Costume still has some magic for child
As soon as the calendar flipped to October, she was in a hurry. It’s Halloween, she declared. She must have a costume, and not just any costume but that of Bubbles, the blue Power Puff Girl. There was an urgency to her demand, the kind that drives pint-size bodies that must associate every month with some important event, and a fixation that causes her to focus only on when that event will occur.
Explaining that Halloween falls on the last day of October, rather than the first, and displaying a calendar for her to count the days did nothing to dissuade her. She needed that costume. Now!
You put her off until last Saturday. She just knew the party store would have it as it has everything. You doubt that anyone would carry the Power Puff Girls and after walking down every aisle you give up. But then she spots it, tucked in the corner of a bottommost shelf. Just one left and in her size.
I am so lucky, she tells the clerk.
She wants to hurry home. You rush through the rest of the Saturday errands. No sooner have you entered the house, when she whips herself into a frenzy, stripping off her jacket, shirt, jeans, shoes and ripping into the costume. On went the blue and black dress. Over her feet went the fake socks and shoes. She wrestles into the yellow hair and slaps the mask across her face. You stay out of her way, putting the rest of the purchases away.
Thump! Thump! Thump! You attempt to figure out what that noise is all about when you hear one more Thump! And then, “Ooohh, this costume doesn’t work. I still can’t fly.”
You think it funny, until she adds, “I wanted to fly out that window, up above the clouds to heaven and see my daddy.”
She’s not a child given easily to tears and there weren’t any accompanying this statement. Just disappointment and frustration. Things you wish dearly to shelter from your child, but realize that isn’t at all possible. They are just as much a part of life as the joy and hope that she brings to each of your days.
Apparently, she’d been planning this flight for nearly two weeks, the equivalent of seven years in a 4-year-old’s life. It didn’t work, and you haven’t the heart to explain Halloween is make believe because she really believed.
You wish for just a moment that she really could fly because you can almost picture the way her face would light up. The very look she used to have when her daddy scooped her through the air. You know that won’t happen. But you also know that little face still has plenty of laughs and smiles to share.
So you do what you can. You stoop down and explain that it’s just a costume. No, it won’t help her to fly, but it still has some magic.
Why take a look in the mirror. It has blond hair and blue eyes, the very traits that she always wants to trade for her dark brown hair and hazel eyes. She just knows one morning she will wake up with Barbie’s coloring. Maybe when she’s 16, she says.
But with this costume, she won’t have to wait.
And, when she wears it to a couple of parties and while trick-or-treating she can fill up bags and bags of candy.
She likes that idea. So she’ll practice that part, she says, asking once again to see the calendar and count the days when her costume will work the magic that it can.
Luanne Traud is the Herald-Standard’s editorial page editor. E-mail: ltraud@heraldstandard.com.