Growing Versions

I have been horrified by my kids in their Halloween costumes. They often toy with iterations of costumes in the weeks and days leading up to the big day, only to give me a shock the night of. Bunny, zombie business man, kid lost trick or treating, pharmacist gone berserk, ghost, bunny, skeleton. While none of these costumes are elaborate, if the light is right...they make you squint and see them as the terrifying little essences that they can be. My daughter, long haunted by Coraline, scared my socks off one year with her rendering of   Coraline's mother , her personal bogey woman. This year, my son finally settled on a skeleton and when he stretched out on the sidewalk, I could barely look at him through my fingers.

Both of the kids came up with costumes that, in the right light, scared me out of my wits.  My daughter was Coraline's other mother .  That may not seem so scary to you, but I know just how terrified she has been by Caraline's other mother  who has kind of tortured her in her imagination over the years, and trust me, her ballet flats, grey scarf and eye make-up all added up to something bone chilling.

The latest version of a Hallowe'en costume that my son would like to be created for him (by magic I think) is a raining cloud.  A cloud that "you could fill with candies". I am thinking about that would be possible. I really am, even if the possibilties far outnumber my skills to implement them.  It is fun drawing plans in my head.

My kids are continually coming up with Hallowe'en costume ideas.  And I do mean continually.  I never thought I'd be participating (however unwillingly) in serious Hallowe'en costume brainstorms more than once in the month of April, for example.  The list of possibilities is long and growing everyday. I cannot sew and I can barely tape straight so we are limited in what we can hobble together from the dress up box, second hand store and the grocery store. The possible contenders include: a lamp (a persistent contender), a drain pipe (what is that white tube hanging off the side of the house?), followed by a suggestion that I also be a drain pipe and then we could drain into each other (fun!), a witch's cat (with the proviso that I also be the witch), a scary faced ghost, a vampire, a happy ghost, a spooky ghost, spiderman(again), tiger (again),a spider. Even as a  young adult who was free to attend boozy dress up parties I had a hard time getting into it. ...