The weather is just about perfect for the lead up to Halloween. Suddenly much colder, rainy, with leaves slicking the streets. Dark mornings, a sense of foreboding by afternoon. Lots of staying inside and looking out into a world transformed into a blustery something, that is familiar and foreign. The fretting–would we still be able to trick or treat in the rain? Would our costumes melt before we made it to school, before the parade around the neighborhood that started just after attendance was taken?

Parents, and by parents I mean mostly mothers, lined the sidewalks for the spectacle, maybe even walking us to school since our vision was often obscured by our vacuum-formed plastic masks. Perhaps they were on standby to take our costumes home, I can’t remember. Some costumes were elaborate, I suppose. I never noticed. I shuffled along with self-conscious steps, thinking only of my own get-up, wanting, and not wanting, everyone to look at me.

Down Frederica Street, to Griffith Ave., then up Alderson Court, and in through the back door of Longfellow School. What learning could have taken place between that parade and the cupcakes some mother would bring a few hours later?

Even before elementary school, I must have been dressed in store bought costumes, the ones with the face mask attached to your head with a fiddly elastic band. The flimsy smock of a dress to show you off as a princess, or someone else pretty, worn over your clothes all twisted and uncomfortable. The costumes came bundled in plastic wrap, dangling from a hook by the cardboard top. There must have been glitter involved because it clung to my face for a couple of days.

And those masks, those false faces of torture. The eye holes than never quite matched up with your actual eyes, the way the nose holes scratched your face, the mouth hole wet with condensation. The temperatures might have been autumnal, but inside that mask it was a sauna, but so much went into choosing the costume I never complained. I thought I would be in trouble if I took the mask off. Or the magic would be gone, or something.

But sometimes the weather wasn’t blustery at all. It might be sunny and hot, remnants of a summer that just wouldn’t die. This was wrong in every way. Sunny and cool was acceptable. Hot and humid was not. I remember almost nothing about those Halloweens, except a great disappointment.

As my siblings and I got older, we were less interested in the Ben Cooper store-bought costumes, whose masks were, let’s face it, always a little bit creepy and not in a cute way. They were for babies, anyway, and we were surely not that. We began to make our own, but we put forth the least amount of effort, dipping into the rag bag for inspiration.

Our dad was a World War II buff, so we had plenty of G-issued gear–map cases, ammo belts, and helmets to choose from. Our repertoire then, ran from Army Guy to hobo. If Mother felt energetic she might burn a cork and give us five-day-old stubble, which worked for both Army Guy and hobo. That was the extent of our theatrical make-up.

When we were really little we hit our own block, then we went to our grandmother’s, who never once recognized us. After working over her neighborhood, we visited her best friend, Beulah, who didn’t recognize us, either. She invited us in anyway, and once she discovered she knew us, brought out full sized candy bars she had set aside for us. After you hold one of those – it took two hands — Trick or Treat was over. We sat on our spines on her living room sofa, sighing and resting and contented.

I have one friend who loves Halloween and the sophistication and terror of her costumes astonishes me. Last year she scratched on my backdoor all done up as a witch, screeching my name. My heart leapt to my throat –I knew it was Linda, but in truth, it took a minute.

I don’t have trick or treaters in my neighborhood now. Churches, communities host events, the “trunk or treat” outings that provide a safe environment for the little ones. I get it, but sometimes I long for a glimpse of tiny children, all scary and proud, shuffling through leaves and dragging plastic pumpkins and pillow cases, parents watchful, just outside the range of a vacuum formed mask, the illusion complete.