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Halloween is my idea of hell on Earth, or at least hell inside my head. This personalized version of Dante's Inferno is not just populated by goblins and ghouls, but also bumblebees and superheroes, each one requiring their own wings, capes, horns and appropriately coloured unitard. And just like the fabled hell of my childhood Sunday school, Halloween is wrapped up in guilt and personal failure.
My success in the workplace has led to my domestic downfall. I have a demanding career as a writer, which prevents me from arriving home before 5:30 most days. Usually, this is when a new weather system is moving through the house. My son is saying farewell to the last breezy moments of good behaviour, and he is about to erupt into a tornado that empties baskets full of folded laundry and puzzle boxes boasting 1,000 tiny pieces. While trying to run damage control on a toddler, I am also attempting to assist my six-year-old in her daily reading homework. It's an absolutely exhausting form of multitasking, like doing finepoint embroidery while playing drums for the Rolling Stones.
So, once a year, my permanently fatigued heart suddenly fills with dread as pumpkins appear in shop windows and everybody's lattes. Those orange globes of doom are a constant reminder that I must now add a search for a perfect costume to the daily regimen of responsibilities. At the same time, there is a societal amnesia that many, if not most, moms work outside the home. If a spell is cast at Halloween, then it's one that makes the year 1952 all over again. Acquaintances are earnestly surprised that I don't own a sewing machine or know how to craft gossamer wings from a pair of nylons.
My inability to sew, glue and staple a fairy costume out of an egg carton is even more of an egregious personal failing, because I grew up in a crafty home. A trained doctor, my mother aspired to be a hippie and she spent her summers dipping candles and brewing apple sauce. My father, on the other hand, was a Mennonite, a serious people known for building barns as a form of leisure activity. So whether it was crocheting, woodworking, leather crafting or weaving, I had both nature and nurture on my side.
However, my 19th-century homesteading skills begin and end with my ability to knit misshapen scarves. This means my children's only option for a handcrafted Halloween costume is an ill-dressed snowman. And even thinking about the logistics of a carrot nose makes my heart droop.
Drew Shannon for The Globe and Mail
Don't get me wrong, as a political and philosophical statement against a dependency on the industrial disposable clothing complex, I absolutely support the crafts. Just the other day, a childless friend was commenting about how she despised the commercialization of Halloween: children acquiring their packaged costumes in outlet stores to be transformed into the latest marketing success by Disney Inc. In principle, I agree with her – I mean, hating commercialization is as easy as loving puppies. Except, of course, if your child wants you to sew a puppy costume complete with ears and tail. Then puppies and their furry ilk are not welcome in my home.
But there is a basic self-defeating flaw in my hating the commercialization of holidays such as Halloween, because corporations are now simply doing the work that used to be the domain of women. Cookies, decorations, even costumes, all used to be the charge of the mother who stayed at home to raise children. And if the popularity of Valium prescriptions was any indication, some of those housebound moms of the apparently idyllic 1950s and 60s weren't entirely content. So as much as I hate commercialization, my sanity, and my eight hours of sleep, desperately depend on it.
And yet, even while believing that the expectations placed on all mothers are as utterly unrealistic as the stainless-steel kitchens of home-decorating TV shows, I do still long for the time and energy to create a homemade Halloween devil suit complete with a sequined forked tail. This cognitive costume contradiction is the hell inside not just my head but also my heart.
The only salve to my guilty conscience is that my children seem entirely happy with the costumes that arrive via the postman. Their enthusiasm still bubbles like a witch's cauldron to wander the streets of our marginally spooky Victoria neighbourhood to be offered candies by our mostly retired and elderly neighbours. And despite their online-ordered superhero suits, my offspring still carry their plastic buckets of candy like real pirates claiming a king's ransom. But the one thing I am absolutely convinced that my children would notice is if their mother was exhausted and ill-tempered from having tried and failed to make a mouse's tail out of a coat hanger.
So instead of having my own heart dress up as a ghoul for Halloween, I will put away my ill-used glue gun and click my way to a costume. Last year, I bought my daughter a Wonder Woman outfit that came with golden bracelets. The good news is the outfit didn't end up in a costume cemetery after Oct. 31. In fact, my son still loves to don the blue tutu included in the online costume package. I only wonder sometimes: If my son can be Wonder Woman, then why can't I?
Jean Paetkau lives in Victoria.