BY JOELLEN COLLINS
I haven’t had a trick-or-treater visit my condo for years. I no longer work at a school offering children’s costume parades, nor have I watched my San Francisco grandchildren at Halloween. I rail against the commercialism of this and the seasonal events that follow: images of zombies assail me along with turkey recipes and early displays of Christmas decorations and toys. I am tempted to stay at home and be Mrs. Scrooge of “Pumpkinland.”
Two things have happened this year, however, that dampen my cynicism about the over-candied and hyped celebrations of October 31. I have rekindled some long-forgotten enthusiasm for this day when kids may forget the stresses of our society and simply have fun playing dress-up. I also don’t negate the joy of adults who get to try on another persona and be childlike again. It’s hard to be Scrooge when one sees big smiles and laughter all around.
When I worked around young children, I darkened my office and dressed as “Madame Blavatsky” (my apologies to the real woman with that name, long departed and a friend of Yeats, the great Irish poet). A rather small crystal ball, lit and covered with an opaque scarf, was a perfect vehicle for telling “fortunes.” I confess that the predictions were based on positive visions of happy lives, often suited to the interests I already knew about my juvenile seekers. For the last couple of years I have played this role again at a friend’s home and truly enjoy the effort and time involved with sharing my storytelling abilities with a young audience. I do have to be careful. In my first season of being Madame I told a kindergartner, following some good prophesies, that he would be a happy old man. After, he told his teacher that he didn’t WANT to be an old man! As I once again become Madame Blavatsky, I must remember that young children usually take adult pronouncements as truths.
When my girls were tiny and I spent a lot of time sewing their clothes and projects for the annual school carnival, I lavished my energy on unusual Halloween creations. The little girl who loved being Big Foot reveled two years later in my creation, a copy of Princess Diane’s wedding dress. My older daughter resented being a three-legged monster with a friend who tired easily, refusing to trip up to doorsteps in their required leg-ties, so later decided that it was more fun to make her own.
This Halloween I joyfully assembled two costumes for my family. My four-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter is a mermaid-princess-fairy bride, and my sophisticated, brilliant financial wizard of a son-in-law will mimic a Sun Valley skater we saw this summer whose outfit sparkled with a happy face symbol a la Burning Man and abundant strings of lights. I won’t be there to delight in the spectacle, but at least I am a distant part of it.
Maybe next year I’ll simply gobble up leftover Reese’s peanut butter cups alone at home, but I doubt it.
