Halloween 1998

Last might, when our neighbors' daughters turned up at our door dressed as Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion, I was reminded of a Halloween long ago. In 1998, when Emma was six and Sarah was two, Emma dressed up as Dorothy and Sarah dressed up as the Cowardly Lion, or as she said at the time, the Curious Lion.


As we did every year when they were younger, we took the girls up to my parents to participate in the Halloween parade and costume contest that the my parents' neighborhood association held each year. My brothers and sister and I had participated in these parades back when we were kids and my mother and father got a huge kick out of watching their grandchildren participate. Emma liked the parade for lots of reasons; it was another excuse to dress up, for one thing, and they always had great treats on hand for another. But it didn't hurt that she almost always won a prize for her costumes. Most of the time she was dressed as a fairy, or a butterfly, or a princess. Her costumes were glitzy and the personality she showed when the judges spoke to her was equally sparkly, so it wasn't surprising that she frequently walked off with the prize for the prettiest costume.

Emma is pretty tickled to be standing next to Glinda the Good Witch!

I was a little worried that her winning streak was going to end with the Dorothy costume and that she would be very disappointed. She had kind of come to expect that she would win. I could imagine what she told her friends about the event, "We march in a parade behind a firetruck, we show off our costumes one by one, we get some treats, and then they give me my prize." After all, that's what seemed to happen every year. But this year she was dressed in a simple gingham pinafore with pigtails. Except for the shoes and her personality, there was no sparkle. And I don't know what Disney movie or book was the inspiration, but there was a bumper crop of princesses at the parade that year.

Emma was thrilled with herself as Dorothy, though. She was beaming and skipping along during the parade, swinging her basket carrying her stuffed Toto along beside her. She chatted up the judges and the princesses and steered clear of anyone wearing a scary or gory costume. Her faithful sidekick, the Curious Lion, was not so enthusiastic. She insisted on being carried for most of the parade and wore the biggest (and cutest) pout on her face the whole time. When the judges asked her what she was, she refused to speak to them. Peter, who was holding her,  answered for her. "She's the Grumpy Lion," he said. The judges should have been impressed by how well she was playing the part.

"On my way home. Now I'm happy!"

When the time came for the costume contest winners to be announced, Emma was excited and confident. I braced myself for the flood of disappointment I expected to face if she didn't win something. And then...they announced her number! Once again, she had taken the prettiest category. For my mother, this cemented her theory. "It's not the costume," she said' "It's the girl. She could wear a paper bag and she'd still be the prettiest."


That year turned out to be the year of Dorothy for Emma. By the end of the school year we owned three Dorothy dresses and three pairs of ruby slippers. In the spring, Emma played Dorothy in her Music for Children production of The Wizard of Oz. She had outgrown her Halloween pinafore and shoes and we had to buy her a new dress and shoes. Then her ballet class danced to Somewhere Over the Rainbow for the annual recital and they insisted that we purchase yet another Dorothy costume and spray paint a pair of  ballet slippers red.

Sarah also took a spin as Dorothy for at least one Halloween and was equally charming in her costume.  So, I suppose it's not surprising that I have a special fondness for little girls dressed as Dorothy and sneak a little extra candy into their bags when they come to my door.