Halloween used to be so easy. My son, Connor, was crazy about fire trucks when he was small. He wore his Party City fireman costume two years in a row. One year he was Dracula, and other than a can of black spray paint from Party City, his costume was your typical Party City Dracula. “Not bad” I thought, reviewing my makeup work, applying some red goop to his face for blood and darkening his normally blonde eyebrows.
Then one year, Lianne changed all that. We have a lot of long conversations here, between our lunches; our waiting in clients’ lobbies for meetings; our trips to theaters like Marriott, Theatre at the Center or First Folio, so we all know each other pretty well. One evening on the way home from a press opening, Lianne told us about how her sister was once a vending machine for Halloween. Apparently, she had gotten a cardboard box and taped candy to it. It seemed fun, and easy.
I mentioned it to Holly, who is our Pinterest queen. She can also find anything on YouTube if it smacks of creativity. The next day, she found a “how to” video on how to make a – well, rather elaborate vending machine. I went home and told my kids, and Ava was elated to be a candy vending machine. Since Connor always begged for pop, I thought he might enjoy being a pop vending machine. He wasn’t as excited about it but he agreed. I made Ava’s costume, and Holly made Connor’s. The process wasn’t too hard. I bought the pop, candy, and even an LED light to light the vending machines.
Good enough. But we didn’t really think about the kids having to bend down to get the candy part. People often leave candy on their porches if they are not home, and a lot of the Trick or Treating consisted of Ava saying, “Uh oh, it’s a bowl on the porch. How am I going to bend?” with me having to fetch the candy up the stairs. One of the funniest memories I have of that Halloween is of Connor going to get some candy on a porch. On the lawn, there was a large decoration of a grim reaper complete with a pitchfork positioned next to the bowl. Connor leaned down to get the candy, and the “decoration” turned out to be a teenager playing practical jokes on the kids. He jumped up and said “Boo!” and Connor went flying backwards landing on the lawn on his back. There he wiggled and kicked, trying to get up as only an overturned turtle could do. In his rectangular vending machine costume, he was immobile until I pulled him up. If only I had videotaped this moment, it could have been a YouTube sensation.
The next year, Ava decided that homemade costumes were the only way to go. She had found a pink cupcake online that she wanted to be. I purchased a laundry basket from Target, along with some pink tulle, and some brown felt from a fabric store. It was lightweight and easy to construct, to be honest. Since Sweet Mandy B’s is our favorite bakery, we went there and got a bakery box, applied the bakery’s logo stickers, and she wore it on her head as a hat. Her friends really liked the costume, because they are as big of fans of the bakery as Ava. I took her over to Sweet Mandy B’s to show the owner, but Ava got nary a pink cupcake from her. But the employees thought it was cute and put Ava’s photo on their Facebook page.
From there, Ava decided that I was somehow a combination of Nancy Missimi and Frances Maggio (two of the hottest costume designers in Chicago theater, in case you don’t know them). Connor had already decided that he was too old for homemade costumes. In 2013, Ava chose a picture that she had found online of a claw machine – you know, the one that you drop your life savings in to try to get the claw to pick up a fifty cent stuffed animal. It seemed a mighty task, but the Mom in me made me say, I’m up for the challenge.
So, the process. One trip to UPS to buy three different boxes, not knowing which would be the right size. Stuffed animal search and negotiating with said daughter as to which stuffed animals she was ready to lose from her mighty collection to use in the contraption. Two hairbands foiled and strung to make a “claw”. One broken Atari set found for the control. Nine hours of late night hellish taping and wrapping. At last, the creation was done, and I was pleased with it.
When I was a kid, the first and only time you got to wear your Halloween costume was on Halloween. Now kids have three and four events each holiday. Ava’s first event was her school’s Halloween party. In a test run, she said the box didn’t feel good on her shoulders. So at 9:30pm the night before, off I went to Walgreen’s for sponges to hot glue and insert in top of said costume. Ah, what we won’t do for our children.
Then – the big night. Opening night for the little claw machine. No klieg lights, no red carpet – but a warm glow came out of noisy St. Clement School inviting us in for a great festive party that we would all remember. My daughter, only 7 years old, walked in holding my hand. We made it down the stairs. Then, she immediately took off her costume, proclaiming, “It’s too heavy.” From there, she ran off with her friends, leaving the claw machine in the basement’s make shift carnival room, in a corner.
Well, no amount of cajoling would get that child to wear that costume. It sat sadly there, sort of like its own tribute to “The Land of the Misfit Toys” in Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. But, fate would smile on the little creation, because pre-school children thought it so realistic, thinking that it was a real claw machine, and my lovely daughter had left it in the CARNIVAL room after all. Now, I didn’t see this; I only heard about it from other moms, but I guess that when the claw didn’t actually descend, the children decided that they could just pull off the hot glued stuffed animals, so there I found it at the end of the night, pathetically deflocked of its stuffed animal menagerie.
With a huge sigh and a lot of perseverance (and my typical Irish stubbornness) I re-built and re-engineered the claw machine the next day, and told Ava that she WAS GOING TO WEAR THE DAMN COSTUME or not go trick or treating. You know, us moms have our way with words, when we want to – tee hee! And I added that I would never, ever make another homemade costume. By the end of the weekend, she had already started brainstorming what she would be the next year.
The next year, like the pain of child birth, I somehow forgot about the threat I had made the previous year and when she found a Lego costume on Pinterest, I was actually relieved. It seemed so much easier than the Godforsaken claw machine. This time, I bought one box and decided if it fit, great, and if it didn’t – well, too bad. I got soup bowls from Potbelly to affix and she and I painted it in the back yard. It was really fun and easy.
This year, Holly found an easy donut costume on Pinterest. Ava is now almost eleven, so she was able to work on it pretty much herself, and one of her friends from school also made the same costume. Ava loves arts and crafting (I think I know where she got that from) and she was proud and happy to work on it with supervision.
Each year, even in spite of the work, I was always aware of how fleeting time is and how quickly my children would grow out of the Halloween costume stage, knowing how very much I would miss it. Halloween is this Saturday, and Connor and I have barely discussed it. He’s a cool eighth grader now. I’m going to go trick or treating and squeeze tightly my 5th grade donut’s hand, and relish in the stardust of youth for a little while longer.
