Halloween has always been a holiday I do not enjoy. As a single adult with no kids, my M.O. was to hide out at home with some Netflix in the dark, praying no one knocked on my door. I’m not really a costume person, and I hate the color orange.
But having toddlers has obviously changed that. For the third year in a row, we went with a flying-beasts theme, but this year, I did not convince myself it would be cheaper and cooler to DIY it. Instead, I ordered whimsical tulle-and-felt peacock costumes off Etsy. Super cute, super Waldorfish, super interpretive.
We decided to take the girls trick or treating in Ashfield, Massachusetts, the town where I grew up. I hadn’t done Halloween there in at least 30 years.
Things have changed a lot since I was a kid in the 70s. Instead of carousing about unsupervised and getting into all sorts of sugar-enhanced mischief, the kids in my hometown now parade down Main Street en masse with their entire families in tow. The “Rag Shag Parade,” as it’s officially called (¿am I getting this right?), starts on one end at the convenience store and ends at the other at the fire station. A police car leads the way, a fire truck the caboose. Everyone lines up at the houses along Main Street, where the residents sit outside on their decorated porches, handing out candy from under thick down comforters.
Incidentally, on October 31st in New England, it is not warm, to say the least. Yesterday, I got to relive the frigid Halloweens from my childhood, where even a princess has a down ski parka on under her silks. It was way too cold for toddlers to wear just whimsical peacock costumes. I threw on their funkiest, warmest coats: a zebra number and a cheetah number. For the rest of the night, people said “Oh cute! A zebra and cheetah?” I was sure to correct every single person: “Nope. She is a peacock. They’re both peacocks. They’re peacocks wearing zebra and cheetah coats.” Dur.
Why do we spend money on Halloween costumes?
Anyway, after the exhilaration of the trick or treating, we landed at the firehouse for donuts and cider, and caught up with a few of my old friends. Wild eyed from the idea of all that candy they had amassed (but so far not eaten one iota of, thank you very much), the girls begged me for the last thing I hadn’t confiscated: red lollipops. I acquiesced, under one condition: they let me take their picture, together. That’s how we arrived here:
Eliza slept until almost 8:30 this morning, unheard of.
