Halloween was always a big deal in our house. Mommy always ran a few ideas by us but whatever inspired her first was what we usually went with. She had some great ones, too.

Back in the first week of August, I saw a group of movers turning the old JJ Newberry's store in Berkeley into a Spirit Halloween store. It was kind of odd to see all that imagery we associate with crisp Autumn nights on a hot afternoon in the middle of the dog days. But it got me to thinking about Halloweens past, and I remembered that my mom started planning our costumes around the same time we were doing back-to-school shopping.

Halloween was always a big deal in our house. Mommy always ran a few ideas by us but whatever inspired her first was what we usually went with. She had some great ones, too. I can remember every Halloween costume from age 4 on up. There were some really good ones, and some great ones too. I don't think any of our costumes were ever average or boring. And she made every single one - no plastic dime store costumes for us, thank you very much.

In 1975, our costumes had a bicentennial theme. My little brother was a revolutionary war drummer, complete with a tricorn hat and a drum made out of a party-size plastic ice cream tub. I was Betsy Ross. My outfit was my mom's idea of an eighteenth-century seamstress' dress, with an apron, and I carried a basket on my arm that held some pincushions and an American flag.

The best costumes ever were the year I was in 5th grade and Danny was in 3rd. He was an octopus; I was Chiquita Banana. Mommy made our costumes out of big cardboard boxes, cut up and taped together. She covered Danny's in black fabric and we all stuffed balled-up newspaper into long black "tentacles" that Mommy'd sewn up. My Chiquita costume was off the hook. We made a big banana-shaped box and painted it yellow. Mommy drew a large copy of the Chiquita sticker and we stuck that on the back. She attached a flouncy skirt to the bottom, and we made a big papier mache hat with fat tissue-paper flowers (making fruit was just too much, but the flowers looked great). That banana costume blew the minds of all the teachers at my elementary school and all the kids were jealous.

I kept dressing up for Halloween through my 20's. My costumes tended towards the freaky-lingerie-sparkly-wig-glam witch genre, and it was fun to troll the thrift shop for the most over-the-top jewelry and clothes I could get my hands on. I haven't worn a Halloween costume in years, and I've been pretty uninspired when it comes to my son's Halloweens. I've bought little baby Dalmatian outfits, and last year he was a construction worker. That costume was great, he had guys on their way to work stopping and telling him he needed to come help them on the construction site. But it didn't take much to get that costume together, and since Jayden's all about construction stuff, I didn't have to put any thought at all into what he would be.

I'm hoping to change that when he's in elementary school. Maybe he'll be as excited as I was thirty years ago, getting involved in the planning and the making and being tickled about having an awesome costume. I've been hoarding large pieces of cardboard and papier mache materials and scraps of this and that. Maybe next August, before he starts kindergarten, when the stores are rolling out their cheap costumes and the bags of candy, we'll already be hashing out ideas for costumes and figuring out what we need.

This year? I have no idea. The Halloween stuff is on the shelves already but I haven't thought about what he might want to dress up as, and I haven't even asked him. Guess I better get on my j.o.b. - after all, it is the first week of September already...

Lists? I love 'em. My school-years Halloween costumes:

Preschool: a pretty little fairy with wings & a magic wand

Kindergarten: the best witch ever

1st grade: yankee doodle sweetheart: red knit dress, straw hat, white go-go boots, with Fourth of July decorations all over everything

2nd grade: Laura Ingalls Wilder

3rd grade: Betsy Ross

4th grade: dead bride (this one was great)

5th grade: Chiquita Banana

6th grade: a very cool gypsy

7th grade: Raggedy Ann

8th grade: 40's femme fatale

9th grade: medfly, complete with black trash bag wings

10th grade: 50's bobby-soxer w/ poodle skirt

11th grade: I really wanted to be Vanity, but ended up being a 50's girl again, this time with cuffed jeans

12th grade: a gypsy