Scare Up Some Memories

The costumes, the candy, the creepiness; October 31 is wicked-good fun.

I am going to miss the Halloween parade this year. The first time ever. The first time my children and grandchildren will march without me.

It’s a small parade but it closes down the main street of our town for a few hours on a Sunday afternoon every October. Kids and parents and grandparents dress up as witches and ghouls and princes and princesses. Some families dress as movie characters: Dorothy and the gang from The Wizard of Oz; characters from The Beverly Hillbillies; Spiderman; Wonder Woman; Dracula; Batman. It is America on parade, creative, diverse, people everywhere, marching and laughing, and hundreds more sitting on the sidelines and watching. Children on their fathers’ shoulders, in carriages, propped up in wagons, riding scooters and bikes, and on foot walking, skipping and running.

I have always loved Halloween even when I was a child and my mother insisted upon trick-or-treating with me. "Can’t I go with the other kids?" I begged when I was 7 and 9 and 11.

And always she said, "No. Someone might steal you." So she held my hand and walked me around the block and stood beside me as I knocked on doors and shouted, "Trick-or-treat."

Every year I wore my dance recital costume over my coat. And every year my dance recital costume was pink and made of tulle. All the other kids were ghosts, muslin sheets yanked from their beds, or monsters, made from paper bags. No one bought costumes back then and no one sewed them. It was catch as catch can.

I think I learned to sew because of Halloween, because I wanted more than pink tulle and sheets for my kids. I loved making costumes — bobcats and Cinderella and Snow White and bunnies and a bright gold lynx. One year I turned all of us into Pilgrims, hats and all. It didn’t matter if a zipper was crooked or if a sleeve puckered. Halloween is forgiving. It’s the costume that catches the eye not the mismatched seam.

When my children grew too old to dress-up and trick-or-treat, I continued to dress up  on Halloween night. I wore a black blouse and a long black skirt, tinted my make-up green, blackened my teeth, drew red circles around my eyes, etched in wrinkles with eyebrow pencil, put on a black wig and a witch's hat, and scared everyone who came to my door.

I even scared my daughter, Julie.

Every year, she stood next to me and watched as I dressed in black and painted my face green. She witnessed the transformation. But she cried and ran away from me anyway.

Fast forward two decades. All of my kids were grown and there was no one home to dress up for, to cackle at, to scare with poison apples.

That's when Halloween became the loneliest night of the year.

But then my town started the Halloween parade. And the parade cheered me. I watched it for a lot of years, sitting on the sidelines waving at kids I didn’t know.

And then my children had children and it was like a carnival starting up. Everything was brighter and louder, lights flashing, the carousel whirring, a calliope playing.

Plus I got to march. Lucy was a bee that first year, perched high in her father's arms. Then came Adam, the next year, a cousin, the pair of them in a double stroller, Adam a goat, and Lucy a bear. They walked the following year, Lucy as Little Miss Muffett and Adam, the spider that sat down beside her. And last year there was Charlotte, and another carriage and another little bumblebee and another reason to smile.

The parade always ends at the high school, on the lawn with balloons and Hoodsie Cups and a DJ playing monster songs and hundreds of kids running around and hundreds of adults standing around and smiling. 

It’s a Norman Rockwell moment. A sprawling lawn. Orange trees. Happy children.

Lucy is dressing as a 50s girl this year: grey poodle skirt, black sweater, and saddle shoes. And Adam wants to be a dinosaur and Charlotte will either be a sunflower or Bam Bam.

And I will be miles away, not just out of town for the parade, but out of the country, visiting sites I’ve seen only in books and documentaries. It’s a trip of a lifetime. And I’m looking forward to it. 

But I’m sorry to me missing my favorite day of the year, my grandchildren marching and the whole town celebrating.

“Take lots of pictures,” I tell my daughters. And they promise that they will.