Jacked-up jack-o-lantern

I'm no pumpkin carving whiz and I never claimed to be. What I am is a woman who loves Halloween and isn't afraid to fail. Convenient, seeing as I do it so often. 

So every October, we hit the old pumpkin patch and set about creating some jack o lanterns. Nothing fancy or ambitious. At least, my end-products aren't fancy or ambitious. The children's design is something else altogether. It's the same every year. I tell the kids to grab a piece of paper and design their jack o lantern, bearing in mind that straight lines are easier for me to execute as I am, after all, just a normal layperson working with a steak knife, not a gourd slicing master with professional implements on hand. And every year they nod and then draw spectacular jack-o-lantern faces, detailed, complex creations, with eyelashes and eye balls and cheekbones and chins and earrings and coiffures. Every feature is rounded. Nota straight line to be spotted. Then they hand it over and say, "This. Make this, Mommy."

"Sure," I agree, and every time I carve the same exact jack-o-lantern face. triangle eyes, an upside down triangle nose. The mouth is where I strut my stuff, often tossing in a tooth or two (always fangs, since they are triangular). Sometimes, i'll carve the child's initials into the cheekbone as if I'm branding the pumping, although usually I just carve another half triangle there, so that it looks like an less than/ greater than sign referring to invisible numbers or a lazy arrow. You'd think the kids would be disappointd or annoyed at my sub-par rendering of thier great vision, but they never are. You know why? 

It's fucking INSANELY cool to watch someone make a pumpkin into a face, no matter how crude that face is. 

"Wow!" they'll exclaim, "I love it!" And then five seconds later, they run off, and don't look at the pumpkin again until it starts to decompose so much so that it stinks. Then they regard it with a lurid fascianton, particulalry if any friends are over. 

"Wan to see something DISGUSTING???" they'll shriek, "Our pumpkin is rotting!"

This year, however, I decided to challenge myself. After eight years of pumpkin carving with s steak knife, i decided to consider a more nuanced implement. I longed for circles. So I took a stab (pun fully intended) with the tiny pocket knife included in David's Leatherman tool. It was a revelation, which I think is clear from the photo above.

"Look kids! I made circular eyes!!!!" I shrieked.

They were considerably less excited about this major step forward in our family's history of pumpkin carving, but what do they know, after all? They're the artists, heads in the clouds, insulated from the tedious details I face as a grunt worker.

Still, I'm pleased.  And next year, the sky's the limit. I'm get all Van Gogh on that pumpkin, swirls and shit. A woman's got to have dreams. 

Someone's been eating my candy . . . .

I have exercised what I consider to be a fair-to-middling amount of restraint when pillaging the kids' Halloween candy stash. I mean, I haven't DENIED myself or anything but neither have I glutted myself. I'm averaging one to two Fun Size pieces of candy per day - roughly the same amount as the kids, though my candy consumption usually happens after their bedtime, under the cloak of night. And really, recently, its been even less, since by this point, we've eaten all the good stuff. Now, its just Tootsie pops and red-and-white candy-cane mints and Lemonheads. Who likes Lemonheads, I ask you? Who? (And on a side note, I'm going to have to counsel the kids a little more next year on candy selection -- less lolls, more chocolate, people).

But, regardless of my moderate amount of moderation, and regardless of the fact that there is still at least a dozen to two dozen pieces of candy left in his bucket, Primo has been starting to voice suspicions.

The other day, when I handed him his bucket for candy selection, he looked at me intensely and said, "I think someone's been eating my Halloween candy. There was so much and now there's hardly any left."

I was not about to LIE to the child. Were he to ask me, point blank, "Did you, Mother, eat my Halloween candy," I would have confessed. But he wasn't asking any direct questions, just sharing reflections. So I just said, "Well, if you eat a piece a day, eventually you finish it all," which is true enough.

But I know he's on to me. Its all because I showed him that Youtube clip, "I Ate All Your Halloween Candy." Before that, he would have never dared to dream a parent would commit such a vile act of betrayal. But now that he knows such things happen, none of us are free from suspicion. Damn Youtube.

Well, maybe its a blessing in disguise.My ass doesn't need the calories. And there was no good candy left anyway.

Party Mama

I made the mistake many years ago of offering to throw a Halloween party for my kids. You don't realize, as a new, young mom, that if you offer to throw a seasonal party once, you will be required to throw it every year for the rest of your progeny's childhoods. Well, you're not required to throw the party but just try explaining to your kids that you're just too old and cranky and freaking tired to uphold what they have come to see as a family tradition. I thought maybe if I didn't bring it up, they'd forget about it. Fat chance. In early September, Primo started asking what was on the docket for the party this year.

"Oh, are we having a party?" I asked, innocently, "I mean, do you really want to?"

Well, that's a dumb question. What's not to want? Mommy does all the work -- buying plates and favors and materials for Halloween crafts, Mommy administers all games and lugs around dozens of juice boxes and bagels. Mommy cleans up. Kids have wild fun.

"Yes, I want it," replied Primo.

"Well, Ok, I guess, but let's keep it really small, just you and Sec's closest friends."

'OK, sure."

And we did keep the guest list down. Only that everyone has siblings, so whatever number you start with, you double. And then, once you're having four sets of siblings over, well, why not extend the invite to just one or two new friends from school -- it'll help build community after all, and improve the kids' at-school social lives. You can't very well not invite family, can you? So, somehow I'm throwing a regular old party, the day before Halloween.

You know what I'm going to say next time the kids mention a Halloween party?

"You're about to enjoy a holiday where you dress up in your dream costume and then stay up late so strangers can throw candy and chocolate at you all night until you can't eat another bite. That's enough of a party."

I have become a bona-fide party grinch.Convenient timing, just before my son's birthday.

October Snow

This is OCTOBER?

On Friday, Primo told me, and his sister, that it was going to snow tomorrow and my reaction was to get really annoyed that he'd gotten both their hopes up about something that would clearly never happen.

"I guess its possible but HIGHLY UNLIKELY," I assured the kids, "So don't get your hopes up. At all."

I have PTSD from the night last year when everyone said there'd be a blizzard and the next day would be a snow day and so my kids were so excited they stayed up til MIDNIGHT and -- guess what? -- it was a freaking dusting of snow and NO snow day. I can still hear the shrieks of disappointed anguish when I broke the news to them that there would, in fact, be school. The moral to this story is, don't let your children ever get TOO excited about anything, especially something as capricious as the weather.

But, lo and behold! Primo was right, big time. End of October blizzard, we had. The snow delivered. And the kids were ECSTATIC Plus, what's even better, it didn't interfere with trick or treating tonight.

Happy Halloween everyone!.

Halloween Pre-Production

Primo always knows what he wants to be for Halloween by the start of the school year and he stands by his choice, no problem. He's a steady fella, that one. This year, its Harry Potter. Easy, cheap, very little effort on my part. A dream come true.

Seconda, on the other hand, is a major, incurable Halloween flip-flopper. Last year, I made her settle on one choice early on and guilted my grandmother into making an Evil Stepmother costume from scratch. then I set about securing a magic mirror, a suitable queen crown (you can't throw a stone without hitting a tiara but I dare you to find a golden crown for a little girl) and an amulet. The day before Halloween, Sec informed me she would not be wearing the costume. Period. She didn't want to be the evil stepmother anymore. She wanted to be Snow White. We compromised by letting her wear some old dress-up for the day before Halloween but on Halloween evening, I forced her to don the costume my grandmother had labored over. She got into it eventually but it was a major pain in the ass.

So this year, I've been asking her on a daily basis what she thinks he might want to be. I'm basically tallying up the responses and trying to see which one pops up most frequently, but though this plan seems sound, I know it won't work. Sound plans never work with my daughter. So far, the list includes:

Hermione.
Hedwig the Owl.
Snow White.
Sleeping Beauty.
Cinderella.
Catwoman.
A Cheetah.
A Bat
Girl Vampire

Whatever she chooses, I know she'll change her mind at the last minute and then I'll be forced to be the Evil Mother who yells "YOU'RE GOING TO WEAR THIS GODDAMNED BAT COSTUME FOR HALLOWEEN AND YOU'RE GOING TO LIKE IT MISSY!" and "DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY CHILDREN HAVE NO COSTUMES TO WEAR AT ALL AND DON"T EVEN GET SO MUCH AS A HERSHEY'S KISS ON HALLOWEEN?"

Halloween Hangover

I was talking to my Mommy friend this morning, and she said, "I am so wiped out from this Halloween weekend, I feel like I have a hangover - I woke this morning and didn't know where my wallet was, or where my phone had ended up. My house is trashed and my voice is all hoarse."

The Halloween Hangover. I've got it bad. Pounding head. Ravaged by fatigue. Having Halloween on a Sunday added up to a 72-hour Halloweenapolooza. If I see one more jack-o-lantern, I may very well be sick. But I will say, I got a big kick out of seeing my kids in full regalia on Sunday:



Sec was so evil as the Snow White Stepmother that your blood ran cold when she gave you her patented icy stare, with those blood-red lips pursed. And Primo was a stone-cold freaky zombie. Every time he said "Trick or Treat" he'd do a quick show of shooting himself with his peashooter, complete with zombie wails or agony -- thus giving those people thier Almond-Joy's worth of entertainment. Final analysis: despite Halloween overkill, it was pretty damn fun. Thank God I don't have to do it for another 365 days.

Halloween, supersized

Halloween used to be a day, one day out of the year. Now, it’s a season. Like Christmas, it’s become super sized, and the celebration begins right after school starts.

I’m not complaining (for once). Actually, this is A-OK with me, because I am basically a Halloween junkie. You’re talking to someone who – up until my storage area was invaded by a family of mice -- boasted an extensive wig collection, no less than four different kinds of boas and enough make-up to keep all of Brooklyn glammed up for the month of October. And no, I’m not a drag queen. I like dress-up.

As a kid, I was the Queen of Halloween, since Nonnie was a professional seamstress and a semi-professional martyr who liked to do pro-bono sewing work in the form of devising frilly, poofy, lacey princess-y gowns for me to sport. One year, I was Scarlet O-Hara and my dad built a hoop skirt out of wire hangers. That was one time where my mother was the opposite of Joan Crawford: “More wire hangers!!! We need MORE WIRE HANGERS!!!”

My children have, of course, followed suit. Except that they, sophisticated souls that they are, have a preference for the dark and macabre elements of the holiday, and like to get spooky. Non-spooky attire is not allowed on Halloween. Evil reigns. That’s just how we roll.

Primo will be – wait for it – a Plants vs Zombies Zombie. This was a last-minute switch-up due to the fact that he is currently in the throes of a raging obsession with the game and also the fact that his first costume idea, to be the Headless Horseman, with no head, turned out to be impractical since not only could he not see anything or play with his friends, his mouth would be covered and he could not eat candy. This is, of course, a dealbreaker. So zombie it is.

When people ask Sec what she’s going to be, she says. “A stepmother/”

This doesn’t make immediate sense to many people, so I’ve been clarifying: “She means an evil stepmother.”

But when I told that to a mom this morning at drop-off, I realized that maybe it sounded like I had something against stepmothers, so I hastened to add, “I mean, THE evil stepmother, from Snow White.” That would have been sufficient clarification but instead I went on, “Not like, any stepmother. Some are very nice.”

That, too, would have been more than enough clarification and potentially even a little funny. But then I felt compelled to add more, in the event that the mom I was talking to was, in fact, somebody’s stepmother: “I don’t have a problem with stepmothers. Divorce happens. I mean, it’s not my problem, it’s the Brothers Grimm’s.”

Then I shut up.

So, yeah, Sec’s gonna be the evil Stepmother, in a costume her great grandmother -- masterful seamstress - fashioned just for her, replete with magic mirror and poison apple. The apple’s not really poison. I wouldn’t let my kid play with a poison apple. OK, now I’m going to stop clarifying and find some medication for my logorrhea.

HALLOWEEN!

Halloween began with Primo up at 5:45 am, and by “up” I mean bouncing off the walls and raring to go.

“Let’s go trick of treating RIGHT NOW!!!!” he shouted.

I took two Tylenol and put on the television.

By 10:30am we were all in costume, in agreement with Primo’s Grand Plan of Halloween 2009

Primo – Count Dracula in black velveteen cape, burgundy vest, purple medallion, vampire wig and several variety of fangs. This is the first year he got a store-bought costume and I have to say, I think we could have bought four costumes for the price of this get-up.

Daddy – Frankenstein, with green stitches that Primo drew on his cheeks with my eyeliner (the could could work at a makeup counter) and bolts applied to his neck with Bandaids

Mommy – Bride of Frankenstein, with a show-stopping wig and bridal gown made from one old white sheet and three dozen safety pins (Project Runway, here I come!)

Seconda – Max, from Where the Wild Things Are. Primo’s original plan had her as a werewolf, which she was jazzed for, but when we couldn’t find faux fur and my grandmother unearthed Primo’s old Max costume, we shuffled things around a bit and went from werewolf to boy in a wolf suit. Timed rather well with the recent release of the film, no? Besides, I’ve never seen any child in a costume that better suited their personality. My daughter should always wear the wolf suit. Every time we turned around, she had peeled off the hood part, taken off her shoes and socks and was getting into some new naughtiness with a huge, impish grin on her face.

It took us approximately four hours to get into costume but the great thing about waking up before 6am is even when it takes four hours to get into costume you are still fully by 10am when all other normal people are just squinting their eyes open on Saturday morning.

Once costumed, we walked over to Boo at the Zoo. Or should I say, began the un-ending trek which left me feeling like we were in some weird Halloween-version of Grapes of Wrath. Turns out the zoo, which was a do-able, if tiring, walk from our old apartment in North Slope is now impossibly far away. So far away that no matter how long we walked, we never got appreciably closer. It was like being on a tread mill -- with a five year old riding piggyback. But we Joads weren’t going to give up – couldn’t really, since we were meeting friends there -- so we just slung the tired children over our bodies, shedding wigs and extraneous costume parts as we went along. And by noon we had made it to the zoo.

The zoo was about as much fun as it can be to a grown-up whose been there four zillion times this year. Haunted barn was a high point. Kids loved the spooky carousel although the combination of hearing “WHO YOU GONNA CALL? GHOSTBUSTERS!!!!” on repeat play at excruciating decibel levels while being whipped around in circles made me dangerously close to upchucking.

By 3:30pm, we were home – just in time to start Halloween for real.

Thought I felt like the only candy that could help me was the variety celebs put into their nose, I rallied and we all went bravely into that good night of trick-or-treating.

And a good night it was, indeed. Primo ran from stoop to stoop, shouting over his shoulder to me, ‘I ASKED THEM FOR CANDY AND IT REALLY WORKED!!!! THEY GAVE IT TO ME!!!!” with so much wonder and marvel that I couldn’t help but smile, old Halloween-Scrooge that I am. Seconda didn’t waste time saying anything, she just ripped open candy packages as fast as she could, cramming the chocolate into her mouth.

The parade was amazing, with bagpipes and huge, towering puppets and an amazing stroller decked out like R2D2 and a girl dressed as a toilet bowl and all sorts of cleverness. Then Primo said, “Can we be in the parade, too?” so we all jumped into the stream of people walking and waved to the crowd.

By 8:30, the children had retired their still-bulging candy bags and were slumbering soundly. Running around begging strangers for candy tires a person out, it would appear.

Halloween highlights, readers? Great costumes? Moments to remember?

How to Feel Like a Supermom: Halloween Version

A few months after Seconda was born, when Primo was about two and a half, we took a road trip, and during this road trip, we pulled over to eat the sandwiches I’d packed at a New Jersey rest stop. I don’t always have the foresight or energy to pack sandwiches and often we just drive and drive with whining children and rumbling stomachs, looking for someplace that isn’t McDonald’s, finding nothing and finally stopping at McDonald’s, over-hungry and a somewhat guilty. But on this occasion, I had packed sandwiches and it was a beautiful day so we ate outside. I was playing with the kids, tickling them or pretending to eat them or something and I noticed a mom nearby with her baby, watching us. Not in a creepy way. In an admiring way.

Then the mom talked to me.

“You’re such a great mom,” she said. “You’re so fun.”

I didn’t want to mislead the lady so I quickly disabused her of the notion that I was always this great. I told her that the kids drive me nuts and I don’t feel so “fun” when I’m yelling at them like a harpie. Then we talked about her baby and exchanged mom notes and went back in our cars to reach our separate destinations.

I’m not the sort of person that gets frequently admired – like an astronaut, or a doctor or a mother of triplets – so her compliment made quite an impression on me. I’ll admit it, I treasured it. I milked it, too, reminding David every five minutes in that car ride that I was a “great mom” and wasn’t he lucky to have landed someone as “fun” as me, someone so fun, in fact, a perfect stranger could not help but comment on it. It still gives me a little buzz to recall. Our job is so thankless in so many ways, so much self-sacrifice is involved, and all you typically get from strangers is reprimands, head-shakes, tsk tsks and other despicable gestures of judgment with the clear message,

“You suck.”

I was thinking of this Rest Stop Good Samaritan this week because it occurred to me that while I couldn’t be a SuperMom, there are certainly moments or things I do that make me feel like a SuperMom. Short-cuts, of you will. Little things with big payoff. It’s similar to my strategy for looking hot. There is just no damn way right now that I can go to the gym, I’ve tried and I just can’t make it work. But if I put on a really great dress that’s cut just right, well, I won’t be any thinner but I’ll look thinner and feel hotter. Illusion it may be but hey, there’s nothing wrong with that.

So in the spirit of magic tricks, I offer you –

Tip No. 1 for Feeling Like a SuperMom

Let your kid costume you for Halloween.

That’s right, tomorrow, for the first time in years, I’m wearing a costume. It wasn’t my idea. Primo planned our family costume last March, when his spook obsession first developed. I thought he’d forget about it by Halloween by as capricious as kids are, they have some ideas with staying power. So this year, David will be Frankenstein and I will be, who else? His bride. I bought the wig which seriously is so tall that I can hardly keep my head straight. And today I am going to spend much too much time scrounging around for some facsimile of a bridal dress in my closet. For a minute I thought about wearing my actual wedding dress but then the reason I was born returned to me. So, I’m dressing up tomorrow and it better make me feel like a SuperMom, to combat the searing embarrassment.

Now, that I think about it, I should re-title this tip: Tip No. 1 for Me to Feel A Little Less Lonely in my Douchiness.

Spooky Spoofs

I don’t have many fields of expertise and certainly very few that are useful to anyone. But if you and your child love Halloween or spooks generally, and if you and your child want to see these spooks appear in spoofs of famous children’s literature, than doggoneit, I’m your woman. Primo and I have read so many of these spooky spoofs that I wrote a short article about my favorite ones for Time Out NY Kids which you can read by clicking here. All of them are one hundred percent amomamok-approved for quality. Just in time for Halloween. . .

Hot Dogs and Ghoul Masks and Books – Oh My!

I am never so glad to be a Brooklynite as on a Sunday. There is such a panorama of possibility in terms of diversion and delight, its hard to know where to start, especially on a spectacular sunny fall day. This Sunday we started at Bark, the eco-friendly haute dog joint on Bergen Street. Pork and beef blend dogs with all sorts of fresh, tasty toppings (oh, chili cheese dog, wilt thou be mine?) are so good you won’t mind paying the high prices (six bucks for a dog? Seriously?). Primo polished off a biscuit with cherry jam which he highly recommends and Seconda quite enjoyed the piping hot and greasy salt-and-pepper fries. And the best part is the whole place is green – from the wind power used to keep the lights on to the reclaimed wood communal tables to the compost receptacles. Hey, green is the new black.

Then off to the feature presentation of the day – Ghouls and Gourds at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. Best damn October-fest I’ve been to in years. And the recipe for success is simple: huge, Julie Taymor-like masks and puppets that kids can crawl into. Check out my kids in these puppet pieces of art:

Icing on the cake was meeting the author/ illustrator of Primo’s favorite book: The Field Guide to Monsters. Johan Olander was delightful; he talked to Primo for a while about his process and inspiration, and let the kids draw their own monsters, some of which he’ll include on his website. Primo was really thrilled. His monster was the Zookalak, who lives in the air, eats trees and plants and looks charming, with 10,000 teeth. Then we hit the story-telling tent and heard Javaka Steptoe read a few of his books, like Rain Play and a funny collection of tongue-twisty puns he helped to illustrate called How Much Wood Could a Woodchuck Chuck? Oh, literature! Oh sunshine! Oh Brooklyn!

A mish-mash of illuminating miscellany

Today I am consumed with making 4 zillion sugar cookies and chocolate chow mein spiders (don’t knock ‘em til you’ve tried ‘em) for a little Halloween party tomorrow. Because of that, today’s dose of blogness falls under the category of Miscellany.


1. Do other people find that for months and months after they move into a new place they lack items which they need for civilized life? I have been living in this apartment for three months without a toilet bowl brush, or a razor or baking soda. Since these things are never direly necessary, they never make it to my sphere of consciousness when I’m at the store and I just have to look at my toilet bowl and think, "Man, I need a toilet brush." But I have must get a razor soon because trying to hide from David the fact that I am using his razor to shear the dense growth on my legs is very stressful.

2. If you sign up for a Mommy and Me swim class, make sure you have a one-piece bathing suit before the first class. If you don’t, you’ll end up wearing a skimpy bikini that fit you five years ago when you bought it but now, after two children, looks indecent and not in a good way. And once you get over the horror of wearing it once, it will be easier to continue wearing that bikini to swim class rather than buy a suitable black one-piece like all the other sane mothers. And while your own horror at wearing the bikini will subside the horror others feel while seeing you barely contained in a stretched-out Old Navy two-piece will not diminish and you won’t stand a chance of making any Mommy friends.

3. An explosive moment in our apple-pie-baking several weeks ago made it necessary for me to explore the wonders of my "self-cleaning oven." I didn't even know I had one of these and I certainly didn't imagine it would actually clean itself, without any help OR cleaning products. Guys, its MAGIC. If you are looking for something to believe in, believe in self-cleaning ovens.

4. Does anyone know any good games for a Halloween party with a bunch of Kindergarteners and 2 year-olds in attendance? Craft project ideas are welcome, too, but make them the easy and not-so-messy kind because I’d like to avoid stepping in puddles of glitter glue for the next two weeks. Who invented glitter glue pens by the way? Who really thought that would be a good idea?

Halloweening

Since October is Monster Madness Month here at A Mom Amok, I'm posting this essay I wrote about my son's first Halloween which appeared in the Park Slope Reader's Fall '05 issue. Gives you a sense of the boy's humble Halloween beginnings. Prepare to be wowed by this year's costume design, Primo's brainchild. Let's just say it will be a family affair and it won't be pretty. Cackle cackle, hiss hiss. Ok, I'm a wierdo.

HALLOWEENING

I’m a die-hard Halloweener and I haven’t let an October 31st go by uncelebrated in three decades. I don’t mean that I erect life-sized motion-sensor witches and skeletons in font of door which cackle and shriek "Boo!" every time someone passes by. I don't host a haunted house or anything. Nohing wierd or beyond the pale. I just love dressing up and I tend to take it very seriously.

It helps that as a little girl I had a personal costume designer. My grandmother was an expert seamstress, her skills honed through years working at a swimsuit manufacturing factory, and come Halloween, the magic of her needle was devoted entirely to me. Over the years, I masqueraded as such iconographic figures as Little Bo Peep, Princess Leia, Barbara Eden’s Jeannie and -- our masterpiece, the crown jewel of my grandmother’s costume trunk – Tara’s own Scarlet O’Hara, in a lemon-colored three-tiered hoop skirt. With a start like this, how could a girl not love Halloween?

As a kid, the thrill of Halloween was all about busting out of the humdrum to achieve a taste of the extraordinary, if only for a day. That, and the twenty tons of candy I amassed. In adolescence, Halloween was an excuse to wear as few clothes as possible, to find new and exciting ways of re-inventing the basic streetwalker costume. And then, in college and my early twenties, Halloween was an invitation to showcase my clever wit through the high-concept costume piece. But there comes a time when even the most innovative trick-or-treater runs out of steam, when you’ve sipped martinis as Kafka’s cockroach and flirted as an electrocuted fairy, when you’ve made the rounds as a post-Y2K cyborg and peaked at Bloody Mary, and you think, “Halloween’s just not what it used to be.”

This is when you should have a baby. Because one of the compensations motherhood offers for the pain of childbirth and months of sleep deprivation is the privilege of dressing your progeny in whatever costume your want to, for at least one or two Halloweens. After this point, your child will demand a woefully uncreative costume, typically the mass-produced habiliments of a cartoon character which will reveal to your neighbors that your child watches TV, a lot of it, and will do so until you hit the jackpot and get a live-in nanny. But for one or two Halloweens, the pipsqueak will get no say whatsoever and will happily serve as a canvas for your creative genius.

The July before my Primo’s first Halloween, my grandmother started making inquires about our plans. She reminded me that we’d have to make an appearance in Bensonhurst since her neighbors were dying to see the baby in his costume. They’d never forgotten me in my Scarlet O’Hara glory and now wanted to witness the debut of this next generation of my family’s trick or treaters.

“You betta start tinking about what’s he gonna be,” she advised, and offered to pull one of my old costumes from her dusty trunk to mark the occasion. I politely declined. This was an important Halloween, an inauguration for Primo into a lifetime of make-believe and candy; it warranted serious consideration. The problem was, the possibilities were really endless. He could go classic, as the Velveteen Rabbit; literary, as Don Quixote; local, as Uncle Louie G. Where to even start?

I consulted with Primo to get some input, but despite our intense mother-son bond, I couldn’t understand his baby talk. The weeks rolled by as I waited for inspiration to hit and eventually the abundance of possibility stranded me in a no-man’s land of inaction. Which is to say, I froze under pressure. And I found myself on October 30, with two choices: head to the Atlantic Mall and rifle through the remaining animal costumes at Old Navy or ask my grandmother to creak open the old costume trunk.

So on Halloween afternoon, Primo hit the streets of Bensonhurst in a pink clown costume circa 1976. With matching pom-pom hat, of course. We made our rounds, with my grandmother shouting to her friends to, “Come to da window! He’s coming!” And the Italians hung out of their windows in their mumus, oohing and ahhing, shouting bilingual benedictions and affirming that the baby was as pretty as his mama in her Scarlet O’Hara costume. Occasionally someone would come down to their stoop for a closer look and press a one dollar bill, or even a five spot, into Primo’s sweaty little clown palm. I counted our booty on the R train back to the Slope-- twenty five bucks. Not bad for an afternoon’s work.

When my husband came home and saw his son in his pepto-bismol pagliaccio get-up, he raised a brow but said nothing. He had followed the entire “Boy’s hat found” thread on parkslopeparents and knew better than to make a fuss about a little fuchsia. Now, had we been Halloweening in Eastern Tennessee, in my husband’s hometown, a boy in pink would be worse than a boy named Sue. But here in Park Slope, Primo can, and does, enjoy the freedom of wearing his mother’s sequined slippers while clutching a vintage leopard skin handbag and pushing a babydoll stroller.

So we took our baby clown to his first Halloween parade on 7th Avenue without a qualm in the world. And as we strolled down that candy highway, the thrill of the kids all jacked up on sugar was infectious enough that I began wondering if I couldn’t get back in the costume game myself. Next year, I mused, Primo and I could plan a his-and-her costume – Bonnie and Clyde perhaps, or Fred and Ginger. There was always Kafka and his cockroach, and it was only fair to let the kid take center stage as the bug.

And so, a Halloween legacy is born.

Spanish Ficodor

There are times when the children start talking to me and after a few seconds of nodding and “uh huh”-ing, I think to myself, “Wait – what’s he talking about? Is it me or does this not make any sense?” This is what happened last night, when after bath, as I brushed Primo’s teeth and helped him put his PJs on, he gave me a short lecture on something called the Spanish Ficodor.

“When it is a baby it is called Spanish Ficodor and then for a while it is called nothing and then when it grows up it is called the Italian Ficodor. Because Italian is the opposite of Spanish, I guess."

When I asked what a ficodor was, he gave the following explanation: "A ficodor is like Frankenstein, it is so misunderstanded. It’s like a havalina or a black cat, actually its basically a beast. Or, I should say, it is related to a beast. It has a crazy name because it is a crazy beast and because it is Italian and on Halloween, Italians make a big scene and a big deal out of people.”

As I was taking this in, Primo added: “Don’t write that on your blog, It is a secret.”

(For the record, this information was later cleared for publication by Primo, who, upon further consideration, though the world should know).

Tricks or Treats

A few days ago, my husband sent me an email whose subject line read, “What we have to look forward to.” It read, simply:

“When Seconda comes to us wanting to wear one of these for Halloween--I'm letting you do the talking.”

Click on this link and you will read, as I did, about the dismaying trend of little girls dressing up in harlot-type Halloween costumes. The pictures feature young girls and tweens in miniature versions of the stripper-witch costume that has become de rigueur for women. And it’s awful on some many levels.

The knee-high boots and lace-up hot pink corsets are bad enough but the kid models are even doing sexy poses and I have to wonder, where’d they learn that? I mean, did the photographer direct them to bend one knee and put both hands on their hips or did they just intuit that this is what was expected of them? The worst is the “Alice in Wonderland Child/ Teen Costume.” Go ahead, click on it for a closer look.

Would you have ever guessed that was Alice in Wonderland? Are the black and white striped stockings supposed to be my clue? The floppy eared bunny she dangles from her fingers, ostensibly just the way she’d dangle a man along? As far as I know, Lewis Carroll’s formidably funny adventurer didn’t hook her way through wonderland. It’s a slap in the face to Alice and to girls and to literature. But the most egregious part is that this model, with her feet turned inward and knees together, is doing her best sexy school-girl impersonation and the fact of the matter is, she’s just a schoolgirl herself – a teen maybe, but still. I blame Britney, which is what I always do when I don’t know who to blame.

Look, I’m no Victorian. If I posted pictures of the Halloween costumes I wore in my college years and early 20’s, you’d be embarrassed to have the screen open at work. I remember that on Halloween of ’99 I had a big party at my apartment and dressed at a “post-millennial cyborg.” That’s a fancy word for super-skank in a duct –tape costume. It’s true, the only thing I was wearing was a bikini top and boy panties, both fashioned from duct-tape, with a pair of wings I made out of wire hangers attached. My good friend came n a pair of pasties. I’m no Victorian.

Nonetheless, I was an adult. Hey, if you’re a grown woman and want to sex it up on Halloween, I’m not gonna stand in your way. But for the love of all that is sacred, keep little girls little as long as you can. There’s plenty of time to wear knee-high boots and wield a pitchfork later. I’m all for free expression but sometimes you have to be the bad guy and say, “No way, Jose. Because it’s not appropriate. Because I love you. And because I said so.”

I just thought since David was going to let me do the talking, I’d get started a little early.