Diary #4: It's The Great Witchlet, undie girl

“What are you going to be?” I miss being small enough that this question cuts across every other important thing, from the end of warm days on. I stood in Sears with my mum when I was in seventh grade really, really wanting to be Cleopatra, but she had me settle on an angel. Same gown and gold cord, but no mysterious headdress or glitter eye makeup. I did convince her into getting the glitter, though, which lasted me, super-sparingly, through freshman year productions of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The gaps in my memory are almost enough to let me miss the Halloweens of years past -- the only time all year I could get my hands on fishnets and black nail polish, rare commodities indeed in pre-Hot Topic suburbia. For a high school witchlet, Halloween was like Gay Pride for a just-barely-out-of-the-closet queer kid (which I was, too, but that’s another story). I found badges of honor and recognition on the shelves of October drugstores. I had an ‘in’ this once a year with all the other kids to tell them my stories about Halloween being a sacred day to Witches of old (I didn’t know any other Witches “of now” but myself). I had to cope with the strange reality that what was a costume for almost everyone else I knew was what I wanted to wear whenever I liked.

At some point I didn’t get called a witch automatically for wearing long dresses and dark lipstick. The Craft came out during my last month of high school, and I moved out to the country and met other Witches and went trick-or-treating one last year. Samhain re-defined my Octobers, even though the leaves and chill in the wind and the shorter days were all still the same. I helped TA a course on Witches at my University, playing Ask a Witch on Samhain, getting all kinds of respect for just standing there saying things those freshmen and sophomores had never thought of before when they looked at the black-clad girls they mocked back in tenth grade.

“What are you going to be?” Which sort of Witch, I wonder, will I be this Samhain? I’m still a little heavy on the black in my wardrobe for an aging goth girl, but now that I can get pretty much any color nail polish or lipstick I like, Halloween Black doesn’t have that singular appeal any longer. Mounting that podium twice a week for two years in the Witches: Myth & Reality class put me out there as a SpokesWitch before I got to know myself as a Witch very well --so wrapped up as I was in being a Good Witch to educate the masses, I mostly forgot to live my life for myself! Feels a bit like being the Witch in her town who gets interviewed by the paper every Halloween to clarify, NO, we don’t kill black cats, and YES, we are part of a legitimate spiritual community -- but I ended up feeling like that nearly every day.

On Samhain, I’m going to turn my memory towards those I’ve known who have passed this year, but I’m also giving some thought to all the faces I’ve worn, in this life, let alone other lives -- the one’s I’ve let go of, the Witches I’ve been and remember. I’m sure as the years pass I’ll have more photos to add to the ancestor’s shrine, but right now, I’m offering up pieces of myself alongside the few ancestors whose names I know. I’m gathering with the friends who will make the memories with me we’ll be whispering to each other in our later years. I’ll go out and live the dreams I’ll pass onto my grandchildren. I’ll let go, out into the costumed carnival of Halloween, and listen for the wisdom of the living as the Dead draw near.