from the brownstone and Mary Poppins!
Since I was a kid, I have always loved Halloween. The whole gory mess of it. From scooping out the cold, gooey innards of a pumpkin with my fingers to a squirt of treacly drug-store "blood" running down my middle-school neck.
My parents were good sports in this. Throughout my childhood, they donned costumes as well, and accompanied me on my trick or treating until I was old enough to do it myself (also middle school, exciting times!). Somewhere along the way, it became a tradition for my mom, my little brother James, and me to make our own gravestones every year, complete with witty/morbid death poems detailing how the interred met their untimely end.
Halloween meshed well with our family, which put little stock in the saccharine and had (by perhaps by necessity and/or circumstance) a deep streak of dark humor. It was no surprise that my one repeat costume was a corpse-like Lizzie Borden, complete with a bloody axe, where I had painted the infamous poem.
Lizzie Borden took an axe,
gave her mother 40 whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
she gave her father forty-one!
Halloween tapped into all the theatrical and exhibitionist sides of my personality. It was free license to transform, to explore, to shock. To play with boundaries and skirt them.
Molly on the other hand, has always hated Halloween for reasons that she can't quite even articulate to this day. Something about the fear of looking stupid, and the fear of exposure. It was one small example of the larger theme of Molly's childhood... the struggle to feel free.
I understand all of this, and I love Molly, but at first her hatred of the holiday was something I struggled with. I alternately sighed with disappointment and tried to lead her to water. This did not go well. Our last Halloween was a depressing affair, with Molly sulking in the sheriff costume I gave her, as we got a lonely beer in our neighborhood dive bar.
I guess I've gotten spoiled from our general tendency as a couple to band together in our efforts and be stronger for it. But to use a cheesy metaphor, sometimes I have to learn to be my own wind behind the sails. So, that's what I tried to do this year. The week before Halloween, I put in an inordinate amount of time (considering the finished product that is) into making this:
What is it you say? Why, a brownstone of course! What better way to show my love of Brooklyn low-rise architecture? As you can see, we live on the floor above the parlor and wear our wedding gowns at all times. And some guy from a New Yorker cartoon lives above us and owns what looks like a Picasso painting. Naturally.
I'm not sure if I should place any particular significance on the fact that my first Halloween costume since turning thirty is also my first box costume (after years of favoring much more slinky/outlandish outfits) but there you go.
For Molly, her happiness is key. I knew that she a) had to come up with the costume herself this year and it b) most definitely had to fit her sensibilities. As a child, Molly was Dorothy for many years, and she tends to favor prim, well put-together looks. With a new blazer from Marshalls, a thirft-store hat, a glue gun, some white flowers, an umbrella, and an artfully placed cardinal, she became a beautiful Mary Poppins. She could even smile genuinely when I took this picture!:
After all my fretting about finding a plan for the night that was properly fun and grandiose, our Halloween ended up being a low-key affair. I made a pumpkin pie (the filling spilled and burnt the crusts, oops!) and we took it to our downstairs neighbor who was throwing a party. We had plans to leave for elsewhere, but we had a surprisingly good time just where we were, and if I was being honest with myself, I was exhausted from three nights of little sleep. As we said our good-byes a little before eleven, I contemplated the amazing luxury of walking sated and sleepy up two flights of stairs and into a comfortable bed. We ordered in pizza and watched It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown while the rain pelted on the windows.* It was a lovely evening and if that's what having an adult Halloween is like, I realize it's only a bad thing when it's not in accordance with your desires.
* It's crazy to think that this first aired in 1966. Not many things from that time have aged nearly so well. I think it's something to do with the lack of sentimentality. As a kid, I could absorb the general melancholy tenor of the Charlie Brown TV shows and I definitely liked them. But revisiting them as an adult makes me realize how much of it went over my head. The humor is sharp and adult, its outlook on life bittersweet and even at times a bit nihilistic.
