Dear L,
For the second year in a row, we were invited to a Halloween party and Mumma had a great idea for a costume: we go as bank robbers and a bag of money.
Yaya was hired for the task, as she often is. Not pointing fingers, but the costume didn’t quite deliver the results we’d hoped for.
She presented us with a small burlap sack turned-skirt, and a long-sleeve shirt stitched in fake $100 bills. The skirt kept falling down and tripping you, but I’ll cut her some slack because you have a stumpy toddler physique and that was always going to be difficult. The shirt, however, seemed to be made with no prior knowledge of the recipient. It’s as if she forgot you:
Try to eat everything within reach, and
Have pale, sensitive Irish skin that breaks out in blotches at the slightest of irritations — which of course you did, quite liberally and effectively, the instant we put the shirt on you.
The ride to the party was less than enjoyable with your wails reverberating off the windows and dashboard. I should add halfway through the journey Mumma and I realized we were still wearing our ski masks, which in hindsight probably wasn’t helping the situation. Removing the masks only made it worse. All trust was lost after that point. The disappointment in your eyes told me this moment would now become a base memory for life and the trigger to set you down a path of face tattoos and an on-again, off-again relationship with someone called ‘Snake’.
At no point did we consider turning back. This was our first almost normal adult social outing in months. We had a tight window of freedom, maybe 1-1.5 hours to go wild, before we’d have to retreat to the nightly routine of dinner, bath, and bed; followed by two hours of cleaning dishes and picking shit off the floor (90% of parenthood).
By the time we reached our friend’s house you finally calmed down, but not because of anything we did, but because you were emotionally and physically exhausted.
You left behind a wake of ripped, tear-soaked counterfeit Benjamins in the street, which I like to imagine later served as a cruel yet hard-won lesson for some unfortunate passerby: Sometimes Halloween is all Trick and no Treat.
The miracle of simply making it to the party was overshadowed by the sobering realization that this year we wouldn’t be winning 'best group costume’. A family of four dressed as ‘Where’s Waldo?’ took the trophy. I was disappointed, but I can’t claim any foul play with the judges.
By then, the objective eye saw us for who we really were: no longer bank robbers and a bag of money, but two defeated kidnappers holding a very tired and sweaty baby.