Halloween used to be my favorite holiday. It’s not as if something happened. It’s just that I don’t have little kids anymore, and I don’t dress up and go to parties anymore. We don’t live in what you’d call a neighborhood, so no one actually comes trick-or-treating. (That’s a big loss, since I don’t get to have the leftover packages of Twizzlers.) Sadly, it’s become just another night.
But back in the day, way back, when I was 8, 9, 10, it was the highlight of my life: the crispy fall air, the smell and the crunch of the leaves, the dark (when else were we ever allowed out alone in the dark?), and the excitement of going a few blocks farther than our known boundaries into new streets. Oh, the danger was so delicious!
Before Walmart sold ready-made costumes, it gave some mothers a chance to be creative with whatever they had in the attic. Even overly busy moms like mine sewed and patched and draped and came up with princesses and evil witches, and Captain Hooks and Lone Rangers.
Before razor blades were in apples, before kids were taken, before big boys lurked in bushes, the biggest threat was sugar.
For me, the magic of this holiday was, and still is, the way you could be someone else entirely. With just a change of the outfit, the forbidden lipstick and a swagger you’d never known you had, all the parts of me –– the ones inside me –– could be ignited, acknowledged, and come out and play for a night.
As an adult, I will never forget going to a party as a guy. I had broken my wrist and didn’t even want to go out that year. But I loved the idea of a costume party. I hated the thought of missing out. Still, I didn’t want anyone to come near my wrist. I felt fragile and weak.
What to do, what to do.
What I did was, I took an Advil, put on my husband’s tweed sports jacket and a pair of his cords, and with my black eyeliner I smudged a beard across my chin, and drew a mustache above my lip. The medicine kicked in, my heretofore hidden macho self emerged, and off we went.
And my charade began.
I hung out in a corner of the room, and looked like Central Casting had found the answer to a cross between James Dean and Dean Martin.
All night women came up to me and flirted. I loved it. The music was loud, and if I’m going to stereotype here, I didn’t need to talk much. And I passed.
There are few events that offer the gift of getting to reinvent yourself. Play-acting, but not really. Because it’s more like feeling at one with a part of yourself that never sees the light of day.
One year, my friend Bob, a devout Catholic, went as the Pope; my friend Eleanor, the shyest introvert ever to walk this planet, went as a hooker; my friend Jeanie, a junior high school principal, went as the Fonz. I probably went as a fairy princess more times than not, all six feet and ample-bodied (I’m not using the word “fat” anymore), a reminder that the pain of not being tiny and beautiful had still not been healed.
It’s astounding how we don’t experience the sense of freedom, the liberation, the lightness of being from what Henry James called “mind-forged manacles,” unless there is something like Halloween to give us permission to let go and expand our own consciousness.
When I write these columns, sometimes I go off-track and have to reread as I write. Which is what I just did.
And something interesting happened. I think I’ve reawakened my long-buried love affair with Halloween.
So now what? I just might have to get out Joel’s moth-eaten jacket, sharpen my coal-black eye liner, and look for an invite to a come-as-one-of-your-parts party.
Anyone?
