My wife loves to decorate for holidays. In this pursuit she defines holidays broadly and widely. Valentine's Day is a holiday. It lasts three days. Easter is a holiday. She has made bunny cakes, and always makes Easter baskets, even now, when adult children are not home. At Christmas our home is always on the neighborhood tour. Halloween, however, is a favorite. She has a witch costume, and we have tomb stones, multiple pumpkins, spider webs, and even a large, motorized tarantula which elicited screams last night. We also have one item to which I cannot listen or even look at.
It is a 'doll' of a witch seated at a table writing. She has the iconified 'witchy' looks- long, hooked nose, fierce eyes, wart, black robe and pointed hat, combined with a slightly fiendish, slightly vacuous smile meant, I assume, to amuse rather than to frighten. When a button is pressed a recording plays. There is a snippet of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, than a drawn out howl, then cackling fiendish laughter. This sequence, without the music, is repeated, then a high pitched, old woman's voice says, singsong, 'happy Halloween', then laughs fiendishly again.
Just writing about this upsets me. I have never liked the item. It reminds me of my mother.
Halloween is one of several days that has rituals and images associated with it- little children happily going off in costumes to collect candy, carving pumpkins, candles, adults answering doors to the greeting of 'trick or treat'. Like every other holiday, my mother tried mightily to conform to the rituals. She tried very hard to make them fun, 'normal' in a household that was anything but. My memories of Halloween, however, are not like the stereotypes. Costumes were a yearly agony and source of despair. My mother was not a seamstress, and I think in her heart of hearts thought the entire evening a waste of time. We never bought a store costume, the mask and gown common in the '60s. Typically we ended up with sheets with holes cut in it for eyes while being shouted at about wearing our coats. Mom didn't have a great modulation between quiet and frightening. When we came home our candy was scrutinized, dumped onto the floor. Candied apples were discarded, as were any home-made treats or unwrapped items. There were too many stories about people putting razor blades in apples, or rat poison in candy, and I suppose our neighbors looked like typical homicidal maniac suspects.
My mother always had a fiercesome countenance, with glittering eyes and, until softened by age, sharp features. It is not hard to see in her the stereotypical witch, especially when she was screaming, or despairing over what to a child were ordinary parental responsibilities. That she was overwhelmed by a husband's illness, that she came from a brutally abusive background, that she had emotional issues and needs of her own that were completely ignored and unmet, was unknown and irrelevant to the child.
But behind all the turmoil, she had an enormous capacity to love. She was incredibly loyal, even to those who hurt her terribly. Like her children. And she knew life was hard, and ugly. She tried so hard to make up for it at holiday times, even though there were only four of us, then three. Her huge efforts were an attempt to compensate, wordlessly, for the agonies of the rest of the year. And we were, typically, only able to experience the shortcomings, the terrible contrast between daily life and what was supposed to be, the holiday overcompensation accompanied by agitation and, too often, hard words and tears.
My wife has made holidays happy in way that is a yearly fantasy come true for me. But that witch is nothing more than an embodiment of the contrasts and sadnesses of my mother. It is an old woman, sitting at a desk (as she sat in later years in a chair, lost in books to escape her lonely reality), scary looking and sounding, that then cackles a peculiar, belated wish for a happy Halloween. It simultaneously embodies the contrasts of my upbringing and the suffering of my mother, her desperate attempts to make the ugly beautiful, her unrequited loyalty and love.
And I can't stand it.
Ted
It is a 'doll' of a witch seated at a table writing. She has the iconified 'witchy' looks- long, hooked nose, fierce eyes, wart, black robe and pointed hat, combined with a slightly fiendish, slightly vacuous smile meant, I assume, to amuse rather than to frighten. When a button is pressed a recording plays. There is a snippet of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, than a drawn out howl, then cackling fiendish laughter. This sequence, without the music, is repeated, then a high pitched, old woman's voice says, singsong, 'happy Halloween', then laughs fiendishly again.
Just writing about this upsets me. I have never liked the item. It reminds me of my mother.
Halloween is one of several days that has rituals and images associated with it- little children happily going off in costumes to collect candy, carving pumpkins, candles, adults answering doors to the greeting of 'trick or treat'. Like every other holiday, my mother tried mightily to conform to the rituals. She tried very hard to make them fun, 'normal' in a household that was anything but. My memories of Halloween, however, are not like the stereotypes. Costumes were a yearly agony and source of despair. My mother was not a seamstress, and I think in her heart of hearts thought the entire evening a waste of time. We never bought a store costume, the mask and gown common in the '60s. Typically we ended up with sheets with holes cut in it for eyes while being shouted at about wearing our coats. Mom didn't have a great modulation between quiet and frightening. When we came home our candy was scrutinized, dumped onto the floor. Candied apples were discarded, as were any home-made treats or unwrapped items. There were too many stories about people putting razor blades in apples, or rat poison in candy, and I suppose our neighbors looked like typical homicidal maniac suspects.
My mother always had a fiercesome countenance, with glittering eyes and, until softened by age, sharp features. It is not hard to see in her the stereotypical witch, especially when she was screaming, or despairing over what to a child were ordinary parental responsibilities. That she was overwhelmed by a husband's illness, that she came from a brutally abusive background, that she had emotional issues and needs of her own that were completely ignored and unmet, was unknown and irrelevant to the child.
But behind all the turmoil, she had an enormous capacity to love. She was incredibly loyal, even to those who hurt her terribly. Like her children. And she knew life was hard, and ugly. She tried so hard to make up for it at holiday times, even though there were only four of us, then three. Her huge efforts were an attempt to compensate, wordlessly, for the agonies of the rest of the year. And we were, typically, only able to experience the shortcomings, the terrible contrast between daily life and what was supposed to be, the holiday overcompensation accompanied by agitation and, too often, hard words and tears.
My wife has made holidays happy in way that is a yearly fantasy come true for me. But that witch is nothing more than an embodiment of the contrasts and sadnesses of my mother. It is an old woman, sitting at a desk (as she sat in later years in a chair, lost in books to escape her lonely reality), scary looking and sounding, that then cackles a peculiar, belated wish for a happy Halloween. It simultaneously embodies the contrasts of my upbringing and the suffering of my mother, her desperate attempts to make the ugly beautiful, her unrequited loyalty and love.
And I can't stand it.
Ted
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