It was 1:15 a.m., on October 31st, and I was laying across my sewing table with an expanse of lavender fleece under my cheek. I could have been drooling, but I wasn’t awake enough to sense the feeling of salvia, skin and related boundaries. I had told myself, “Never again” in the wee hours of my Halloween costume making marathon last year and yet there I was wrestling a cheerleader costume out of a few yards of fuzzy fabric. I figured if my 6-year old string bean girl was going to be exposing some skin, give or take a few inches of skirt, the long sleeves I had insisted upon, and the vagaries of Vermont weather, I’d make sure what was covering her was really warm. At this point in my nocturnal sew-fest, I had completed the top and was pulling the skirt together.
Two hours prior, I had been making buttonholes on my nine-year-old daughter’s olive green, pioneer dress. Of course 11:15 p.m. is a tough time to be learning how to attach a buttonhole foot to your sewing machine for the first time and discovering new points of reference on the dials. While it isn’t exactly brain surgery, I’ve typically found that rested neurons facilitate new learning. Thankfully, I took the pattern’s advice and did a test drive on some fabric scraps. Twenty minutes later, I was hopeful that the manual’s statement “Buttonhole-making is a simple process that provides reliable results” wasn’t simply positive techno-dribble. With tentative confidence, a deep, tired sigh and the thought, “No guts, no glory,” I attempted my first buttonhole on the actual dress. The buttonhole foot got stuck on the length section, and before I realized it, I had produced an accurate, tightly threaded, but too short buttonhole. Within 15 minutes, I had sewed the actual button on top of the buttonhole, attached an eye and hook underneath and went on to the next one trusting that things had to improve. They did. By this time, the now familiar mantra was circling in my brain about every 10 minutes, “Never again. Never again. Next year will be different.”
Of course, I had tried to make it different this year. When I had opened our new calendar on January 1st, I had written “Halloween Costume choices” at the top of the September page. Then on the first weekend in October, I had written “Halloween Costume patterns and fabric.” About mid-September, I used all the appropriate buzz words in a conversation. I told the girls that Halloween was “next month,” asked if they wanted to be “creative” and make their own costumes, and indicated that one way or the other, we’d decide “early” on the specifics.
When the first weekend in October came, we revisited the conversation, but went to the swimming pool instead of the fabric store. At the time it made sense, because the costume choices to date were fairly low tech. My eldest daughter, Kate, was going to be a farmer of her own design, although she requested I make her a pioneer costume “just for playing in,” having recently become a big fan of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. The littlest, Eliza, wanted to be a “toymaker in a dress with high heels.” My first thought was to convert the Glinda Goodwitch dress from a previous Halloween and pair it with an apron and tools. So, I was looking at making an apron with pockets for the toymaker’s little wooden crafts and tools, and a pioneer dress without a specific deadline. It all sounded workable, easy, an out-breath.
Several more days melted away, and finally we drove to the fabric store on October 22nd, a chilly, wet Sunday afternoon in which everyone was a little cranky and tired. After admiring the specific Halloween fabrics: slippery polyesters with flying witches or bats, and black fleece with pumpkins, all strategically placed at the store entrance, we went to the pattern section and began searching for our patterns. Big mistake. All of a sudden the girls were presented with an array of pink and purple clad princesses, gender-bender pirates, cutesy bugs, and fleece puppies and kittens. Looking in their suddenly fervent (or was it feral?) eyes, I knew we were into mission creep. Once Eliza spotted the perky red and white cheerleader costume and started with, “Mommy, I think I want to be…” I knew our toymaker was in retirement. Kate held fast to the pioneer girl costume, but suddenly wearing it for Halloween was becoming a possibility. In the bright fluorescent lights and the haze of my Mom-brain, I lost perspective on what we had previously decided or the capacity to set clear boundaries. We were in it, and I wanted to be “the good Mom,” whatever that means. We purchased patterns, fabric, and notions (a moniker which I wish meant that I had half a notion about what I was really doing) and once again, I was at the start line of my Halloween costume-making marathon.
After a week balanced between regular life commitments and ironing, pinning, cutting, and sewing, then ironing, pinning, cutting, and sewing some more, I ended up on October 30th breathless and just a tad stressed with a ways to go. At 2:30 a.m. on October 31st, I called it a night. The pioneer dress was ready to wear and the “peace” cheerleader outfit, as Eliza and Kate had named it, complete with a peace sign on the chest, were finished. On the eve of Halloween, Kate went as a self-designed farmer, and Eliza headed outdoors bare-legged into the 55 degree weather, with a smile and a cheer her sister had made up: “From the east—— to the west, peace is the very best. Gooooooo Peace!” I felt an enormous sense of relief, blended with equal amounts of joy and fatigue.
And on November 5th, I know this for sure: Next year will be different.