Me, Laura Ingalls and Why Halloween Means Way More Than We Think

I thought parenthood was supposed to keep you always in the present.

The urgent feeding and changing followed by more urgent feeding and changing, the scrapes on the playground, the Hugs, Mommy! Hugs! Kids need you in the here and now.

But I've come to realize being a parent is more like navigating a series of high and often scary footbridges back and forth between past and future.

Children draw us back to our own childhood and then a minute later push us far into the future. What will they become? Will they be OK? (Or if you are me: Am I scarring them for life?)

Halloween is one of those days where our swaying and pitching bridges steady a bit. We are more solid under our feet. 

We realize our kids understand the power of transformation better than we do. We watch them own it. They are Superman. And we helped them get there. 

My colleague Liz Taurasi is living it now with her 2-year-old son. It inspired her to write this great piece about Halloween 1974 and one alarmingly spooky Queen of Hearts costume. Liz brings us right back to the wood-paneled rec rooms of our youth where Mom could still make the world bend in our favor:

"..memories of my mother cutting the eye holes in the mask just a little larger so I could see better, and the nostrils in the nose, as well, so I could breath a little better. She would also, of course, trim the costume itself so I wouldn’t trip over it."

My mother did the same thing for me and my siblings. And it didn't matter if it was straight off-the-shelf or grand gestures of homemade costumery, when Halloween rolled around, she understood it was a magical time for us.

Which brings me to Laura Ingalls.

Born in 1971, there was plenty of Nancy Drew and Judy Blume to shape my worldview, but nothing more so than the Laura Ingalls Wilder series. 

I wished for one sweet orange and a shiny penny (and tons of toys) for Christmas. I even considered burying a potato in a fire just so I could nearly blind myself like Almanzo Wilder. Why yes I was a strange child.

So of course that's the only costume I wanted at 9 and 10 and secretly every year after, Laura Ingalls. My mother managed to create an amazing outfit from scratch. It had a period-perfect white bonnet, a white apron and a simple dress of flowered old-timey fabric. Perfect everyday wear for my hard work in the prairie sun. The fact I still can't find my one picture of it is a tragedy. 

I became Laura, pigtails and all. 

Tomorrow night we'll worry, to be sure, as we always do. About scary things that can happen and scary things that probably never will, but because it happened somewhere to someone, you just never know. It's a messed up world.

But we'll also have a moment.

We'll remember how we breathed so hard against those stiff masks we thought we'd pass out, but didn't dare take them off. 

We'll remember how our Moms only had to pick up a pair of scissors or work an old sewing machine to convince us all the power in the world existed in their hands alone. 

We'll remember when we could still be someone else entirely, if only for one night.