Give it up for Halloween!

me and my sister performing Under the Sea, 1991

Candy corn and make-believe--what's not to love about Halloween?

My mother (who routinely worked sixty hour weeks outside the home, who cooked our meals and never missed a school program, who went to the grocery store every single day though she hates the grocery store, who still laughs at all my jokes--even the really bad ones) made my halloween costumes. With a sewing machine.

For those of you in the etsy community, this will seem like no big deal. After all, the revolution is handmade, no? But I am not from a family of crafty people.

My grandmother's great loves: matching accessories, gold purses, shopping bags, clearance sales.

My grandmother's hates: needles of the knitting or sewing variety, working from home, following a pattern.

And the mother doesn't fall far from the tree so to speak.

However, each year my mom got out the singer and got to work on the costume of my dreams. I was a gypsy. I was a genie. I was swaddled and sometimes stuffed into costumes of satin and sequins, felt and fake fur--and always love.

As happens more and more in my adulthood, I find that I am not quite up to par with my mother. I am more laid back, more lazy, maybe even more tired than this woman who is apparently totally tireless. Also I have no sewing machine. So this year, I bought costumes for my nephews who live in the UK.

I made a mistake though and now I have an extra costume. You see, I did learn from my mother and from my grandmother before her that everything should match. (See my grandmother's loves above). After twenty-six years, the impulse to put two related things together is almost pathological.

Etsy and Katie are slowly breaking me of the habit. Note that we are big on coordination in the shop and we don't worry so much about actually matching. But it takes time. Meanwhile, I bought my infant nephew a lion costume, but couldn't find one for his older brother. Even after a hunt worthy of a Hemingway short story, I couldn't find a tiger. Or a zebra. Or a four legged animal of any kind. So I went back to the drawing board and bought the toddler a darling octopus costume and got the baby a matching goldfish swaddle.

Now, I have this lonely lion costume:

It comes from the Children's Place and is a brand new 0-6 month costume with a body piece that you could wear over a shirt, a matching head piece, and two booties. Unfortunately, you can't tell from the picture that it is new because in my haste (before I knew how hard it was to get a second safari animal costume) I took it out of the packaging. If you know a little lion in waiting who is without a mane or tail at the moment, leave me a comment. I will be conducting a raffle Saturday morning for this costume and will send it to the winner priority mail, so that it will be sure to get there in time for Halloween festivities.

To be honest, I am not even sure whether they do trick or treating in Wales the way we do it in Texas. I get the impression that British people are willing to buy their own candy and don't need to resort to begging for their tootsie roll fix. But I could be wrong. Anyway, I bought my nephews their costumes not because they needed them, or even because they would particularly appreciate them (they are really only babies), but because it allowed me to slip into that Halloween world where anything is possible and everyone is transformed.

For one day a year, you can be a fish or a bird. You can be a plane or you can be Superman. You can be the wicked witch or you can wear the ruby slippers. That is the homemade magic of Halloween.