Halloween Memories of Happy Times

October 13, 2002

The Boston Herald

It’s just a piece of orange felt that was made into a mitten so many years ago its loss should mean nothing now. There were two mittens then, plus a giant, orange, Ernie head.

Ernie, as in Bert and Ernie from “Sesame Street,” was a  Halloween costume I made for my youngest child at least 20 years ago. I don't sew now. I should never have sewed then. I botched everything. I stitched left sleeves into right armholes not once or twice, but regularly. I confused collars with facings, and more than once cut out the wrong pattern pieces.

But every Halloween, I made my children's costumes because it didn't matter so much if Batman had trousers, which were supposed to have been sleeves, or if the lynx my son begged to be one year wound up with spots like a leopard's. The Batman material was black and shiny and the hood had ears, and the lynx was gold and furry, and its tail was long, and to a child's untrained eye and to my forgiving one, black ears and a fat tail were enough.

If there had been fancy costumes for sale back then, my shortcomings would have been obvious. But children's costumes were one-piece things that tied at the neck like giant bibs, made of itchy, flimsy material, with the outline of a character printed on the front. A store bought Ernie would have fit in a small, flimsy box.

My homemade Ernie needed a whole shelf to hold him, his head twice the size of a basketball. My homemade Ernie reigned as king of an upstairs closet until three weeks ago, when I cleaned that closet and dethroned him.

He was the last thing I ever made. After him, I hung up my scissors. I closed the lid of that sewing machine forever.

I cut him out on the living room floor one October night with my daughter kneeling beside me. The pattern was for Ernie and Bert. You could make one or the other, or you could make both . I was making Ernie, who was short, round and orange, not Bert, who was long, lean and yellow. No way could you mix them up.

And yet I did. I was thinking Ernie, picturing Ernie, even doing Ernie's little "hehehe" laugh. But I cut out Bert. I had the eyebrows pinned to the head when I realized this. The eyebrows were flat, not arched, and the head was oval, not round. Bert, not Ernie, lay in pieces all over my living room floor.

I put my daughter to bed, lied to her and said I had the situation under control, then raced to the store for more fabric.

That year, she wore Ernie's orange head and orange mittens trick-or­ treating. And everyone who opened the door said something like:  "Wow.  It's Ernie from 'Sesame Street.' I'd recognize you anywhere." And underneath the head, where no one could see, my daughter smiled.

Over the years, Ernie has been taken off the shelf for the occasional Halloween party or parade. The truth is, though, he has been retired for a while. Faded and bedraggled, he's outdone by today's lush costumes, which put this homemade one to shame.

And yet, shabby as he is, I couldn't part with him. When I cleaned the bedroom closet, I gave away cartons and trash bags filled with things. But when it came time to discard him, I couldn't. I took him off the shelf, carried him down the hall and placed him on my bed. I must have dropped his mitten on the way. It must have gotten mixed in with the trash.

I threw away my thesis paper by mistake, too: a 350-page treatise on education in Ireland, which I wrote in 1977 for a master's degree program. There was no copy. That was it. I spent months researching it, months writing it and more months typing it, in the days before home computers. I should have felt sadder at losing this than losing a faded old Ernie mitten.

But the mitten meant more.

Ernie sits on a shelf in my bedroom closet now, next to Teddy Ruxpin and a xylophone my son pulled around the house 32 years ago. Ernie’s stuffing is loose, his eyes are faded. and he's minus a mitten.

But he doesn't seem to mind. I open the closet door and I smile because there he is, still smiling at me - a big, happy smile that I stitched on his face many years ago.

His smile makes me smile. And for this I am grateful.