Yesterday, with exactly fifty days to go till October 31st, my friend and I ran out to go get materials for our Halloween costumes. Yes, I know fifty days in advance is pretty early, so early that some of the stores we visited hadn’t even gotten their Halloween sections together yet, but we were just so excited to celebrate our favorite Holiday.
Growing up in the United States, Halloween was (and still is, for that matter) an enormous part of my childhood. I always looked forward to the time of year when I could finally start planning my Halloween costume. I don’t know exactly why, but I have always loved dressing up in costume. I think part of it is the joy I get from designing and creating my own costumes (which I always make myself).
I’ve put together lots of fun costumes over the years, but a few favorites always come to mind. One of my first Halloweens, I was a black cat, a simple costume with store-bought ears and black crayon whiskers. A few years after that I decided to go as a Ninja, figuring out how to tie a t-shirt to form a ninja mask (a surprisingly useful skill to have), and ransacking my closet for every piece of black clothing I owned. While I was in Middle and in the midst of my hard-core my Percy Jackson phase, I went as Medusa one year (making my snake-hair out of pipe cleaners) and Athena the next (that costume involved lots of gold spray paint; which never dried. And shed. EVERYWHERE.). And of course I’ve gone as my favorite warrior-princess, Wonder Woman, multiple times.
But, now that I am growing older, I find myself in wondering if this my last Halloween. If I’m “too old” to be trick-or-treating or dressing up on Halloween. Some of my friends have younger siblings that we take can take trick-or-treating as a sort of explanation for our age, but I don’t think that will be the same. This knowledge makes me sad, partly because it is part of a bigger realization; the realization that, like it or not, I am growing up, and my life is changing.
And then I remember. I remember all that making my own Halloween costumes over the years has taught me; how it is has led to my love of costume-making and cosplay. I remember that I can always attend Comic Con in costume; where there is no “too old” and five-year-olds and fifty-year-olds alike come dressed as characters from their favorite books, movies, and TV shows. I remember that this isn’t my last Halloween. Even if I might not trick-or-treat after this year, I will continue to celebrate the Holiday in new ways, and I will continue making and dressing up in costumes. If there is one thing I’ve learned from my experience so far with becoming older, it is that growing up doesn’t always mean leaving your childhood experiences behind so much as it means redefining those experiences in new and often exciting ways.
So no, I have a feeling that, no matter what the future holds, this is not my last Halloween.
I hope you enjoyed this post, and would love to hear what you think about it. You can check out my blog, Nerd Word, for more personal essays and musings similar to this post along with book reviews and just nerdy talk in general!
-Minerva
2 comments
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteDon't let anyone deter you in your quests for free candy !! You are never to old to dress up...NEVER !!
ReplyDeleteAlanna, my dear, you are a very gifted storyteller, keep up the blog...its marvelous!
xo
Howard Stark