don[t] vient li maus d'amer,
Monday, October 30, 2006
Monday was the perfect October day – high winds, blue skies covered in wispy whites, cascades of dried leaves.
Back on the ranch, Carrie was preparing Linnea for Halloween. A costume test-run was quickly underway. Apparently the spider and the rapper ideas had been discarded.
“Hey, baby, do you want to be Caesar’s ghost?” She asked her in the afternoon.
“Sure…” Linnea wasn’t positive who Caesar was, exactly.
After Carrie explained, she obediently let Carrie dress her in black tights, long-sleeved black shirt and white sheet for a toga. Then Carrie added white face paint all over her face, followed by a little red lipstick for blood. Linnea drew the line there.
“No, Carrie! No! I don’t want that! It’ll get in my mouth!”
Carrie laughed, “No, no, Linnea. I promise it won’t get in your mouth. Just hold still.”
Linnea was finally convinced and allowed Carrie to trace a little red near her mouth. Then clear lip gloss was added to give the appearance of tears around her eyes.
“OK, baby girl, now hold still.”
Carrie had brought out a tube of baby powder and with puffs here and there, made her hair look gray enough to satisfy any ghost. A belt was added to cinch the toga, and a wreath of ivy around her head.
Carrie then cut out the Roman crest out of cardboard and prepared it to attach to a stick or a paper towel roll to be spray-painted gold and held out as a form of scepter.
“Now, you need to learn your lines here,” Carrie urged her as she wrapped up the make-up department. “Repeat after me – Beware the Ides of March.”
“Beware the Ides of March. I don’t even know what that means.”
“Ides is the Roman way to say the fifteenth. That’s when Caesar was killed, on March 15th. Now when people open the door to give you candy, tell them – Beware the Ides of March.”
Linnea practiced her lines faithfully and talked over her costume and lines with Collette on the back yard swing, while helping Collette with her book.
When Mom returned from running errands, she was not wild about the costume.
“Creepy, Carrie. Oooooh – too creepy.”
Mom’s costume idea for Linnea had been for her to wear all black and a pink plastic pumpkin on her head.
That evening, with the doors and windows open to the fair winds and the night skies, the kids carved their pumpkins over newspaper on the kitchen counter, while Joe, Rose, and Molly were painting the youth building at church. Frances painstakingly drew several of his favorite army guns around the sides and cut them out. The house was filled with glowing pumpkins by the time OLeif and Collette left.