only head I carried under my arm.) We also couldn't climb stairs, we discovered to our chagrin. Which made it somewhat more difficult to actually ring doorbells. Fortunately we were trick-or-treating with friends, so they could ring, and bring us candy down from the porches of our neighbors.

In graduate school, some friends and I went as the Wizard of Oz folks. Of course, it was more fun for me and my friend Rose to be the Tin Man and Scarecrow, which left Charles to be Dorothy.


Nowadays, the costumes aren't mine. Instead, my Son Spidey hangs out with his best friend, The Hulk, at school...


and my Daughter the Pink Fairy Princess pals around with her friend the Sweet Pink Kitty at last night's downtown Halloween gathering.


And even though they're not quite old enough to be really creative with their own costumes, or to sew anything themselves, they already understand the fantastic power of dressing up, the imaginative leap of becoming someone else.

I would not trade my little Fairy or my strong Spiderman for anything in the world:


And I love the fact that apparently, despite the squabbles and scuffles, they would not trade anything for each other either.

Happy Halloween, everyone!