Homemade Halloween

     The only thing I made for Halloween this year was our traditional Halloween stew--complete with the fall leaves that Alex and Bess were convinced came from our back yard until years later when they discovered bay leaves in the aisle of their local grocery stores.
     I didn't make any jack-o-lanterns.   I didn't make any pumpkin pies.  And, living in an apartment with no trick-or-treaters, I didn't make multiple trips to the grocery store to pick out bags of Halloween candy that I'd enjoy having as leftovers.
      I also didn't make any costumes, although there was a time when I did.  A time when I pulled an all-nighter pushing dull needles through layers of  fake fur destined to become a full-body, Care Bear costume for Alex.  A time when I spent multiple evenings cutting out poster board and gluing on hundreds of individual sequins and jewels to make butterfly wings, and then figuring out how to attach 4 foot wing spans onto 12 inch shoulders. A time when I altered one of my own suits the night before Halloween because Bess decided at the last minute that she wanted to go as an attorney instead of a princess.
     I don't get a lot of credit for those evenings, because somehow Alex and Bess remember that Baba, their St. Louis grandma, always made their Halloween costumes.  And to give her credit, there were gypsy costumes, and witch costumes, and Wild Thing costumes that bore Baba's accomplished sewing.  But there were also less professional looking costumes, glued, and sloppily sewn by me.
      The common thread was that they were all homemade--with love.
      And also a little bit of necessity, since the store bought costumes back then were cheap looking plastic, one size fits most, with colors and designs that inexplicably stopped at the side seams so that everyone looked the same as the Halloween parade passed you by.  Accessories were usually limited to a hard plastic mask with eye holes spaced too far apart and mouth holes you could barely breathe through, and fit was accomplished by cutting off a little from the legs, a little from the sleeves, and tying the one plastic tie a little bit tighter in the back.  
      The "good" costumes were the homemade ones-- crafted by moms and grandmas and pulled together by needle and thread, Elmer's glue, and whatever could be found around the house.  They weren't always professional looking, but they were almost always creative.  One of my favorites was worn by a little boy from a family of five kids (and a very busy mom), who came to the door with his winter jacket on top of his head.  When I looked a little confused, he told me happily that he was "a coat."
     There's not much confusion these days, when even the costumes from the drug store come with hats and accessories, and are made out of lots of different, authentic looking materials. My own grandson looked adorable for his first Halloween, dressed as an elephant, with a full-body fleece costume, complete with Dumbo size ears, hooves, and a foot long trunk growing out of the attached hood.  His contemporaries were equally cute as realistic looking pumpkins, and leopards, and butterflies, and pirates.  There wasn't a single dropped stitch or glob of Elmer's among them.  And I'm pretty sure the moms' creative input was directed mainly at deciding, "Walgreen's or Target?"
     Which is why I was surprised when Alex asked if I could help with Flynn's costume next year. She's living in Africa, with not a lot of access to supplies, and was apparently thinking ahead.  I grabbed my Elmer's, ready for whatever she had in mind.
     And what she had in mind was me going to the after-Halloween costume sales that she had seen advertised online.  I dropped the Elmer's and made a quick trip to Target.
     I could say I was chagrined that there wasn't going to be a homemade costume.  Or I could say something about progress sometimes being a little bit sad.
     In my first draft of this blog post, that's actually how I ended it.
     But I didn't post it because it didn't feel right.  And, quite frankly, it was a lie.  All the little kids in their store bought costumes looked adorable this year. I would have loved to have had choices like that for my girls, and would have been at the front of the line to buy any one of them.
     Thanks to Alex, I kind of was.  Courtesy of aisles of professional looking, non-plastic, half off, after-Halloween-sale, costumes at Target, Flynn's ready for next year with a full-body, fake fur, very cute, monkey costume, complete with a long tail in back, and a stuffed banana attached to his left paw.
     Bought with love.  And not even a little regret.