Old Dog, New Tricks (& Treats)

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I just dropped off my 16-year-old stepchild at a job training. The cashier asked if I was her older sister and meant it, bless her heart. I got myself a celebratory cookie and a sunlit bench within a parent’s please-be-close-but-not-too-close radius. “You Make My Dreams Come True” is playing over the outside speakers – It debuted in 1980, same as me. At 10pm on All Hallow’s Eve, I was born spooky. Next week I turn 43.

Boo, indeed.

My wish-list is at the bottom. You get your treat first.

Today’s 2-Minute Tale

The last week and a half, I was sick as a dog. (Why do we even say that? *Looks it up* Apparently plague-infected fleas could infect dogs? Charming factoid. *scratch scratch*). Considering I was deep in the process of learning new tricks in time for my birthday, it’s as fitting a comparison as any. For months now, I’ve been digging up Celtic songs and 16^th-century lute tunes to … scare myself. I vowed to challenge my vocal range, culminating in a series of such shows around my birthday. Sniffling, tail between my legs, I decided my training would have to paws if I wanted my treats to be there come Halloween.

Feverish in every way, I made swift preparations to weather the cold with the same spells and remedies of childhood: Cough drops, quarts of wonton soup, every blanket I could find, and a stack of Disney movies just as thick. I built my altar. Its base: The childhood quilt my mother made for my first bed, a dusty rose Laura Ashley fabric with little pearls and satin ribbons. Then the sheets. Then the human thunder jacket of my weighted blanket, a gift from my husband while we were dating. Then a knitted blanket my family had spent many movie nights beneath. I topped it off with the quilt my mother made for 10-years-ago me, this one black and gray with a few muted butterflies. I tucked my body between these comforters of my life, and spoke the words:

“Alright, you can have me now.”

I mingled traditions a bit. I kicked off the sick movie marathon with my annual October viewing of “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” Did you know that Disney wanted them to animate Jack Skellington with eyes instead of just black chasms? Can you imagine how much creepier he would have looked?

It’s bizarre to think a whole skeleton lives inside of us. In my 42.984 years, I’ve managed to break no major bones. I dislocated my shoulder when I was two. I once broke a toe in my sleep. Taken bone by bone, they belong to us: She broke her leg. He’s got a bum knee. Grandma got a hip replacement. But the complete set suggests a separate personality, invokes the uncanny valley (the spectrum of how much something resembles a human being and our emotional response to that). That thing is not ME. And yet, here we are, every day, animating our scary scaffolding, a trellis for flesh-colored flowers in a vase of seawater. Beautiful and grotesque.

“I AM the pumpkin king,” I whisper defiantly from inside my pile of blankets, before the soft tissues of my body betray me in a fit of coughs, sneezes and … mucus. This inspires me to grab “The Princess and the Frog” as my second feature.

It seems fitting that my birthday newsletter is

kind of a tribute to the things my mother makes.

* * *

Ten movies, two quarts of wonton soup and too much hot tea later, I have made myself as better as I can be. I can resume my regular October rituals and watch “Bell, Book & Candle,” and get back to practicing these songs of faeries, mermaids, zombies, changelings and murderesses. Your treat is a behind-the-scenes recording from Celtic Halloween practice a couple weeks back. Apparently, as melancholy as “Reres Hill” sounds, in this version nothing bad actually happens. They get lost and don't even get so much as a cold. Zero skeletons. They get married, of all things! But don’t worry, the entire rest of the show Oct. 29 is mayhem, I assure you. As will be Jazz & Roots Fest in Annapolis, and then the collaborative ilyAyreheart show Nov. 6. That’s just the tip of the tibia, folks.