Grandma was 79 by then and still living in the same house. The roof had been replaced, the old furnace was finally gone, and her sewing machine sat mostly unused because arthritis and weaker eyesight had slowed her hands.
Sophie wore a witch costume, and Caleb was a dinosaur. Both came from a store, and Grandma judged them like a serious contest official, praising the cape and acting terrified when Caleb roared.
Then she brought out a photo album that held my entire Halloween history. The kids flipped through pages of my homemade Halloween costumes while I tried to defend my dignity.
Sophie said my superhero mask looked strange, then quickly called it vintage once Grandma admitted she had made it. Caleb decided my robot costume made me look like a microwave with legs, and Grandma laughed until she cried.
One Simple Question That Stopped Her
Then Sophie asked Grandma what she used to dress up as when she was a little girl.
The laughter faded. Grandma quietly closed the album and admitted she never really had a costume at all.
She grew up as one of five children. Her father worked in a machine shop, and her mother took in laundry. They had enough to get by but nothing extra, and her parents thought Halloween was a waste of good money.
So each October, she sat by the front window and watched other children walk past as cowboys, princesses, ghosts, and witches.
Sophie asked if she had ever asked for a costume. Grandma said she tried once, and her father told her she already had clothes.
Caleb was outraged on her behalf. Sophie asked if it made her sad, and Grandma admitted it did, a little, before tapping Sophie’s hat and saying she got over it.
I stared at the album. Ten years of homemade Halloween costumes suddenly looked completely different.
She hadn’t been making homemade Halloween costumes only because we were poor. She had been giving me the very thing she was never allowed to have.
A Secret Plan and a Forgotten Shoebox
I asked Grandma to take the kids trick-or-treating without me, blaming an upset stomach. She pointed out that I had seemed perfectly fine moments earlier, rolled her eyes, and headed out with a grandchild on each hand.
As soon as the door closed, I told Natalie my plan. Grandma was finally getting a costume of her own, and we had about 90 minutes to make it happen.
While Natalie searched the closets, I went into Grandma’s bedroom. Under the bed, behind a pair of old slippers, I found a soft-cornered shoebox tied with a faded orange ribbon.
Inside were black-and-white photos of Grandma as a girl of eight or nine. Beneath them were folded pages covered in a child’s drawings.
One showed a woman in a star-covered gown with a pointed hat and a wand. Across the top, in shaky pencil, was her name, the word Halloween, and her age: nine.
There were more. A nurse, a movie star, a fairy, a witch, each labeled with a different age. They were costumes she had dreamed about year after year and never received.
Tucked among them was a note in her adult handwriting, calling them silly old costumes she had wanted but never got. At the very bottom was one more sketch, neater and clearly drawn as a grown woman: a dark blue dress, silver stars, a cape, and a pointed hat, titled Midnight Witch.
