Costume's Through My Lifetime

Ah, Halloween, Hallows Eve, Day of Terror… whatever you want to call it, I think almost everyone in the world can say Halloween is one of the best holidays around! It comes with leaves on the ground, pumpkins, family time, and getting to stay out late! What kid, adult, dog, goldfish, wouldn’t enjoy the fun traditions that Hallows Eve has to offer?! I know for a fact my twin and I find it to be one of our top favorite holidays!

Since I was born, I loved Halloween and so did my twin. Pumpkin carving with my dad, making oven roasted pumpkin seeds, scary movies (my dad and sister anyway, I HATE scary movies to this day) but especially getting to dress up in costume’s and getting to go trick or treating! We started out the same, baby skunks one year, a kitten costume the next. We didn’t have a choice; we couldn’t talk (babies tend to have that struggle) and my Mom and Dad didn’t know our personalities yet. We were put in matching costumes for a few years until we were old enough to start requesting our costumes.

Eventually being polar opposite showed itself the most through costume choice and though we still loved being able to go trick or treating together our costumes were night and day. I loved being dressed up as Glinda, a Princess and Sleeping Beauty. Anything fairy tale, beautiful and magical you could think of I wanted to be it. My sister? A Pokémon, The Corps Bride, a frog (I think or maybe she was a turtle). The point is our very different personalities shined every day but was brightest every October 31st.

What made Halloween even more special, was not only did I get to enjoy it with my twin by my side through almost all of childhood, but my mom always made our costume! Every year, she would ask us what we wanted to be for Halloween and then take us to Joann Fabrics and let us flip through every pattern book they had. If she ever got impatient, she never showed it. She would let us pick our fabric out and get to work at the beginning of every October. To this day I still think her costumes beat out store bought! There was one year she didn’t make my costume, I wanted store bought for some reason.

As I get older, I still enjoy asking her to make my costumes (I even asked her if she could possibly make mine this year). I still wear them too, one’s she made from when I was fourteen (I’m five foot five inches and stopped growing around that time). It’s crazy that they still fit! It has definitely made it so much easier to make last minute plans to go out for Hallows Eve, having five options to choose from. No one even has to know that they’re years old!

My sister and I are both grown now, so we don’t spend Halloween together like we used to and with Covid-19 that hit and cancelled almost every holiday so far this year, I am, however, still ecstatic to be celebrating another Halloween. Throwing on a costume and maybe throwing a virtual party, where friends, family and all lovers of this spooky holiday can still socially distance yet still come together safely to enjoy a haunting time during a haunting time. Though this year will sadly mark the second time my Mom isn’t making my costume, I am happy to be going as my favorite character, Mandalorian. With Baby Yoda by my side and with the safety of my helmet I wish you all a safe, fun and spooky Halloween. This is the way.