Halloween - in retrospect

 It all started with the wings.  Have you ever seen something you simply had to have?  Something you were drawn and kept returning to until you finally gave in and bought it?

A few weeks before Halloween, I came across a pair of fairy wings for sale in the costume department of one of the stores I frequent.  They were beautiful and I was enchanted.  I picked them up and put them back down again.  The next time I returned to the store they were still there and I did the same thing.  This went on for several more visits until I succumbed.  Now that I was the proud owner of these lovely fairy wings, what was I going to do with them?

My work has a Halloween party for the residents and the staff is always invited (read strongly encouraged) to dress up.  I'm not one who's big on masquerading and usually find myself sitting on the fence as to whether I will or won't dress up.   Then, something almost always comes over me and I find myself trying to come up with something at the eleventh hour the night before.  Now that I had this great prop, I decided to bypass the valley of indecision and actually prepare a costume for the day.

I put on a long blue, lacy dress, blue socks and sandals, a blonde wig with a silver cap and donned my new silvery blue wings. I added a silver and blue necklace, heavily made-up eyes with blue eyeshadow and liner and applied silver glitter gel to my face, neck and upper chest. A star-tipped silver fairy wand completed the outfit.  To my mind's eye, I was trying to be "The Blue Fairy" from Walt Disney's "Pinocchio".  I had to pull all this together very early in the morning before I left for work.  

My husband took one look at me, proclaimed me beautiful and said, "you know who you should go as, don't you?"  I, being the fish who always bites, answered innocently, "no, who?"  He wrote down on a piece of paper what he thought I should bill myself as and it was this:

          The Lady of Rising Hopes; The Fairy Princess Viagra

Oh my!  We shared a good laugh over this before I left for work.  I stuck to the "Blue Fairy" persona among the residents but I shared my husband's take on my get-up with my administrator and the office staff and much appreciative laughter was shared all around.  The old folks got a big charge seeing me dressed as I was and a few had no idea who I was--what fun.

My daughter and son-in-law invited me to join them for my granddaughter's trick-or-treating adventure.  She was dressed up as the cutest, most sparkling "Cupid" you could possibly imagine.  To me, she looked like a beautiful Valentine but what the hey.  I decided to don my costume once more and go with them.  It was refreshing to step back and experience Halloween through the eyes of a four and a half year old and feel all the enthusiasm that ensued.  I wanted to share this Halloween with my daughter's little family and get a new, not so negative perspective on this holiday which, as a child, I once adored.  I think I got just that.

This morning, I went outside and as I looked up and down the street, I was so pleased to see no traces of broken eggs or smashed pumpkins.  I really hate to see anyone's carved masterpiece reduced to a pulverized orange mess in the middle of the street.  All in all, I enjoyed this Halloween more than I have in many a year.