Halloween Party

October 29, 2011

Hi Andrea,

The weather report said rain.  All day. 

But the sun is shining, reaching through my front window, stretching across the oriental carpets and maple floor, across the desk, ending at my keyboard.  My living room is filled with light.  It invites me out.  To play.

JR ESTATE SALES OCTOBER 29 & 30 - 10-4PM Dining room table/chairs, china cabinets, lamps, recliner sofa, lift chair, 5 twin beds, queen bed set, loveseat, end tables, computer desk, lots of glassware, kitchen misc, linens, upright freezer, tool chest, some tools, medical equipment & more.

Estate Sales.  You’d think I’d shy away from these.  Searching through the remnants of a life for some small treasure I can bring to mine.  They are the highlight of a Saturday.  Cup of coffee in hand, I look through kitchen ware in search of old  pitchers, flour sack hand towel, glass bowls.  I search for hand embroidered pillow cases, cloth napkins, table clothes.  I search the bookshelves for cookbooks and entertaining fiction.  Sometimes, in the closets, I will find a blouse my size, a coat, a scarf, a hat.  Often, I come away with nothing but a sense of whose pieces of a life I have just been privy too.  Those things they left behind.

Steve is upstairs showering now.  I hear him humming. 

Music.  The sound of his contentment.

Estate Sales.  I am never sure what I might find.  I just know I need it when I see it. 

Halloween is Monday. I have not been to a Halloween Party since I was seventeen years old.  Steve has not been to one in ages either.  He has some story about a Halloween Costume Party he went to in the 70’s that was pretty wild.  He and I have been agonizing for weeks about our costumes. 

Last night we went shopping.  Goodwill, the Halloween Store, Spencers, Claires, Wet Seal.  You would love what we came up with.  He is going to me my pimp.  I am going to be is “ho”. 

It is fun to be outrageous. 

At Wet Seal I saw a little black tube skirt in the window. 

“Let’s find a salesgirl.”  I told Steve , as we entered the store.

Just about that time a young Asian woman in her early twenties, Marcia, asked if she could help us.

“My girlfriend here is looking for a Halloween Costume.”  Steve volunteered.  I was just going to ask for the little black skirt on the mannequin in the window.  No explanation needed.

Marcia turned to me, all perky with her salesgirl smile.  “So,” she asked, punctuating the so, “what are you going to be.”

I wasn’t quite prepared to answer the question, and my brain would not work fast enough to make up a lie.  “A  ‘ho’” I answered. 

The truth was priceless.

When she recovered, she got excited.  “That is so cool.”

I am now the proud owner of a black piece of elastic with a zipper up the front that I hope will cover all my naughty parts.  Some black high heel boots, fish net stocking, big feathery earrings, enough bracelets for six women.  I be stylin’. 

You would be proud of me.

I am not the mother you left behind.

Death changes things. 

Redefines. 

Refines.

Why am I 56 years old and experiencing all of this as if it were the first time? Sometimes it is.  Sometimes it is the first time in a long time.

Marriage and motherhood took much of me.  Always, there was a fight to claim some small piece of me for myself.  Everyone, and everything had first dibs on my time.  When I took a second to ask what I wanted, someone else’s needs took precedence over my own.  I did not know how to set boundaries.   I am learning now.  The agony of saying no.

Guilt I already knew.

But not today.  And not tonight.  Tonight I am going to a Halloween party as a ‘ho’ with her pimp.  I will be carefree and outrageously slutty.  I will laugh and dance. 

I will claim that small piece for me.

Release.  Relinquish.  Redine.

              Love You Andie-Hope you like the photo.

              Mom