“Night” did not last more than a few minutes as a costume. My son took it off minutes before the school party, when he saw what all the other kids were wearing, and felt acutely uncomfortable. This almost ruined the party for him, but he rallied, and I had him look around to see if he liked any of the costumes he saw and might like to change to – and after seeing another boy in a karate gi, decided he’d wear his.
As it got closer to actual Halloween and trick-or-treating, I kept wondering how to make wearing a gi into more of a costume – could we at least use face paint to create a different color skin? OK, he acquiesced.
Then I remembered last year’s store-bought skeleton costume, and suggested he wear that under the gi – to become a dead karate master. This idea took, even though he never once called himself by that, saying instead he was a “dead karate person” – showing his sense that death was far more powerful than any karate master could be. He’s right, I suppose.
He was delighted in the way kids are supposed to be delighted about costumes. He even wanted to wear the awful mask, and, low and behold, wore the thing for the entire event, taking it off only at the end when he’d met up with his friend and wanted to put his glasses back on so he could see her. He playfully roared and attempted to scare people. But mostly, he had fun playing with an alternate side of his personality, the one who could become powerful and scary.
I’m wondering how I forgot last year’s skeleton costume when I wrote my first Halloween post. Or the year before, when he was a bat, an actual attempt as an observable noun. Oh, repression. Each costume experience had some tinge of the oversensitivity winning – he didn’t want to wear make up to make a bat face, so he looked exactly like him, but from the neck down had great black feather wings and a black body suit. The skeleton year – the year I broke down and decided enough with creativity-based individuality that will certainly be appreciated in his college years, why not just get the kid a costume that makes him fit in – that year he wouldn’t wear the mask. He didn’t like the way he looked in the mirror, the change in breathing, the way it was difficult to see without glasses under it, so he even tried to wear his glasses over it, ultimately not wearing it at all. How do we parents manage all the excruciating painful moments of our children? They re-ignite all of our excruciatingly painful moments, because even if we inherited the “I love Halloween” gene, we inherited some other weakness. No one gets out without some ghostly, ghoulish figures that haunt us with challenges, failures and humiliations.
- Dead Karate Person (aka, Dead Karate Master)
Here’s this year’s Halloween take-away, not counting a bucket overfilled with candy: My son found a costume he felt comfortable in. He was happy and confident enough to go through a haunted bouncy house that he’s avoided every year prior, just because he was wandering around town, a few steps behind the girl who currently makes his heart soar. She wore a flowy, spider-queen shawl that made her seem six feet tall and her first blush of deep red lipstick, exuding a feminine allure and power way far beyond her years. My son was channeling all of death’s power to prove something to her, and to himself. My son foiled death last night.