Halloween with Sam was much more fun this year. Sam was able to walk up to people, take the offered treats from their hands, and put them into his own soft little pumpkin bag. At night, after all was said and done, he pranced in circles around his little pile of candy, giggling and grabbing handfuls of his treasures. He finally collapsed in an exhausted, chocolate-stained heap of joy, dreaming of Tootsie Pops. The sight alone was nearly enough to send me into a diabetic coma.
The day itself was a little less sickeningly sweet than the evening, though, due to Sam's inexperience with the holiday. Specifically, the "oddly-dressed" children made him a little nervous. Sam loves crowds of kids, most days, but all of the costumes, props, and masks set him on edge. They were children, of course, but they had disguised themselves! Why were they hiding their faces behind makeup and rubber? My ordinarily brave little boy frowned and was reluctant to go near.
I have a good hunch that his suspicious frowns were not due to the frightening nature of the masks covering the children's faces, since Pooh received the same level of hostility as did the zombies and ghouls. Additionally, this is the little boy who normally giggles when seeing vampires and other scary creations on television. No, I think that Sam's discomfort stemmed from the fact that he knew that these disguises were hiding ordinary faces, ordinary people. They were kids with whom he might have played and laughed, but they were pretending to be something else, and he couldn't see them. He wanted them to show themselves.
I can understand that.
On a broader level, I get irritated, too, when people pretend to be what they're not. Sometimes it's a matter of defensiveness; not wanting to be viewed as an inferior mother, for example, a woman might loudly proclaim how her child has slept through the night since birth, or how they have a vocabulary of twenty-three words at ten months of age. (I must have personally met thirty of these mamas before throwing up my hands at much of the online parenting scene.) Or, say, another person might vocally condemn those who consume meat/gluten/dairy/tap water/pesticide-ridden genetically-mutated soy products in order to steer conversation away from the fact that they themselves occasionally (gasp!) shop at Walmart, or wear leather, or let lapse their subscription to Mother Jones magazine.
I make no personal claims to one hundred percent sincerity; I know there are areas of hypocrisy in my life, areas on which I need to work. Knowing they are there, though, and acknowledging their existence takes me one step closer toward removing my masks. I could pretend they don't exist, or try to hide them from view. How could I ever experience intimacy with anybody if I did? How could anybody know me if I didn't show myself?
Sam didn't like having to make guesses about the people around him, and I don't either. I wish I could know the people I see, and know that the faces looking at me truly reflected the people behind them. Truthfully, I think I've been lucky in that many of the people I've met in my life have been at least mostly honest with me, and honest with themselves. I have several good friends who fall into that category. These are the people who, long before they ever became friends, became my role models, though they didn't know. Something inside of me recognized their innate honesty and wanted to emulate them - not necessarily in who they were, but in the more elemental ways that their souls sang.
For someone to reveal their true face, especially when they don't know me, is a compliment and a sign of inner strength. I strive to do the same, though I don't always succeed. There's always the fear that, revealing one's true face, one might find it mocked and teased, or criticized and scorned. If I admit that I allow my son to watch Teletubbies, will I find myself shunned from the library playgroup? If I am caught without makeup and without my hair brushed, will I be viewed as less than a competent woman? If a visiting neighbor spies a paperback romance novel on my coffee table, should I immediately start making excuses - or accept the fact that if she's the kind of person who would scorn me for my reading choices, then she's not the kind of person I need in my tribe in the first place?
I think the latter starts to hit closer to the truth. I think the latter is the sort of thing I need to keep more firmly in mind if I'm to be the kind of woman, the kind of person, that I want to be.
Halloween is over. My son has taken off his costume, and it's been put away in the back of the closet. I wish that I could remove my own masks so easily.
