Years ago, I walked into a Halloween party at school, excited to see my little kindergartner dressed up for the first school holiday with his buddies. It was far tamer than my own memories. I recall Halloween parades and greasy makeup smeared all over our faces, buckets of candy and sticky fingers on the bus ride home. Back then, we called it Halloween and not Fall Celebration. We sang spooky songs like Have You Seen the Ghost of John and told stories like the one about the girl with a ribbon tied around her neck. There were masks and props, carnivals and cake walks, construction paper ghosts hanging from the hallway ceilings.
Times have changed. So have safety measures. I’m not resentful, especially in the public school arena. It’s nice to avoid the creepies. (And fake blood.) Kids probably don’t need cupcakes and rice crispy treats two hours before they go trick or treating…even if the “healthy schools” initiative seems a tad overkill. You can bet most of the veggie tray–the carrot witch fingers from pinterest some poor mother tried to turn into novelty–will end up in the trash.
On this particular day In the kindergarten room we parents milled about, admiring animal and super hero costumes and coaxing our own kids to eat healthy mini “pumpkins”–peeled clementines with a celery stem poking out of the top. We laughed and made polite small talk, ourselves dressed in our cozy fall flannels, putzing around our little ones.
This is when she walked in the room. I knew who she was, even apart from her garish witch costume and green makeup. She was Evan’s mom, and she bagged groceries at the store. A couple months before I met her as she was loading my meat, eggs, milk into the cart. Her front teeth were gone, either knocked or rotted out, and she curled her lip to cover the hole. “You ready for school?” she’d asked my five year old, and he’d dipped his head, nodding a shy yes. “My son is going be in kindergarten, too,” she told him. She mentioned the name of the elementary school and it was the same as ours. “Maybe they’ll be in the same class!” I offered.
“Yeah…I hope Evan ends up going to that school. Right now we’re staying at the women’s shelter, but I’m trying to get out of it. There just aren’t many low-income options in this town.”
My cart full of kids hinted it was time to go. I promised her I’d keep my eye out and see what I could find available. As it turned out, she beat me to it, finding a room to rent on her own. I prayed that we might not lose contact. As fate had it, our kids were in the same class.
And here she was, decked out as a witch, purple hair topped with a pointy black hat, wart and all.
I could tell she was making the room parents uncomfortable. They huddled a little tighter around their kids, making louder the lighthearted conversation to pry the wondering eyes of small children off the witch in the room. “Oh, I looove your purple pumpkin and orange cat, Joshua!”
Detecting the awkward interference, I walked over to her and welcomed her. “You made it! I’m so glad! We’re just having treats and playing games,” I said, walking her toward the snack table. “Clementines and celery, can you believe it? Everyone is either allergic to the good stuff or it’s been banned.”
It occurred to me that she was equally surprised to walk in a room where none of the parents looked like anything but parents. Where was their Halloween spirit? With false bravado and all the help of a costume and makeup she’d procured, she smiled her toothless smile and whispered to me, “I thought everyone was supposed to dress up.” I waved it off and handed her an orange, pretending it didn’t matter a bit.
“Where’s Evan? Is he the one dressed up as Darth Vader?” I said. She beamed and pointed at the little guy. Immediately he saw her are ran to her, hugging her legs.
Guilt rushed through my veins. I felt my cheeks turn red, ashamed for unconsciously judging Evan and his mom’s neediness. This was a great divide, and I was in limbo. Do I rest on the side of a scary-looking witch or with the well-mannered and well-dressed? Does my desire to fit in create friction when it comes to accepting and integrating people on the fringes?
In a heartbeat, I saw a mama who cared more about what her boy thought than what everyone else around was murmuring. I saw a boy who watched his mama show up for his first school party. I saw the mom I wanted to be, the lowest common denominator, no pretense, a soft place to land.
I saw a hint of something unseen. I’ve been chasing after it ever since, searching for the unknown. The place where I could take my shoes off more often because it was holy ground. One glimpse of it was far more beautiful than anything I saw in the cool, unaffected parents at school. They could have a thousand things: nice clothes, a reliable car, a manageable number of evenly-spaced kids, a flexible work schedule, hobbies–a lot, from outward appearances. They had the advantage of being able to drop in, nonchalant, to the kindergarten Halloween party. But there was some kind of secret sauce in Evan’s mom’s struggle. She held her kids far more precious, because she knew the fragility of life. There wasn’t an ounce of arrogance in her appearance because life had never afforded her the opportunity. Everyone else’s standards could be damned; she’d dress up as a witch and surprise Evan.
I’ve learned a lot from people who don’t have their lives together. People who don’t fake it till they make it. I used to be scornful of this very type, probably because from childhood I desperately wanted to have it together. I thought satisfaction came from upping the ante and anticipating success around every corner. But how many corners does a person have to turn before it is enough? How many ways can I get everything right–my way–but still be ultimately wrong? How could I ever look someone level in the eye when I’m not willing to compromise on my high standards? Entitled living and patronizing words–it’s a ruse–and it’s not kind. It for sure doesn’t fool the underprivileged.
If you are a person who has it all together and hangs out with other people who have it all together, don’t you sense this? That you are missing out on valuable–priceless, even–by avoiding a world of misfits? That perhaps you are your own joy-stealer? Maybe we must first drop the illusion we have something superior planned for our lives.
What about Halloween, public school, poverty–you name it–are we so afraid of? Doesn’t God hide treasures in the unassuming fields and wait for us to find them and dig up the pearls?
I have become curious about the things unseen. We live in a physical world, so it’s easy to spend our lives pursuing what we can perceive, that which appeals to our senses. But if we only go after what our eyes can see and our fingers can touch, we’ll only ever understand one side. We will never understand what is unseen, which is equally (or maybe even more) important as what is seen. There is a whole other side to life when the coin is flipped. But none of the unseen things will ever be brought to light if we don’t go out and start digging in the dirt.
One by one He took them from me,
All the things I valued most,
Until I was empty-handed;
Every glittering toy was lost.
And I walked earth’s highways, grieving
In my rags and poverty
Till I heard His voice inviting,
“Lift your empty hands to Me!“
So I held my hands toward heaven,
And He filled them with a store
Of His own transcendent riches,
Till they could contain no more.
And at last I comprehended
with my stupid mind and dull,
That God COULD not pour His riches
Into hands already full!
-Treasures, Martha Snell Nicholson
