Halloween
...the new owner of her very own sewing machine, was helping our other roommate make his Roman senator's costume for a party. When they hit a snag, so to speak, my mother was immediately at the other end of the line, full of bobbin and pin advice. When the phone was passed to me, I swallowed my orange and black cupcake and listened to her musings about where the Bag of Costumes Past was. Someone needed a shirt or something. I have no doubt that she had what he was looking for. If not, she could always make it. * * * * * The first Halloween I can remember, I was some kind of fairy. I had a beautiful white dress on, a wood wand painted silver with silver sequins (oh my god, I loved that wand) and white wings, made of wire and mesh. In later years, I was a cheerleader (with homemade pom-poms and a yellow and blue skirt), an old lady (antique cane and a wig made of yarn) and a pirate (eye-patch, silk shirt and vest). Each year was an effort to outdo the previous one. Toward the end, it just got ridiculous. When I was 11, I was a bag-piper, complete with a kilt made from the family tartan and a set of constructed bagpipes, which were functional, not because they actually played (thankfully), but because my mother hollowed it out to hold my candy. In 6th grade, I won most original costume at school when I came as a mushroom. The bottom portion was just a regular straight sleeveless tunic that went to the floor. But the hat was brilliant. Using an umbrella with its handle and pole sawed off, she covered the cap in cotton and then in matching fabric. The base fit perfectly on my head. My final Halloween as a trick-or-treater, I was The Moon (with my best friend, The Cow, who yes, jumped over me occasionally). It was just cardboard, cut in a crescent shape, worn like a sandwich board, but with typical flare, my mother painted it an eerie blue-green, using glow-in-the-dark paint. When I felt like I'd gotten told old to trick or treat, I held on to the Halloween spirit for a few years by going to events or hanging out with friends. 10th Grade included some drama club hijinks and watching Rocky Horror. My senior year of high school, a friend and I got tickets to see the Philadelphia Orchestra. In between playing creepy classics, we watched episodes of The Twilight Zone, and Christopher Lloyd came out and read "The Raven." Things trailed off in college. Mom and I used to decorate the house with long black and orange streamers that hung in a curtain from the balcony down over the front door. She sent me a few rolls my freshman year, which I draped from the ceiling dutifully, but they'd lost their impact because they'd lost their audience. After graduating, I moved to New Hampshire for graduate school and decided that my first Halloween in New England would be done right. I bought orange and red mums, which I put out on the bench on my front porch, along with two very round and happy pumpkins (we'd gotten them at a tiny farm we discovered after meandering around back roads one night after class). I stocked up on the best candy (in my mind, mini Milky Ways and Snickers and such). And then on Halloween night, I carved my pum...