Ava and the Witch

As she sat in our bedroom gazing out the window, her straggly hair tucked in a shower cap, the witch looked anything but frightening.  But when Ava, at age three, saw her last year, the old crone was in her glowering glory, hunched by the fireplace, her potions, Ouija board, and broom within reach.  So it wasn’t surprising that our grandniece was hesitant about visiting our house this October.  For months after her prior encounter with Witchy, she responded to any mention of “Dave and Lea” with a shudder and “Oh.  The Witch.”

I confess to a certain satisfaction in hearing her make that connection.  I want Ava to be happy and comfortable at our house, but I have ancestors on both sides of the 17^th century Salem Witch Trial travesty and an extravagant enthusiasm for Halloween, so Lea-equals-Witchy?  Kind of like that.

Ava is four now. During the spring and summer, while Witchy was safely out of sight in the attic and our activities centered on the backyard, Ava helped Dave plant potatoes in a weathered wooden whisky tub and returned months later to harvest them.  She flew a kite with Tucker and blew bubbles with Dave.  She picked raspberries in our thorny patch and peered through low-hanging limbs to inspect a nearby swamp.  Best of all, our neighbors took in a pregnant feral cat, and Dave and I got credit for Ava’s cozy cuddle with the resulting kittens.  According to Lisa, Ava’s mom, we now represent nature, kittens, and intriguing explorations as well as Witchy.  Progress.   

I’m not sure how she went about it, but Lisa had been gearing Ava up for an encounter with our witch.  So, when rain prevented a planned visit to Silverman’s Farm to pick apples and pat farm animals, I suggested Lisa, Ava, and Trevor come to help decorate our house for Halloween. Maybe if Ava unwrapped the witches and skeletons at rest in their tissue shrouds, she’d recognize them as resin, porcelain, and fabric only. 

So I dragged out fake tombstones, glycerin-infused oak leaves, pumpkins, and bins, but left Witchy upstairs, glum in her tattered summer garb and shower cap, until Ava’s level of tolerance was established.

Ava arrived grinning with good spirits and eager to face what had once been a source of fear.   Dave and I had not been around for Ava’s birthday, so we won points, early in the visit, with gifts of Rapunzel, Elsa, and Anna, the Disney girls, and knew they’d provide a cheerful refuge if need be.

My sisters and friends know of my penchant for this season and often Christmas and birthdays reap a fresh slew of spooks.  So it’s always a fun surprise when the tissue paper parts to reveal a new witch or black cat.  As Ava delved into the protective layers of white, orange, and black, and hollow eye sockets and spectral limbs appeared, I’d whisk aside skulls and skeletons I’d judge too eerie.  My taste does tend toward Victorian ghoulish, I guess. 

But Ava’s exposure to the bizarre has been minimal, and she took most of these revelations in stride.  When she uncovered a key chain from which dangled a miniature, but very realistic, skull, she gleefully pulled it out.  “Aww.  Cute. So tiny!” She squealed happily as she hung it from a wrought iron hook on a lamp, as gratified with the effect as if it had been an ornament on a Christmas tree.

Every so often, Lisa would say, “Are you ready to have Witchy come down?” 

Despite her relative comfort with the bins’ contents, Ava’s hesitance about Witchy had returned and her “No” was decisive.  In fact, she was steering clear of the stairs for good measure, just in case Witchy took it into her head to make an appearance unbidden.  Maybe I’d personified this concoction of hand-me-down clothes, wadded newspaper, and polyfil too much.

As witches continued to emerge from cupboards and closets, occasionally Ava would shrink away at first glimpse.  “Real or fake?”  Lisa would ask. 

“Fake!” Ava would assert with spook-banishing assurance.

Some of my witches, mostly gifts from my friend Kate and sisters Rita and Francie, are quite lovely actually, and Ava cooed at a charming, pleasant-faced, bat-winged wonder and declared her a fairy witch.  Rita also gave me one of my treasures, a Franklin Mint Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz.  She’s as green and dangerous as Margaret Hamilton’s character, so I handed Ava the flowing gauzy cape, hairnet, and broom before removing the bubble wrap over the doll’s face.  “Ooooh!” exclaimed Ava once the witch was bedecked in her finery.  “She looks like a princess!”

I really do have a lot of witches.

As we girls alternated between cautious bin-unpacking and breaks to play with Rapunzel and Frozen figurines, Dave and Trevor threw a football outside while waiting for Dave’s dough to rise for his weekly batch of bread.  Much of the magic at our house is more about Dave’s kitchen wizardry than anything Witchy dreams up, and the slow pouf of yeast, flours, honey, and eggs cast a different kind of spell once the loaves went into the oven and their aroma wafted through the house.

But the afternoon was lingering toward dusk and Witchy was waiting.  “Would you like to wear Witchy’s cape?”  I asked Ava.  “It’s soft and cozy. And maybe her hat?”

Swathed in black velvet and peeking from beneath the wide brim, Ava took a few twirls while I set out a chair and table by the fireplace.  I rummaged in the dining room for black candles to set in a web-draped candelabrum, unearthed some antique bottles and a tea caddy so Ava could arrange Witchy’s potions, and then went upstairs to fetch the grand-dame herself.

I carried her down in my arms, a time-worn dummy in an old skirt and shirt, her face a grumpy mask crafted from cast-off stockings.  I laughed with over-the-top exuberance as I carried her into the front hall and said, “Just like a big ugly baby, right?”

Right?

While Ava’s smile froze at our entrance, it broadened almost immediately.  Nothing scary here!  She helped me settle the witch onto the chair and arranged the cape while I tucked a pair of boots into place under the skirt.  With a flourish, I removed the shower cap, combed Witchy’s squirrel-nibbled yarn hair over her shoulders, and set the tall peaked hat low on her brow.

“She looks angry,” said Ava with a trace of concern.

“Not angry, just wrinkled.  She’s happy, actually, to be out of the attic and ready for Halloween.  And you helped get everything ready for her!”

It’s easy to dismiss a little girl’s fear over something we know to be harmless, but for Ava, that witch was a threat, a powerful, perhaps magic, threat, yet with a little coaxing, she met her head on.  How many of us could do the same? 

   

    

             

   

The Witch in the Attic

The witch in our attic wears a clear plastic shower cap. It is neither her choice, nor her best look, but in the past, squirrels seeking refuge during hard winters have sampled her straggly yarn hair, so the cap is a cautionary measure.

Two and a half decades ago, Witchy was an afternoon project, a composite of clothing filched from family members. Her hooked nose, lined face and sunken mouth were coaxed from a pair of stockings stuffed with cotton. My kids, Casey and Tucker, packed a faded black shirt and gypsy skirt with wads of newspaper to form her hunch-backed body. Casey’s cast-off gray tights became twisted legs, and since Count Tucker no longer required his cape from the previous Halloween, the witch made off with that as well.

Witchy’s annual descent from the attic would initiate our Halloween preparations. The unbecoming shower cap would be whisked away and replaced with a tall peaked hat. The butter churn by the fireplace was moved to make room for her chair, and her belongings – a skull-topped staff, bat-candelabra, and pewter teapot– were fetched from storage and set within easy reach.

In those days, October was crammed with joyful child-oriented activities - scratchy hayrides, haunted houses and pumpkin-picking expeditions. While the slimy chore of carving jack-o’lanterns was never quite as fun as it was supposed to be, the kids’ enthusiasm spiked briefly when Toys R Us offered stencil kits complete with safe miniature knives. All by themselves, Tucker and Casey sculpted a black cat silhouetted against a harvest moon and an eerie haunted mansion.

Every crisp day of vibrant leaves, somber skies and acorns crunching underfoot held ghoulish games and creepy craft projects, and when I’d surprise the kids with cupcakes topped with black cats or pumpkins of orange frosting, I wasn’t worried about sugar. I felt solid in my world, secure in the sense I was doing exactly what I should be doing.

For good and for ill, the past three autumns have passed without much Halloween spirit at our house. In 2009, chemotherapy drained me of the energy for decorating, as did more recently, my father’s illness and death. Yet, last year held an astonishing trip to Thailand to meet up with our traveling daughter, and this summer, Tucker got married. So, what I’ve learned about life, what I love about life, is that generally, after dark times, life is on the other side, waiting with arms wide.

October has cycled around again, and last weekend’s crisp air, vibrant leaves, somber skies and acorns crunching underfoot triggered a sensory tune-up. My childhood antennae unfurled at the scent of woodsmoke, earthy crushed leaves and the golden rod’s whiff of honey. The whine of a saw, the buzz of yellow jackets. Oak leaves reddening, orange pumpkins in farm fields: I was my little girl self in a corduroy jacket; I was the mother who read her kids Halloween stories and helped them…make Witchy.

Inspired, I scurried up the attic stairs and clambered over bins holding the kids’ drawings, stuffed animals, Cabbage Patch Kids, Jurassic Park figures, and vintage Transformers to meet the steely gaze of the witch’s close-set eyes. In her shower cap, she was unimpressive, but that was soon to change.

Together, we made our way back down the stairs, her legs dangling and misshapen, her newspaper innards lumpy, her clothing filthy. I know it’s crazy, but I felt like apologizing.

First thing, I untied the tattered cape and threw it away, then took off the shower cap, and combed her hair into place. Casey, now 29, recently purged her closet and set aside bags of clothes for Goodwill, so I pawed through camisoles, tee-shirts, and dresses in search of anything black. Success. After gingerly removing Witchy’s almost-ancient garments, I helped her into a fresh long –sleeved shirt and gauzy skirt and lent her my black shawl. Beside her, on a small table, I set a wooden box of apothecary bottles and herbs, as well as her skull-topped staff, bat-candelabra, and pewter teapot. In her own way, she looked beautiful sitting by the fireplace.

We both felt better.

With his wife, Tucker, now 32, plans to hold his annual pumpkin-carving party. I doubt he likes scooping the yucky goo any better than he did as a child, but he loves the freshly toasted seeds. On a recent trip to a Halloween store with Casey, she pointed out the sexy little costumes she’d worn during her years in college and New York – Red Riding Hood, a firefighter, a pirate. Hmmm. We shrieked and giggled at the animatronic ghouls and she talked me out of buying the “cheap-looking” ripped black fabric I wanted to drape on the mantle and convinced me to go with tattered mesh netting. And later, when she stopped by the house to visit our Halloween queen by the fireplace, my daughter’s expression was wistful. “I love Witchy,” she said. And I love the memories Witchy conjures.