Halloween.
I’ve never been a big Halloween fan. In fact I’m a downright curmudgeon about it. In college it seemed like an excuse for women to dress like tramps and now it seems like an excuse for boys to wield weapons. Plus I find some of the stuff about it legitimately spooky.
So I’m kind of a loser mom when it comes to Halloween. I don’t decorate the house and I generally force them to trick or treat early and go to bed at a regular hour. Of course having a child with a nut allergy makes all of the candy extra fun and stressful.
Grace and Whit have had matching/coordinating Halloween costumes for four years. The first year, when she was just 3 and he was 9 months old, she was chicken and he was an egg. That was really great. I got a lot of comments about how “Hey you’re really taking a stance on the which came first thing, eh?” They were adorable.
The next year they were a firefighter (Grace) and a dalmation. Whit still occasionally emerges from his room wearing his dalmation costume, which is now skin-tight. Then the next year they were Tinkerbell and Peter Pan. I searched high and low to find a non-Disney Tinkerbell and I did. And last year they were Wonder Woman and Superman. Photos of the costumes here and here.
So this year it was clear early on that Whit was going to be something from Star Wars. Despite not having seen the movie, he is utterly obsessed. He wanted to be Captain Rex so I bought him a clone troopers costume (and a gun, which I still haven’t decided whether I’m going to give to him or not). Grace came to me several days after Whit had decided on his costume. She told me, eyes cast down but firm resignation in her voice, “Mum, I’ll be Princess Leia if you want.”
Of course I wanted! What a cute costume, perfect for her, plus not slutty and potentially warm enough if it is a classic New England Halloween. But something tugged in me. And I told her, then and there, that she didn’t have to match. She decided to be a witch and is very excited about it. It is a small thing, an infinitesimally small easing of the hand I keep on them.