Halloween, his way

>I should have known how it would turn out, and yet I was as surprised as I always am when the stories begin that way.

First, I should say that I LOVE holidays.  I was one of those people who was fortunate enough to have a happy childhood, and that childhood is filled with memories of the special events that surround special days.  Moving out west meant that holidays held a bittersweet taste for me as I had to figure out how to celebrate them away from the rest of my family.  And when I say “bittersweet” I mean that I cried on most of them for the first two years.

But then I became a parent.  Suddenly the idea of holidays was exciting again.  We could do all those things that I did growing up!  We could pass on traditions that the kids would love as much as I did!

Sebastian obliged for the first year, more or less.  He let us dress him in a pumpkin suit for the his first Halloween, took a bite of oatmeal on his first Thanksgiving, pulled on the wrapping paper for his first Christmas.  He did it all again with slightly more enthusiasm the second time around, but still with no real awareness of the holiday. Each time I thought how it would be even more fun when he was old enough to really participate, get excited with me, and actually do the traditions I remembered doing.  This is going to be the best year yet! I told myself.

The kid loves to eat and he’s starting to play pretend, so Halloween is going to be awesome, right?  We’ll get to go trick-or-treating for the first time!  Hurray!

So we go to the consignment store to pick out a Halloween costume.
“Do you want to be a lion or a tiger?” I asked him.  Those were the two that were the right size and not too odd.
“No tiger,” he said.
“Ok, so a lion, then?”
“You don’t want to be a lion.”
I try to explain.  “You dress up as a lion or a tiger and then you go to the neighbors’ houses and you get CANDY.”
“You don’t want to pretend to be a lion or a tiger,” he tells me.

And that’s the point at which I definitely should have known how it would turn out.  Because you already know, don’t you?  You can see it coming, even if I could not.

I bought the lion costume.  We’ll figure it out later, I told myself.  Some weeks passed.  I brought it up every so often, how he was going to be a lion for Halloween.  I even got him to say what he would pretend to be and what a lion says and he seemed all set.  But any time I tried to put the costume on him?  “You don’t want to be a lion!” he said, in an admittedly good imitation of said beast.

As we got closer, we were looking for a bear costume for our baby bear and my mom stumbled across a Thomas the train costume.  Sebastian is all about Thomas, so we gave him a choice to be the lion or Thomas.  He chose Thomas, of course, and I thought that maybe the problem was just that he wasn’t that into the lion.  But now he was all set and we could do Halloween!  Hurray!

The holiday arrived.  We had picked out the pumpkins, bought the candy, and chosen the costumes.  Except that Sebastian refused to be Thomas.  He would SAY he wanted to be Thomas, was going to be Thomas, but “no, thank you” to actually putting on the costume.

We tried to practice trick-or-treating so that he got the idea and got excited.  He happily trick-or-treated around the living room to each of the three adults, pretending to ring the door bell, saying the famous words, and getting his piece of candy for his little pumpkin pail.  But try as we might, we could not convince him to put on the costume or do anything really except state that he wanted whatever candy we had just given him.  We gave him a little piece of a Three Musketeers with his dinner.  He was sold on the candy part, no problem.  But the costume?  “NO, THANK YOU!”

We explained that you have to wear the costume in order to get the candy.  We practiced again and again.  He finally agreed to wear the hat.  Then as he practiced one last time, I slipped the costume on and took a picture while he examined his practice loot.

And then he was done.  I took it off, and figured we’d just carry it along with us as we went trick-or-treating.

It didn’t really hit me until we were walking up the steps of the neighbor’s house.  Practice wasn’t going to matter in the least.  Sebastian wasn’t going to do this.  He hates talking to strangers.  He gets shy if people say hi to him in grocery stores, he cries if they get too close to his personal space.  He loves his family and the friends he sees often, but everyone else is suspect.

So the idea that this kid was going to wear strange clothes, go up to anyone’s house, say trick-or-treat and thank you, and do this repeatedly?  Was completely ridiculous.

We went to the house of neighbors we see often.  He stood, mesmerized by the bowl of candy she held out for him, completely tongue-tied.  We said the magic words and chose his candy, and he said thank you and practically flew down the steps and away.

But wait!  What’s that you say?  You say they gave us M&Ms??

Ok, one more house.

This time he may have mumbled trick-or-treat, I’m not sure.  He definitely said thank you when he got M&Ms again.

And that was it.  It was time to go home.  “But there are more houses,” we told him, “and we can get more candy.”

He looked in his pumpkin pail and then up at me.  “You want some?” he said.

“Ok, let’s go to a few more houses and then we can go home and have some.”

He looked in the pumpkin pail again and up at me again.  “You want some,” he said more firmly.

So I paused for two seconds that was more like two hours as I realized what was happening here.

I was trying to make Sebastian do Halloween.  I had spent half the day convincing him to dress up, to trick-or-treat, to get candy that I didn’t even really want him to eat!  I had wanted the pictures, the celebration, the excitement, the moment.

Sebastian?  Just wanted to sit back and watch and see what this whole thing was about.  Well, that and the M&Ms.

So that’s what he got.

He snuggled up with his Gramma, ate his M&Ms, and watched the bigger kids come and go, saying trick-or-treat in their excited voices and getting their candy and racing around our street.

I’ve had to learn this before.  That my children are not extensions of me; they are their own people.  That they won’t always love what I love or do what I expect them to do.  That I have to let Sebastian be Sebastian.

And you know what?  He did love Halloween.  He loved it his way.

—
Postscript.  His brother, however, did let me dress him up.  The bear costume we found was too big, so here is our little pumpkin.