Extended Halloween

This is a little late by normal standards, but Halloween has stuck around in the Dixie Household. I have been watching Grace for the weekend and she has refused to take off our father’s fireman uniform for the past 48 hours. I don’t know if it is some kind of stress relief or odd-kid syndrome, but it brings back memories of Halloweens past.

My mother claims to hate Halloween. This is either the true, making our costumes her rebellion against the holiday, or a lie, making them some failed outlet for her creativity each year. Nevertheless, we always stand out.

It started out with the bunny costume. Nine-month old children are cute dressed as furry animals. They look cozy and snug in their Macy’s bought, ‘first halloween’ get-ups. We tried. My mother pulled out the sewing machine and material intended for collegiate mascot wear. She worked through the jamming machine and dozens of broken needles (a sign from above, no doubt) to produce one of the highest quality bunny suits in Chicago. Had I been a 6’ 2” baby giant, it would have looked great. I sat as a pink mass of material and ears, overheating, for the next five year, then K.C. did, then Meg did.

We worked through a string of age-appropriate costumes for a while. Mainly composed of different colored sweatsuits with some kind of felt animal ears glue-gunned to a headband. Michael’s Craft Store banked off our October 30th designs. Third grade we got a little crazy and Mom safety pinned boas to our black sweatsuits. K.C. and I went as cats, but the fumes hit Ma hard. K.C. left the house with whiskers extending from her mouth instead of her pink nose. We left the school under a mound of shedding feathers and smeared face paint.

Fourth grade. Once and only once have we bought a costume. I was really into “I Dream Of Genie” at the time and I wish I could say my parents were drinking. Halloween morning sprang upon us, warm and inviting. I left my coat at home, knowing I would have no use for it that day. I strutted into St. Raymond’s with my sheer veil loose around my face, purple, silk, genie costume, and gym shoes. My anime cartoon-like legs made the capri pants come just under the knees and the mid-drift top highlighted my ungodly pale torso. Sister Elaine had only one wish for me. I can proudly say I have granted that wish.

Group costumes with my friends came after that. For the most part they were void of embarrassment, but this was also the year Ma and Dad decided we should start family themes for Uncle John’s Halloween Bash...

Year One: Friends. Ma gets three of her bras and Dad provides us with socks to fill them. K.C. was jumping for joy as she put hers on. I threw up in mine.

Year Two: Spice Girls. By far the most disturbing. Three girls dressed in Ma’s nighties and nylons. Ma and Dad both in leather skirts, heals, and skimpy tops. Worst part, Dad wore the outfit and attitude like a pro.

Year Three: Great Grandma Alice and the rest of us decked out in honor of John Glenn’s death. No one put holes in the helmets. Grandma may have blacked out once or twice.

Year Four: I, now a punk, storm into the house pissed that I gave to go to a family function. Great Grandma Alice is sitting at our kitchen table, drinking an Old Style, fully wrapped in brown butcher paper that is hot-glue-gunned to white felt and beige fuzz balls that consume her head. Cookie Dough on a sugar cone. Turning into the hall, I can see the rest of the crew still gluing themselves in. Capannari’s couldn’t afford advertisement, so my mother created seven walking ones. She was ruining my life.

The rest of the years were tame. Well, I was away. I block out any thoughts of what may have happened. I hear Ma was Dwight from “The Office.”

This year, Grace had a basketball theme idea. Instead of going as Derek Rose, Joakim Noah, or even an edgy Rodman... she went as the hoop. A piece of cardboard, a metal hanger, a net, and a classic blue sweatsuit created her perfect get-up. She tied the board to her head and was off. Couldn’t have been happier.

She has already started thinking about what she will go as for next year. Some of the option being... An Old-Time Microphone, Perry the Platypus, or An Orange Safety Cone. All I know is I’ll be rocking an oversize bunny costume with a purple mid-drift underneath for when I overheat.

Freedom To Be Ourselves

As the Fourth of July weekend passed us, it hit me what it really means to have freedom. Well, this paired with my family’s demonstration of it.

Growing up, parents of other St. Raymond’s students would come up to my mother saying, “It is so great to watch Elizabeth. She is so comfortable just being herself.” Around the dinner table on those nights my mother would say how wonderful it is to hear the parents say such nice things about me and I would bask in the .3 milliseconds of pride my parents were casting. It was quickly clouded over by the realization that me “being myself” meant I had taken all the scissors and bed sheets out to the garage and had appointments to cut all the neighborhood’s kids’ hair later. Yet, I was still proud that all these parents thought this of me and vocalized it to one another.

I held on to that pride through grammar school, high school, and college thinking that I was in some way advanced in self awareness and confidence. That is, until last week, when I witnessed firsthand what it meant to be ‘so comfortable just being yourself.’

* * *

Our family has recently bought a Mac and in doing so we have discovered our movie making abilities. Yes, Spielberg, look out. No one has taken to this new hobby as much as Grace and our cousin Peter though. They spend hours boxed into the computer room attempting to Parkour off the bed and desk chair. This is fine, but on this particular day it was 90 degrees outside and there is no real necessity to showing the world what a flip looks like in reverse while in a house with no air conditioning.

“Both of you outside. Now,” I called into the room.

They both sighed unnecessarily loud and slummed down the stairs. That was easy, I smiled at my pseudo-mother parenting skills and went back to folding the laundry. Had I actually had any of those skills, I would have waited to hear the slam of the back door.

Five minutes later Grace and Peter were climbing back up the stairs, but dressed in whole new attire. I could hear them discussing, very calmly, what kind of moves they were going to try for this flick. Truly aggravated now, I peeled my legs off the wooden bench and wiped my sweat drenched hands before opening the door to explain to them what ‘going outside’ meant.

When I open the door, I was hit with Grace in her one hundred percent polyester, Halloween, Winnie the Pooh costume fit for a four-year-old paired with Elton John, larger-than-life, clear glasses and Peter in the same, but giraffe style and pink aviators. Due to the fact that they are now more than double the maximum age for these costume, and the fact that it was 110 in our brick oven house, the costumes looked like part of their skin and the wrist and ankle bands were cutting off the circulation to their fingers and toes.

“Take those frickin’ things off!” Just looking at them nearly made me pass out from heat exhaustion, “Get outside and play!”

I snapped a quick pic of the two of them and sent them on their way. This time I heard the front door confirm the two of them left, so I went to load the pictures up on the computer. Not more than two minutes later I can hear a “Hey, Hey, HEEEEEEEEEYYYYY” fly through my window. I let it pass, thinking Grace was just chanting the Unity Call to her neighborhood friends to gather for some street play. But, then it came again… and again. “Hey, Hey, HEEEEYYYYYYYY,” now followed by the beep of a passing car. Crapper.

I looked out my window to find Grace still in her XXS, Winnie-the-Pooh costume shouting at passing cars and running after them with her thumbs in the air.

Sweet Jesus. “Grace! What in God’s name are you doing?!” I look down to Peter fist pumping the sky at Grace’s successful Winnie Run.

She turns toward the window, raising her thumbs up as a reminder to me that life is good, and shouts, “I’m just trying to see how many cars I can get to look at me.”

One, Not hard. Two, Holy Crimany, a DCFS agent is probably on his way to pick you up and bring you to a responsible family! “Get inside!” She shook her head at me and walked inside smiling.

When relaying this story to some family friends that night their response shook me awake real fast, “She is just so comfortable being herself. Isn’t she?”

It took me twenty-two years to realize that being ‘comfortable to be yourself’ is another parent’s way of saying, “It’s nice your child has no reservations of being a complete weirdo. Refreshing.” I will say it took me a couple days to come to terms with the idea that all those mothers didn’t actually think it was super cool of me to wear my hair in twelve ponytails at once or that wearing mismatch knee-highs did not made me look like a super-model… more along the lines of Pippy Longstocking. Yes, she too was left to her own accord. I was right there next to Grace and Peter screaming at passing cars with their responsible, normal adults inside.

So, this Fourth of July I have come to realize that what we are granted as Americans is the freedom to be ourselves; no matter how ridiculous we may look. And that is quite a nice freedom to have.

Home Again

There is a 11/12 year difference between my youngest sister and I. She is currently the age I was when my parents decided to share the 'wonderful news.' So, it is only appropriate to birth this blog with the story of Grace and what it meant to the existing members of the family.

It was a Sunday night, I remember this because we were all watching Whoopi Goldberg in A Knight in Camelot on the family bonding spot some station was pushing, and I was petrified to go to school the next day because my fifth grade class had just finished up our sex-ed talk the week before. There was no way I was going to enter a class where the threat of womanhood could jolt from code nothing to blood-red in the time it took to look up at that Jesus statue over the door and pray no one else was in the bathroom. I had avoided my parents eyes and questions all week (by parents I mean my father's questions, because my mother was keen on having no part in these conversations).

All of the sudden, my father stands up and turns the television off. "Girls," he sat back next to my ma, "we have some wonderful news." I don't have to go to school because we are going to go on a trip to France and have backstage passes to see N*Sync and Hansen! I don't have to go past that sick nurse's office with her repulsive diagrams and pamphlets. Oh thank you God. I love my family! "We are going to have a baby!"


Son of a.....K.C. immediately bolts off the couch (she weighed about fifty pounds at this point... thirty of that was her head and hair) and runs in circles screaming in shear delight, "I have been praying for this every night of my life!!! I want a baby sooo bad. Mom! Dad!" tears are now in her eyes "Every night! God must of heard my prayers. He sent us a baby!!!!!!"

Oh, no, no, no. God had nothing to do with this. K.C. was stealing all of the air and forcing it into that baby-loving arena she was circling. The pressure was causing the whole world to cave in. To my left Meg was crying. I hear ya, sister. Apparently she was sad about being robbed of the youngest title. Small potatoes, Meg, actually small eggs... and fish things. Oh dear, God.

The next day I contemplated pretending to be sick, so that I would have to face my newly enlightened peers. But, realized this meant being home with the parents that acted on that knowledge. I opted for school. I wouldn't have to tell those kids anyways. I could just hide it and then tell everyone that my parents adopted once the baby came. Brilliant.

In my desperation I had forgotten that we knew everyone in town. My mother is one of ten and my father one of four. Their parents live within two blocks of one another and those blocks are right behind my beloved St. Raymond Elementary. I strutted into class with my fake confidence sure I was going to be able to keep this at bay for the next nine months. I wiped my hands off on my uniform skirt (one that was a size too small, but my mother refused to buy a new one until K.C. could fit into this one) and headed from the lockers to my desk. Everything was in order. I was pretty sure no one could smell going-to-be-a-big-sister on me. And by some grace of God, I had done my homework. Life was good.

Mrs. Dome stepped in front of the class and quieted everyone down. The whispers of last weeks lesson still skittering between the boys. Gross. We all stood up and repeated the Pledge of Allegiance and Our Father (I threw in an extra one for his aid in the secrecy) and sat back down to start our science lesson.

"Before we begin today, I want everyone to say congratulations to Elizabeth." The class turned on me before all the blood tsunamied to my face. "Elizabeth is going to have a new baby in her family soon!"

Children's eyes are naturally large compared to their face. If you tell them something that they know is both gross and totally inappropriate they become only eyes and gaping mouths. No one said anything for a fourteen Hail Marys.

"Yeah, Mister Dix," one of the boys giggled out.


Oh, Shit.

* * *

This was my family in 1998 and not much has changed since. My parents opened an ice cream shop. Grace had to have a root canal at age 3 because she was sneaking Laughy Taffys off the bottom shelf and storing them in her teeth. K.C. (head proportional) is 20, a student at UWM-Milwaukee, killer singer, and hard-headed beyond belief. Meg, 17, best athlete I have ever met, capable of making anyone laugh (even when getting in trouble), but, again, 17... a joy for us all. Grace, recently 11, is the typical youngest and loving every moment of it. She is now raising herself, but feeding us the necessary reports of daily life. I am the oldest of the clan, 22, moved back into my parents home after going to school out in New York and trying to remember how to be a part of the natural flow of things around here.