(me and my sweetums 2004, regular ol' store bought costume bits)
I loved Halloween. Seriously, deep in love, will you marry me and live happily ever after in a haunted mansion type love with Halloween. I was totally committed, Halloween of course knew all about Christmas and was ok with our arrangement. BUT, October was dedicated solely to it's needs. We didn't talk about jingle bells, the man with the white beard and trees were ignored in favor of fake spiderweb. Halloween turned a blind eye to the Christmas projects that would creep up earlier and earlier in the year and I'd make the extra effort to carve a jack-o-lantern that had at least 5 spiky teeth. We got a long great.
Halloween let me dress up as a grim reaper, a jester like clown, a black scary cat, an old woman, a cow and a dead bride.....all back in the hay day of our relationship of course. Perhaps I'm actually legally married to Halloween and don't know it.....I'm not sure that spraying one's hair black with fake-o-colour in a can constitutes a binding agreement with a holiday but it damn well should.
(me and my sweetums 2005, costumes made frantically in about 2 hours as Halloween breathed down our necks)Of course like any relationship, at least like the ones you see on tv
(and you just know those are all accurate depictions of real life), Halloween and I grew apart. What with the whole
"you're 19 and have been out of high school for a year and are too big to go trick-or-treating any more" attitude I was getting back then.
Now I know better, it wasn't Halloween who pulled away from us...it was me...me and my fear that a 20 something woman was more creepy than cute if she dressed up and kept trick-or-treating in to her thirties..... So I bit back the urge to keep trying, shoved aside years and years worth of feelings and Halloween faded a bit........though I know it was seeing other people. Didn't those little neighborhood brats show up anyways, dressed to the nines as ghouls and goblins, just to shove it in my face that Halloween was with them? I had to satisfy my urges to rip off their masks and just politely hand out the treat bags by pilfering candy from each one before hand. You hear that you little kids of 10 years ago??? You were supposed to get
TWO mini chocolate bars plus the soda and chips in each treat bag but you only got..
ONE! So ha, sweetest damn chocolate I ever stole.
The nice thing though about a soul mate is that a connection like that just doesn't disappear.
(me and my sweetums 2006, awesome handmade skull heads, wigs and sweetum's armor!)
I know what you're thinking but it's o.k. My sweetie knows all about Halloween, in fact we've come to a pretty good understanding about the whole thing. I don't do any housework during the month of October and he gets to play with my paints and clay. It's a good arrangement, a solid marriage should always be based upon letting your husband paint his own skull and make his own teeth.
( sweetums 2006, check out those teeth, I love a man who can make his own teeth!)In the beginning, when I moved away from home and got married my sweetums and I experimented a little the during our first year. Dabbled our toes in the spookiest of seasons, bought a little candy. A few hats and some rubber masks.....Testing each other, and of course Halloween...would it have me back??? Would it have us both together? We eyed each other over the wads of fake spider web and tentatively both reached for the little plastic spiders...fingers touched, our eyes met and we both knew.....we both wanted Halloween back. We wanted to experience it together.
(me 2007, a very scary fairy!)
It doesn't happen all at once, you have to work at it but after a few years of marriage we were ready for more. We needed to take Halloween to the next level and we did...oh my we did. We embraced Halloween with open arms, fake blood and teeth bared and were met with the loving acceptance of a holiday that had waited patiently by my side when I stumbled, ready to take me back at a moment's notice. I had just been too blinded with stolen chocolate and stupidity to see this.
(me and my sweetums 2007, handmade wings, helmet head pieces etc.)
A holiday that's been turned in to the celebration of costumes and candy....that's my kind of day.
We started out with a few easy costumes, store bought bits and pieces that we wore with childish glee. Then we graduated to embellishing with more custom bits...now the custom bits are embellished with just the occasional store bought bits. Now all our bits and pieces are thrilled and October seems to get bigger every year.
I'm thinking we might even...can I say it? Dare I? We might even go trick-or-treating again some time. Sure our knees will ache like a son of a gun from crouching to look like 10 year olds but...candy...free candy.
Of course I'm jumping the gun here, look at me dreaming about Halloween in February. When I really ought to be planning my latest scheme to catch that damn rabbit. He's got a lot of explaining to do, one year he leaves me a basket full of candy and the next he just ups and doesn't...ever..again. They got names for people..and rabbits like that but they aint purty and my mama reads this (she taught me most of them words, but still, you get my point)
Labels: halloween, humor, memories
It is not officially an awesome Halloween until you have sweated 7 and a half pounds away as you stay in monster character for 3 hours. Coincidentally 7 and a half pounds is how many treats I'm going to eat.
