There is no holiday like Halloween that brings back memories of my last days of childhood. It is a snapshot of a life that would dramatically change over the years.
Life

Halloween: My Last Day of Childhood

There is no holiday like Halloween that brings back memories of my last days of childhood. It is a snapshot of a life that would dramatically change over the years.

I have never been a “dessert person.” Sure, I enjoy snacks as much as the next gal or guy, but I always preferred savory to sweet. (Seriously; when my parents would let us choose one, an appetizer or a dessert, I always voted for nachos, mozzarella sticks, or twice-baked potato skins.) But there was always one exception. There was always one day every year I let my inner sugar fiend out: Halloween.

Pixie sticks. Butterfingers. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Wax bottles. Bottle caps.

Halloweens were a blur of sugar highs, insulin lows, and long, determined walks in the dark and in any weather. Being born in the early ‘80s, they were also a blur of bad hair, bad costume choices, and bad makeup. Not the first few years, of course. My first Halloween I was a hobo, and in subsequent years I had costumes ranging from cheerleader and princess to one badass bunny rabbit. (My mother made the suit, all white and with subtle pink accents, from a pattern — and by hand.) But once I got to school, once I was 5 or maybe 6 years old, I learned that homemade costumes weren’t cool. I wanted to pick my costume and, worse, I wanted my mother to buy my costume.

For those unacquainted with ‘80s costumes, let me enlighten you. The “deluxe” costumes you see today are not what I grew up with. While the Disney store was an exception, the costumes of my childhood were PVC nightmares: they were nothing more than printed smocks (i.e. trash bags with sleeves and hospital-gown-style ties in the back) and flat, one-dimensional masks with strangely-sized eyeholes and “mouth slits.” I remember my eyelashes constantly getting caught in the circular cutouts and, while they look large in pictures, I remember not being able to see; I was never able to see.

I don’t know how I approached my mother about the matter, but I do know asking a woman who makes her kids’ own costumes to cave and buy them some shitty drugstore counterpart is like asking the mother who bakes mini-cupcakes for your birthday to send you to school with a box of Munchkins instead.

I know she was heartbroken, but she obliged, and I went from one subpar costume to the next. There was Supergirl and Wonder Woman and, the worst, Morticia from The Addams Family. (I loved it, but since the outfit also came with a strange face mask instead of, I don’t know, a black wig and some pastey-ass makeup, no one knew who I was.)

As one decade rolled into the next, things got better on the pre-made Halloween homefront thanks to the use of fabric, sizes, sleeves and elastic waistbands, as well as the advent of Party City: the now nationwide purveyor of all things paper and plastic and spooky and seasonal. And while I had one fabric costume before 1996 — wedding day Barbie, whose outfit was some strange hybrid of old Halloween and new, i.e while the dress was made of polyester, the outfit was still topped off with one utterly terrifying mask — my favorite costume (and the only one I wore which ever looked and felt like clothes) was also my last.

It was the costume I wore the last time I knocked on a stranger’s door without being paid. (Don’t get excited; in college I was an environmental canvasser and not a house party whore.) It was the costume I wore the last time I went trick-or-treating which, in truth, was probably two years too late.  It was the costume I wore the last time I dressed in costume and stayed sober.

And it was the outfit I wore the last time I remember — truly remember — being a child.

So what was I? Madonna? Cyndi Lauper? Leeloo? That damn ghostface from Scream?

I was Jeannie from I Dream of Jeannie.

When faced with a wall of options, we don’t always make good choices, and when faced with a wall of costumes, it seems this ‘80s baby turned mid-‘90s teen wanted to look like a ‘60s TV star. I cannot recall exactly what drew me to that costume (I was more of a Bewitched watcher myself), but I am certain it had something to do with the exposed midsection and bikini-style top.

After stuffing the ill-fitting shirt with 2-ply and posing for a few pictures on my grandmother’s lawn, my father and I walked around the neighborhood. The sun had yet to set, and I remember watching the shadows lengthen across lawn after lawn. I remember wanting to hide in the shadows. I didn’t want him there. Why was he there? I was 12, and 12 was too old to go trick-or-treating with a chaperone. Twelve was too old to trick-or-treat in the daylight.

I rang doorbells, said the prerequisite slogan, and took candy, but I never looked anyone in the eye. Not only was 12 too old to go trick-or-treating with a parent, but also it was too old to go trick-or-treating. I knew that, yet I tried desperately to cling to what I knew, to cling to the one holiday I truly loved.

I wanted to pretend I was a kid, with a small puffy chest and lacquered lips. I wanted to pretend I was an adult, one who secretly played with Barbies and still needed her father to check her candy. And I wanted to fill my bag with sugary snacks that would sit in a Ziploc in our spice cabinet well into spring.

My father died that November, just three weeks after Halloween. To my knowledge, the last picture we have together is me dressed not as his daughter, but as Jeannie, with a mauve shade of Wet n’ Wild spread across my lips, a free trick-or-treating bag in one hand and an antique bottle in the other. I didn’t realize how much things would change that year. I didn’t realize how much I would change that year. (I’m now a “piece of candy/piece of chocolate-a-day” kinda gal.)

I didn’t realize how much I would come to miss; I didn’t realize how much I would come to regret. But one regret I’ll never have is that Halloween night. As awkward as I felt, being shadowed by my father; as much crap as I took from my then “friends;” and as strange of a costume choice as that outfit came to become, I don’t regret a second of it. Not one single minute.

And now, when the weather cools and it is normal to buy bags of candy in five or ten pound increments, I get excited. I get excited for pumpkins and falling leaves, porch lights and late nights. I get excited because while the memory of my childhood and my father is just that — a memory — I now have the chance to make those memories with my own daughter.

So I will take her trick-or-treating as long as she wants. I will let her stay up well past her bedtime and consume more sugar than anyone certainly should, and I will let her play and pretend as long as she wants and whenever she wants. Because while I was just pretending all those years (pretending to be a princess or a superhero or a ‘60s TV star), those “pretend” memories — the ones that always transpired on the last and always environmentally temperal day of October — are more real, and more special, than any others.

Now, if only I could find one of those “vintage” plastic costumes.