But I still have alot of memories of the cool costumes.
There was the princess costume that we both got alot of use out of. There was the year we were both black cats. Pipi Longstocking, Molly- The American Girl, the Jack-in-the-Box, the Mime, my very favorite- the unicorn costume, hippies, cowgirls... for someone who did not like Halloween at all, my mother was the best at making Halloween costumes. And it was years before I realized how much she disliked Halloween. So thanks Mom- for the fuzzy pumpkins you hung on the walls, and the costumes you made, the "smelly ghost" you let us put out (remember him?!). I'd mention the cardboard skeleton, but I think that was more Dad's thing than ours. It kinda creeped me out. I wonder how long it took for the people who bought our house in Alabama to find him hanging in the attic?
Anyway- back to Halloween. Greencastle has this really weird thing that they don't do Halloween on the 31st. It's always on the Thursday before. Which I've never really been able to find out why. Seems every time you ask someone, they don't know. Probably because they've done it that way for the last 300 years. I don't know. But anyway, trick-or-treat night was actually last night. As I was driving to choir practice, I saw all the little princesses, and witches, and ghosts, and skater punks, snow whites, and skeletons.... and I really, really missed Emily. I'm not sure what triggered it, but I started remembering all those years. I thought about the last time we went together- I think I was 17 and Em would have been 13. I was an Army girl, and Emily was a mime. I think that was the year we had finally caught on to the fact that maybe it wasn't such a smart idea to let mom and dad "check" our candy to make sure it was "ok". It was the first year I actually got to eat my Mr. Goodbars, and Snickers, and Milky Ways. Or maybe Greencastle candy was safer than Montgomery candy. :)
Emily was funny. I would eat all the "good stuff" first. (probably a survival instinct- get to it before the parents did!) Within a couple days, the chocolate was gone, and all that was left were the starbursts, the cheapo knock-off candy, and Mounds bars (which I know is technically chocolate, but it's full of coconut- which is just a way to ruin perfectly good chocolate, so therefore it doesn't count.) But Emily would hang onto her Snicker's and Reeses and Milky Ways for ever... so I suppose I can't really be too hard on my parents for raiding our candy. I sneaked out of Em's all the time. And the ironic thing is, I never really had to sneak. If I'd asked, she'd probably have just given it to me. *sigh*
Every year, Grandma always sends us a little Halloween goody bag. Mine are the peanut butter Mary Janes. You know, the candies in the orange and black wrappers? They've always been one of my favorites. Emily liked the orange candy pumpkins, which are one of mom's favorites too. And Em always shared. I never was very good at sharing when it came to food. Which is why the Mary Janes were my favorites. No one else likes them, so I didn't have to share.
I miss her. I found myself wishing she was here so we could pretend to be 6 again and dress up and go Trick-or-Treating. And then I realized that wouldn't really be all that fun for her, because she couldn't have eaten all that candy anyway. And if she was here, I wouldn't have wanted to miss choir practice, so we likely wouldn't have gone anyway. I found myself wishing I would wake up and that the last seven months would be one big trick. I wished I was pretending that I wasn't sneaking candy out of her pumpkin, and that she was pretending not to know I was doing it.
I'm not sure if I was missing what could have been, or what once was. But either way, I was missing her. I am missing her.
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