11/1/10

Halloween, progress

I am not the Halloween mother I thought I would be. I have not yet made a single homemade costume based on our family's collective imagination. This year, unlike last, I only pondered this for a millisecond.
Maybe I will make costumes, someday. Until then, we will trade folded bills for itchy, poorly made costumes that originated in the imagination of some corporate entity. Because some things just have to give.

So much of mothering is not what I thought it would be. This is a good and a bad thing, of course. I knew it would be hard. I didn't know that some days that hardness would settle into my stomach, turning it to stone and making me fear both what I've become and what damage I've already done.

I knew I would love them. I didn't know my love for them would be so all consuming that simply watching a beloved child walk away from me in a Halloween costume could reduce me to joyful tears.

I knew I would take a million pictures of them. I didn't quite understand how many poor ones I would take.

(Let us stop for a moment and ponder the olden days, when taking pictures meant FILM and DEVELOPING and the inability to know the quality of the picture you've taken for WEEKS or at least hours. And let us give thanks for the forgiving and immediate nature of digital cameras. AMEN.)

For some reason, Halloween strikes me every year, the way some holidays do. It marks time, this candy-filled, costumed day that comes once a year. Remember when toddler Z sweated herself into a stupor because we were too dim to realize our little bee was too hot?

Remember when I was newly pregnant with E and felt every inch the Halloween ghoul?

What do you mean I need a costume? This IS my costume. SCARRRRRYYYY.

Remember when Z and E were "Cinderella" and "her fairy godmother" and we bought cheap costumes and couldn't get a good picture and ate too much candy and sat outside in the sun on the dining chairs and laughed?

Yes. I remember.

6 comments:

Marie Green said...

We haven't really gone all-out for Halloween w/ our family yet, either. I think it would be really fun to have a family theme (like star wars, for example) and then all of us dress as a character. But notice how I'm saying that right NOW, on Nov. 1st- the day FURTHEST from next year's Halloween? I mean, it all sounds fun and like I would really like to do that until I'm faced with actually DOING it.

I love the bee and the bee-keepers idea... so adorable!

Your girls' costumes were adorable this year too, store bought or no.

Hillary said...

I do not really enjoy Halloween. I like our preHalloween Pumpkin Party. I want to like trick or treating. But I just don't. It feels rude to me.

GratefulTwinMom said...

I love their costumes. Little girls love to be princesses. (Although, I think E is a fairy, no?) No matter how much we try to make them think about something more clever, princesses always seem to win out. I wonder why that is?

Everything about motherhood is not like I thought it would be. I seriously thank my mother in my mind every day as I try to figure this thing out.

Cute photos!

Michelle said...

The girls look so cute! This was my first year making the costume and she looked like a big ball of tulle. My mother has costumes she made for us and insists that the granddaughters wear them some day.

miyoko said...

"Remember when Z and E were "Cinderella" and "her fairy godmother" and we bought cheap costumes and couldn't get a good picture and ate too much candy and sat outside in the sun on the dining chairs and laughed?"

Sounds like an absolutely wonderful Halloween to me! :D

Kathi McCracken Dente said...

OK, having E be Z's fairy godmother is halloween brilliance. I love it!

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