This article is part of a series in partnership with Lalo, an ad-free social media app for family and friends. Share your memories in a safe and private space.
I just finished the last of my kids’ Halloween candy, almost two weeks after trotting around the neighborhood in army green makeup.
While this is our thirteenth consecutive family Halloween costume ensemble, it’s the first time I’ve lathered my face with $13 worth of shmear. And why not? We enjoy Halloween because we can hide in plain sight. And because of the free Peanut M&Ms.
When you start a family you soon realize each partner comes with their own Halloween baggage. Halloween was a blast when I was a lad but alas my enthusiasm didn’t hold. It was a lower-tier holiday, an anticlimactic punctuation to my birthday month. So I was reluctant when Big Brown Mom suggested we dive headfirst into the holiday after the birth of our daughter, Maya. And even more when Joaquin came along.
Big Brown Mom didn’t do much Halloweening as a kid. But she wanted to change that for Maya and Woks. She has skills and determination and a growth mindset. She’s worked her magic on cloth and lace, corduroy and denim. She’s sowed, even hemmed. But never, ever hawed. We’ve been mutant turtles and cereal box characters, The Flintstones, the cast of Scooby Doo and the 4 faces of Michael Jackson (see: no blackface). This year, after floating a dozen or so options and then voting, we went with classic monsters.
Sure enough, we hit thrift stores and halloween stores and makeup stores and convenience stores and candy stores to get everything we needed for the getting. And then the good news came that we were going to be able to wear our costumes twice! We got invited to a Halloween Party!
This also meant that our costumes would be under closer scrutiny. So Big Brown Mom was determined there’d be no slacking or lacking. And I can’t front, we looked pretty fly. Sure, showing up in a well executed costume is a statement. But showing up as a family ensemble is a moment. Indeed, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
But I have to tell you my favorite part each year is looking back at the photos from years prior. They’re time capsules. They’re treasures. They’re fucking hilarious, too. I take videos of the process. I capture Big Brown Mom transforming into Big Brown Stage Mom, nipping, tucking and preening her work.
Some of these photos and videos are meant for public consumption. But not all of them. That’s one reason I value Lalo. It’s a private but social space for my family and loved ones to preserve and share personal memories.
So while you might see select pictures and videos of Big Brown Family on the gram, you’ll never see the footage of me wrestling the last bag of Peanut M&M’s from Maya’s hands because the tears were too embarrassing. But I couldn’t help it. She pulled my hair.
There’s always next year.