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HalloweenOctober 31, 2005 Halloween was my mother's birthday. Her father kept telling her, "You were born on Halloween, so you're a witch; if you'd been born a day later, you would have been a saint." She repeated this often, so I guess it played pretty continuously in her head, like "We're sorry, we are unable to complete your call as dialed . . ." which might go on forever if you never put down the phone. Since her mother was widely acclaimed a saint, the admonition has additional resonance: my mother felt dwarfed by her mother, and toward the end of her life she had a hard time keeping her hostility under control. (My grandmother, who died a week short of her 105th birthday, outlived my mother, who died at 73, although she didn't know it.) In an early poem, I referred to my mother as "the daughter of an ogre and a saint." My grandfather died when I was 11; what I remember is a large, forbidding character ensconced in his den, his gnarled, gouty fingers poised over a chessboard. My mother carried the ogre and the saint around within her -- since I carry my mother and my father around within me, and must intervene occasionally to make sure that neither one stifles the other, I wonder if this is a common thing? Over the years I've managed to synthesize the two (pretty well; most of the time . . .), but I don't believe my mother ever did. During the day my mother was as saintlike as she knew how to be; she hardly took up any space at all. At night, when she drank, the ogre came roaring out: "I hate you kids, I wish I'd never married your father, what do you ever do to help?" The next day, of course, the slate was wiped clean: she hadn't said anything, we never heard anything, and of course she didn't mean it. That's how elephants grow unnoticed in nice suburban living rooms. We took very good care of our elephant. On special occasions my mother let the ogre out during the daytime, and Halloween was most definitely a special occasion. A little litany would play out in the preceding days: I or one of my siblings would say, "We don't have to go trick-or-treating this year, let's celebrate your birthday on your birthday." And my mother, with her saint's halo on, would say, "Oh no, you go trick-or-treating; we can have my birthday dinner on Saturday." We'd take her at her word, because we really wanted to go trick-or-treating, then on Halloween, as the light was fading and we were marshalling masks and bags and flashlights (kids didn't go out with their parents in those days), the ogre would show up: "I suppose you never think that maybe it would be nice to celebrate my birthday on my real birthday. Oh no, you're too selfish, just like your father." And on and on and on. I can't remember what my younger siblings did, but I'd usually arrange to go home on the bus with some school friend and go trick-or-treating in her neighborhood. In my women's community days I learned about the pagan origins of Halloween, which at least half the time I now think of as Samhain, the witches' new year, the night when the veils are thin between the worlds and sometimes you can even see the spirits. I still like Halloween, but I can't help thinking of my mother.
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