six cats in the yard

When we were in Tennessee after Leigh’s father passed away, we decided to find a bunny costume for Maddie for Halloween. We are always calling her bunny and thought that would be a cute idea. Needless to say, I looked online and found something acceptable that would require a little adjustment (addition of pink to the ears) and then just never got around to it. All of sudden it was Halloween and I told myself that we didn’t need a costume for a 3-month-old baby who wasn’t even going to know that day was any different from any other day.

Then I got an innocent email from our friend Tricia asking what Maddie was going to be for Halloween. She has a daughter just 3 weeks younger than Maddie and they were going to dress her up like a hot pepper. Nothing in that email was meant to make me feel bad, but all of a sudden I remembered some of my childhood when my mother forgot to sign me up for softball my 6th grade year and I was devastated. I never played softball again and it was something I was good at. I just remember how I felt, like I wasn’t important enough for my mother to remember something that was hugely important to me.

I pictured Maddie, years from now, in therapy because her mother couldn’t make the time to get her a costume for her very first Halloween. After all, she would at least have pictures of it, even if she didn’t remember it.

I know that having a child really does make you relive and work through your own issues and, while my mother did a lot for me and sacrificed a lot for me in her own way, she wasn’t always able to give me what I needed. I don’t want to make that mistake with Madeleine. I know that I will make my own mistakes, maybe in the name of making up for what I lacked when I was growing up, but hopefully I can give her all of the opportunities that I never had and give her the love and support that I sometimes feel I lacked. I know that she will have regrets in life, but I hope that  she will always make the most of her time here on earth for travel and education and sports and music and drama or science or whatever piques her interest.

So I went right down to our local Wal-Mart intent on finding a kick-ass costume that I could be proud of…well, I went to the evil WM after trying our local used baby clothes store where I couldn’t find anything her size. I was actually excited about the costume I found.