LA TERTÚLIA DEL QUART PIS

This writing is for the thirty-first of October, so I have no choice but to write about Halloween.

This year I’m not really doing Halloween. I don’t even have a costume. Next year though… next year I’ll be in Canada. Last year we went back for Halloween. We must have been gone a couple days, and it was incredibly awesome. We were staying with a friend, who was dressing up as a suicidal marshmallow. I designed it and made it, but even so I don’t think people will blame me for saying it turned out wonderfully. I was a transvestite lumberjack, complete with axe, scarb jacket, moustache and big gold drag queen eyelashes, and my sister was zombie Hannah Montana with a knife in the skull.

We have never gone in for store-bought costumes, us three.

Due to my nomadic lifestyle, my Halloweens have been varied. My first Halloween was when I must have been four. I dressed up as a black cat in a costume made for my grandmother by my great grandmother. It has been worn by three generations of Penneys and Carters. At that point we were in Toronto. I have very little memory of that Halloween, but I probably was fairly traumatized. Kids don’t tend to enjoy their first Halloween untill they’re home with a big bag of candy.

The next year I do remember. It was my sister’s first Halloween, her turn to be a black cat. Well, sort of. She didn’t like the tail on the pants, so she wore simple black pants, and she didn’t want to wear her bright red sweater underneath the cat top, so she just ended up wearing the hat. I was Little Red Riding hood, another costume that’s been in the family for something like sixty years. I enjoyed that Halloween rather more, as I knew what to expect and I also had a little sister to impress with my coolness and general feeling of blasé towards general Halloweenesque creepiness.

The year after that I was in grade one, my first go at school, as kindergarten hadn’t really agreed with me. That year I was Pippi Longstocking, and for some odd reason that was the year of the Pippi Longstockings in Toronto. I met three other girls who were Pippi, but I felt that they had done a bit of a sloppy job on their costumes. My mom had gone full out on mine. I had a blue fleece dress warm enough to not have to wear a coat over it, that my mother had sewed big red patched onto, mismached stripey stockinga and large red lace-up boots. We had gelled my hair out into braids, with the further support of a modifies bit of coathanger wire so my braid stuck out horizontally. We had also bought some spray-on scarlett hair-dye, so I was screamingly redhead. I don’t think I had any face paint on, being a freckly sort of person.

In Canada, there’s a whole system for Halloween in elementary schools. The morning consisted mainly of giggliness and talking about costumes, but in the afternoon we wore our costumes. We went to the library and Mr. Red, the librarian, read us a suitably scary story and then all the students went on a parade around the school. It was fun.

When I was seven we did Halloween in Reedville, Virginia. We were travelling down the ICW to the Bahamas, and we met this nice man, Spud, who had a house with a dock facing onto the harbour. He took us to see the house of a woman who decorated for holidays (Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, Halloween…) so extensively that the town of Reedville actually paid the electricity bill for the decorations. It was amazing. That year I was a witch, and my sister was a princess. After we got back to the boat with all out candy we actually saw the Northern Lights. It was weird. We’d come all the way from Canada to see them in Virginia.

My fifth and sixth Halloweens were celebrated in Toronto. We never went back to the boat before the end of hurrican season, at the begining of November. At Swansea Public School Halloween was a big deal- we all went to school in our costumes and went on a parade around the neighbourhood. In grade 3 I was a vampire, and in grade 4 I was a headless person. My grade 4 costume was pretty sweet. It looked like I had been beheaded and was carrying my head around on a plate. I totally scared a group of kindergarteners.

My seventh Halloween was also spent in Toronto. At that point we were in Spain, but we went back for a week or so. That year I was a vampire again, but it was a seriously cool costume.

On my eighth and ninth and tenth Halloween we did parties in Spain. They were okay.

Last year we went back to Canada and it was awesome beyond belief. I’ve already talked about it above.

This year I’m not doing anything, but I did help my mom and my sister make a killer Mona Lisa costume for my sister.

But next year…next year is gonna be epic. I assure you all. I have Plans.

Natalia