UNDERACHIEVING MOMS DREAD HALLOWEEN

    

Halloween presents a particular kind of challenge for the underachieving mom.  While I adore spending time with my children -- gabbing about their day, tossing a ball around, and examining dead worms – I can’t get it up to do the flashy stuff that requires real effort.  I’m the mom who brings paper napkins for the school potluck. I recently had to buy all of my allotted raffle tickets for a school fundraiser because I forgot to sell them to my friends.  I don’t order books from the school catalogues because the print on the order form is too tiny to read.   Last week, at Show and Tell, my three-year-old son elaborately opened his fists to reveal that he had brought “nothing” to show, because I forgot that Wednesday is the day kids drag in their loot.

            Halloween makes me tense because it’s a time when my shortcomings become even clearer to teachers, other parents, and playmates of my children.  I bought a couple of pumpkins this year, but I don’t plan on carving them.  I can’t deal with all that pulp.  The one pumpkin I attempted to eviscerate in a moment of uncharacteristic holiday zeal two years ago, molded and caved in two hours later.  It sat in my sink for a week turning black.  I have learned from past experience not to do any theme decorating in our apartment, unless I can live with torn orange streamers mocking me in the middle of July. I use a pilfered hotel “Do Not Disturb” sign to discourage trick-or-treaters, since I’m awkward with any children but my own.    

But all these issues are minor compared to the drama that inevitably revolves around the costumes.  I started the conversation early this year and have been trying to manipulate my two sons into wanting to dress as something that requires very little money or effort.  Certainly, I could spring for those flammable cheapy plastic masks and pullover things at K-Mart, but lazy as I am, I can’t bring myself to dress my children as advertisements for TV shows they aren’t allowed to watch.  I suggested that my six-year old wear a shirt and a tie and go as a politician, but he wants to be a komodo dragon.  I told my three-year-old that I could paint some bruises on his arms and legs and he could go as a kid who falls down a lot.  But he wants to be a red cat because a friend of ours works at the Red Cat theater downtown and he’s been obsessed with the image ever since he heard of it.  I’m figuring that we’ll do red sweats and a few whiskers drawn on with a lip liner for the cat.  The Komodo dragon is going to require some re-imagining of a T-Rex costume we cobbled together for the older one last year.

            Things used to be a whole lot easier for underachieving moms.  I’m the daughter of one and it seems like she had a whole lot more like-minded company in the sixties.  One year, she and my dad couldn’t be bothered to take us door to door.  They gave my brother and I some crepe paper and newspapers and told us to take it upstairs and make a different costume for each time we came back down into the living room. I still remember my parents talking about their day, drinking martinis, throwing candy at us each time we emerged in our paper creations.  The next day my mother told our neighbor about our evening.  She was very impressed and passed on her own timesaving tip; “I threw a black wig on Grace and told her to go as her evil twin.”

            I long for the days when you could throw a sheet over a kid and to make him a ghost or dot eyeliner on his chin to make him a hobo.  The Halloween my brother and I spent in our paper get-ups is the only one that either one of us really remembers.  Not because we were traumatized by our parents’ lack of industry or by the fact that our pillowcases were only filled with M & Ms and a couple of walnuts. But because the family was celebrating together on its own peculiar planet, and because we all share a passion for the unsought moment that requires very little effort.