“…and that’s only some of the terror that awaits you!” goes a current ad special for Halloween. It’s followed by, “Get your tickets now!”
Would you? Buy tickets to experience extreme terror? Me? Unh-unh. NO WAY!
Halloween and I have a long and complex history. But terror was never on the menu. Heck, the first and last time I watched a horror movie, I was around twelve. My friend and I had somehow wangled her mother into letting us see an R movie. Less than halfway through, I fled the dark theater with my hands over my mouth holding down a scream. I still have nightmares that incorporate scenes from that movie and smell vaguely of popcorn. And I still cannot watch or read horror. No Haunted Houses or Pumpkin Patches for me, thank you very much.
Usually, when Halloween rolls around, I retreat into my hidey hole, until it is well past. Though I do get out now and then to take pictures of the neighborhood!
But growing up in India, at a time where few had any idea what the holiday meant other than my American mother (See my About page), Halloween was about FUN. In the tiny village in the north, where my father was the Principal of the Agricultural Extension Institute, it meant cards from my maternal grandmother, far away in America. She’d also send flat card stock decorations that would fit in an envelope. Like hissing black cats or pop-up pumpkins and ghosts of honeycomb tissue paper.
It also included carving fresh pumpkins, scooping out the fresh-smelling sticky-goopy innards into what Mom would cook down for yummy pies, and cutting out faces in the remaining shells. Planting candles in their bellies and smelling the hot wax cook the pumpkin flesh as the flame flickered through eerie eyes and toothy grins. Halloween was a family-only event as no one else in the small community understood why the heck our house suddenly featured hissing cats and ghoulish lanterns! I think our neighbors counted their lucky stars they lived a long ways away.
Years later, we moved down south to Bangalore, now known as Bengaluru and the Silicon Valley of India. Back then, it was known as the Garden City of India.
It was an honest to goodness city, with a large enough expat American population to support an American school. My mother lost no time in getting acquainted with the community, even landing a job as a Hindi teacher at the school. Which meant…we were invited to their Halloween parties!
That first Halloween, Mom made us masks and carrot noses and a wizard hat for my brother. I recycled a forest-sprite costume from a play at my own school. (We didn’t attend the American one.) Mom and Dad went traditional, she in a Swedish folk costume and Dad in his formal sherwani.
But the second Halloween was a whole different story! That was when I first experienced the terror that accompanies the holiday…
Now, my mother had lived for over a decade in that tiny North Indian agricultural village, having to be extremely resourceful in the DIY department for just about everything. And suddenly, here she was in “civilization” surrounded by people who didn’t just know what Halloween was, they celebrated it with a costume party.
She wanted to wow them. Really wow them. So, she put on her extreme creativity hat….
….and what came to mind—
Totem poles!
Huh?
You read right. Totem poles.
But how does a kid wear a totem pole to a Halloween costume party?
Easy.
Take the reinforced, corrugated paper/cardboard that was used to wrap our furniture—from our move down south. Our things had been transported to us on a train in massive wooden lift-vans, the era’s shipping containers. We had scads of moving supplies as the crates still sat in our front yard, filled with straw that provided the best play pen on the planet for us kids.
Much sneezing later, my mother had made kid-height cylinders with corrugated paper wrapped around hoops. Two holes were cut out at eye level. That is our eye level when we held the contraptions up to allow us to walk. Over the tops, she draped huge cut-out eagles of the same material, their wings drooping down on each side. All that was left to do, was show us pictures of totem poles from old National Geographic magazines and have us paint the things.
That part was a barrel of fun.
What wasn’t fun was actually wearing the “costumes.” They were lowered down on top of us in the parking lot, after we got to the function. From there on, we had to hold them up on the inside by the hoops and stumble through unfamiliar terrain only partially seen through two tiny eye holes.
Picture two odd contraptions tottering through the parking lot and into the school yard. An eerie silence descended on the crowd. Luckily, I couldn’t see much and so was spared too many of the stunned expressions and slack jaws.
But soon enough, the shock wore off and I was besieged by kids who belonged to the school. Their curiosity had reached new heights. They had to know who was whacko enough to arrive in school dressed as a… they had no idea what.
“Who is it?” they asked, bumping me and poking their fingers through the eye holes. I didn’t know a soul at this place. It was alien territory. My best defense was silence. I froze in place, too terrified to say a word while they jostled each other to reverse-peer through my eyeholes and see who was inside—impossible given the eyeholes were level with my neck when I no longer held the contraption up.
As you can imagine, the school coordinators of the party were utterly gob-smacked. They had never seen anything quite like our two teetering totem poles. They knew this sheer amazing-ness had to be recognized with some sort of prize. It was a costume contest, after all.
So, they came up with a new prize on the fly.
You’d think it might be for resourcefulness, or uniqueness, or creativity…?
Nope.
Outlandishness, even?
Nope.
Our totem pole costumes were given the prize for keeping the wearer the most anonymous.
Huh?
Well, it was true. No one knew who the heck we were. Even after we were rescued from our hot clunky claustrophobic costumes. And that was the sad irony. We were just as anonymous misfits without the costumes as within, no totem pole trauma necessary.
But this way we did get a prize!
Much as I wanted, I could not find pictures of those ill-fated totem poles. However, I did find this one of the next Halloween, by which time, my mother had given up. Or, she no longer had to prove herself having had the opportunity to wow her compatriots with her real credentials as an ex-diplomat in the American Foreign Service, and formidable linguist, comfortable in multiple languages, including Hindi.
She returned my brother to his wizard costume. But I’d outgrown the wood-sprite suit. So, a family-friend draped me in a Hawaiian grass skirt, loaded me down with leis, and instructed me on how to sway to the music with my lips tightly sucked in between my teeth.
Huh?
I had no idea where Hawaii was as I swayed in the itchy grass skirt, sucking my lips in for dear life, and wishing I were back, hidden and anonymous in my own totem pole.
(Note: Problems with cultural appropriation were not a consideration back in those dark ages.)
Many, many, many Halloweens later, I was introduced to a totally different take on the holiday—as a celebration of ancestors and the dear departed in Day of the Dead ceremonies.
Sure, there were skeletal masks galore. There was also
plenty of music and dancing,
and much communing with the dead through decorative commemorative altars, but no horror!
Instead, it was a poignant, colorful celebration that I utterly enjoyed. My favorite part
was when the organizers collected our written intentions and communiques to our own loved ones and put them into a bonfire to send them fluttering to the skies.
And one of my paintings was accepted into a juried art show themed for the season.
So, whether you enjoy getting high on horror, or partying in a wild costume, or placing offerings for your departed on a beautiful altar… Treat Yourself to a Wonderful Time…
…or Else!
In Memoriam:
And always…
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I loved reading this story of your childhood, Rilla. I laughed out loud, commiserated and learned a lot!