My youngest daughter, Sydney, asked me when we were going to buy a Halloween costume this year. As the financial situation right now doesn't bode well for lots of incidentals, I broached the subject trying to plant the seed in her mind that we could probably make up a costume ourselves. My mind wandered back to the days when I was a stay-at-home Mom with six children in the house and a husband with a very good job. I made the children beautiful costumes having taught myself how to sew, and even after the divorce, I had a hard time telling the children they couldn't have something so small as a Halloween costume. So, I didn't.
I began the conversation by asking Sydney what she wanted to be this Halloween. "A Zombie!" was the reply. The wheels in my mind began turning, and I remembered this past spring one of Sydney's dance numbers required the dancers to dress as Zombies.
There! We have a costume already. Sydney, however, wasn't as enthused, but she's warming to the idea of using what she already has. We have to.
I shared some stories with her from my own childhood. As is the case with most adults who grew up in the sixties and seventies, we didn't get new things all of the time. We used what we had, and when we got something new it was a treat. And, if you grew up in a home where you weren't the only child, you shared. A lot.
For at least six years, my younger sister and I shared two Halloween costumes. When it came to acquiring possessions, we didn't have much say in what was purchased, nor were there the myriad of choices as there are now. We were pretty much at the mercy of whatever our parents bought us. Halloween costumes were no exception. My father, for reasons known only to him, bought his then two daughters two completely different Halloween costumes that were intended to last until they literally decomposed. One was a pirate mask with a faux beard with a molded pipe at the corner of his mouth, and the other was a princess mask. I am sure that these masks came with vinyl costumes to match, but as we grew, they fell by the wayside. The masks, however, made it though Halloween after Halloween until we no longer wanted to wear them. With two girls, you can imagine how we both wanted the princess mask, but only one could wear it. So, every other year you wore the pirate mask. I don't remember being too upset, as the main premise was to get my bag filled with candy, which we did, no matter what mask we happened to have the great fortune or mis-fortune to be wearing at the time.
This minimalist trend of buying new stuff wasn't just contained to Halloween costumes. When my sister and I started school, my parents bought us lunch boxes. What I do remember is going along to make the purchase, what I don't remember is being asked what we wanted. I remembered the plaid lunch boxes with their thermoses, and most of the popular television shows of the day also had their lunchboxes: The Beverly Hillbillies, Family Affair, Mannix, The FBI, The Flintstones, and of course, assorted princess lunch totes. Musicians such as the Beatles, the Monkees, and the Cowsills had lunchboxes emblazoned with their likenesses and several popular movies of the day were also immortalized on lunchboxes, and since my father was along on this particular shopping trip, that is what he gravitated towards. My sister and I watched in horror as he spotted the Mannix lunchbox, and breathed a sigh of relief when he put it down. Then, he spotted it. In all it's sexy, testosterone swelling, babe-a-licious glory, there it was: The James Bond 007 lunchbox.
I can still see it-James Bond's likeness guiding a beautiful Indian Bond Girl away from the Taj Mahal, while in the other hand brandishing a Glock. Think you could bring one of these into school now? We watched as he picked it up, turned it around, opened it, checked the thermos, and plunked TWO into the cart. For my sister and I. I remember feeling awkward at first in the lunchroom with my bouffant pixie cut and my parochial school jumper opening my very manly little lunchbox. Eventually, I got over it, and was able to see it for what it simply was: Something that I brought my lunch to school in.
And so the years came and went, the Halloween's and the school lunches along with them. Somehow, the trauma of not having everything, or everything
exactly as I wanted it didn't traumatize me too much. And then, there I was, standing on the precipice of young womanhood in fifth grade readying myself to go away from home for the first time ever. To Girl Scout Camp.
Oh, the excitement! The list with everything I needed to pack and take with me for those four days and three nights was scotch-taped to our avocado green Norge refrigerator. By this time, my father had been gone for two years, and the responsibility for gathering the appropriate gear fell squarely on my mother's shoulders. I had no choice but to trust her to make sure I had everything that I needed. Much of what was needed was already at home--no need to purchase a new flashlight--we had one. Sleeping bag? Borrowed from one of my cousins (I didn't need one of my own). I don't think Mom had to buy much of anything, so her main responsibility was just to have it ready and thrown into the car when I had to go.
The day finally arrived. As we made our way to the Girl Scout Camp almost an hour away, I was starting to have a little fear of being homesick. This was, after all, my first outing away from home for any considerable amount of time. My Mother reassured me that the four days would go swiftly by. As we pulled up to the camp, my mother dropped me at the gathering place where the rest of my troop was, and went to deposit my belongings at another location. After checking in, I bade my mother a teary farewell. Then, off we went as a group to retrieve our belongings and take them to our cabins. As we neared the area where parents had deposited their daughters gear, I noted the cute little zippered overnight bags some of the other girls had; the neatly square-knotted secured pink sleeping bags, the little vinyl overnight cases. But where was mine? As I scanned the area, I zeroed in on a behemoth leather suitcase that dwarfed everyone else's bags. I recognized that bag. My heart sank as I watched the other girls gather their girly belongings, and there I stood, blinking back my tears and staring at my fathers suitcase. The suitcase he took with him when he left for Korea. The suitcase that languished in our garage and I would stare in wide-eyed wonder at all of the pin-up girl decals from the fifty states on it. My attempt to pick it up gracefully failed, so I drug it the hundred or so yards to my cabin. I could feel the other girls' eyes on it and I could hear snickering. I wondered if they had spied the bikini-clad Miss Idaho astride a baking potato yet?
I personally think we give our children too many choices. We spoil them. We spoil them because we want them to have it better than we did. I didn't want any child of mine to have to share a Halloween mask, or any daughter of mine to have a manly lunchbox or any son of mine to have to take a princess lunch tote. I certainly would have never allowed my young daughter to have to anguish over taking her overnight things in a young man's semi-pornographic luggage for all to see, but at the same time, how do you learn to do without or make-do when you've really never had to? The embarrassment I suffered at the time didn't affect my life now, and as a result, I have never been a materialistic person. I think the reason that I am not is because in the grand scheme of things, I've learned that it isn't the stuff in life that matters. I think the proof is that I can smile at the memories now.
And so, Sydney will re-purpose her dance costume as her Halloween costume this year. You know what? I think she's going to be okay with it. Maybe this will start a trend in our house.
