Image by Juushika Redgrave via Flickr

A favorite Halloween costume memory has to do with the year that my son, Robert,  and daughter, Kristin, and I did some fun research on Native American clothing, the Haida tribe being in our cutural heritage. We worked together to find appropriate designs, colors, and decorations, and worked on the costumes together for about a month. I had read in the paper that the local theater group in town offered to do Halloween makeup for kids on Halloween morning as a fund raiser – that sounded great to me! So, as a finishing touch to all the time and effort we had put in to their Native American costumes, we drove to town the morning of Halloween and the kids waited in a long line at the theater to have makeup applied.  An hour later, Kristin came out happily sporting braided hair,  her face painted with a couple of colored stripes; Rob came out with a completely white face, black circled eyes, bright red lips with ‘blood’ dribbling down his chin and vampire teeth! I stared in complete shock and asked why he had vampire make-up on? He said, “They asked me what I wanted to be for Halloween, so I told them. I forgot I was going to be an Indian.” I didn’t realize until that minute that I had never clearly asked either child “What do you want to be for Halloween?” I had said “Would it be fun to (insert my idea here)?” and they had said yes.
We went home, then, to find Rob some black material for a cape, a white t-shirt and black jeans. He practiced making scary faces in the mirror the rest of the afternoon. Both kids had full candy bags at the end of the night, and Mom learned a lesson.