Last Night's Costume
"Oh, I know what I'll be," said Maddy suddenly, having rejected my suggestions that I could make her up into something perfectly monstrous. "I'll be you."
So she went and got my clothes, put them on, and finished it with a leather jacket and some dark glasses.
I took some photographs of her, doing her best impressions of me being photographed. (This is one.)
Then I drove her to her friend's house.
When she got home, I asked her how it had gone. "Well," she said, "Only one person asked what I was meant to be. I said I was my dad, but they looked sort of blank, so I said I was a secret agent, because of the dark glasses. And they liked that."
Then I made up a tradition of us reading vaguely spooky poems to each other before she went to sleep, Kipling's Smuggler's Song and Monro's "Overheard on a Salt Marsh", the Macbeth "Hubble Bubble" speech and a few more. You can make up traditions if you do it with conviction, and remember to do it next year too.
So she went and got my clothes, put them on, and finished it with a leather jacket and some dark glasses.
I took some photographs of her, doing her best impressions of me being photographed. (This is one.)
Then I drove her to her friend's house.
When she got home, I asked her how it had gone. "Well," she said, "Only one person asked what I was meant to be. I said I was my dad, but they looked sort of blank, so I said I was a secret agent, because of the dark glasses. And they liked that."
Then I made up a tradition of us reading vaguely spooky poems to each other before she went to sleep, Kipling's Smuggler's Song and Monro's "Overheard on a Salt Marsh", the Macbeth "Hubble Bubble" speech and a few more. You can make up traditions if you do it with conviction, and remember to do it next year too.
