I may have finally flipped. The evidence is certainly there. Still, when they come to collect me, they'll probably deem me harmless enough.

Tonight my daughter and a friend browbeat me into taking them to a Hallowe'en store. You know the kind -- a vacant space in a mall, turned into a costume and prop store for the Hallowe'en season. It took them two hours and a promise of their doing dinner dishes for me to even consider such a thing on the night before Hallowe'en. I do not like malls, I do not like wasting money on something I could have made better at home, and I do not like stores filled with shrieking, running kids. However, the girls will only be thirteen once, and the Hallowe'en magic will only work for another time or two before they are talking of it as something they used to do "when we were kids". Somehow from the jaded vantage point of seventeen or eighteen, five years ago is an entire generation.

Well, we went to the store, and it was, as I expected, a vision of retail bedlam, combining all the worst features of a discount store, a holiday shop and an arcade, including noise, mess and bad music. Still, I decided to make the best of it. Did you know that you can have fun wherever you are? I didn't believe it either until I tried it a few times, and now I insist on it.

There were all sorts of wacky props, accessories, masks and cheaply constructed costumes. Most of the things were expensive, gaudy and ill-fitting, made of flimsy materials in garish colors. That's Hallowe'en. You want tasteful in beige, go to Saks. Some ensembles had distinctively sinister overtones, some were merely grotesque, and many were humorous, cute, intended to be funny, sexy or very glamorous, all gauzy and spangly. One Elvira costume seemed to require the addition of Elvira to look anything like the picture on the package. There were more sequin tiaras than you could shake a plastic wand with a battery operated star at. Everywhere was an exaggerated pantomime of the profitability of selling to people the opportunity to be something they're not. I was reminded of Natalie Merchant's song, "Carnival".

The girls decided that they would be some variation on a "Dark Angel" theme and had found some large black wings with spangles. The costumes proved to be too expensive in their entirety, so we decided to go home and chop up a few old black skirts of mine and add some old stockings and some thrift shop boots. I walked over to the rack marked "Angels" to replace the gowns while the girls stood in line.

That's when I saw what may yet prove my undoing. I saw, quite simply, my wings.

These were the wings that invisibly attached themselves to me for the years of my own childhood between four and fourteen, the wings that carried me away, that conferred super-powers such as flying and time travel, that reminded me that I was not a mere being of clay but that my soul had wings and that I would live forever, that I could watch the world from great heights and travel to wonderful places whenever I wished it.

In this case, the wings were truly beautiful. Made of some delicate, evanescent, almost transparent fabric stretched over wire frames, they were at least three feet long and have a span that I would guess to be about five feet. They were a beautiful pale sky blue color with pale pink and lavender markings (a color I once heard called sky-blue-pink), they attached to the shoulders by means of delicate elastic straps through which one slides the arms, much as when putting on a life jacket, and they were trimmed with a dusting of silver glitter in a lacy pattern. Far from being gaudy, they were beautiful. How they came to be in such a place is somewhat mysterious; they didn't even look like they belonged there. There wasn't another pair in sight.

I grabbed them and headed for the cash register. I didn't even look at the price until we were ready to be checked out. Fifteen dollars. Generally, I would refuse such an expenditure as wasteful nonsense. As inadequate as the phrase is to describe it, something came over me. I unhesitatingly plunked down the fifteen and some change and was delighted to do it. The girls were between astonishment that I would be so frivolous and delight that I had found something so beautiful. It's what I love about thirteen-year-old girls. They will tell you that something is too expensive or the wrong color for you, but they will never, ever tell you it's silly. Silly is where they live. Delightfully so.

I tried to sneak in the door past my husband, who cast a baleful glance and said: "Tell me those are not for you." I don't lie very well. "Oh, God; those ARE for you. How silly. Don't you think that's a little ridiculous? What a waste of money. Why did you..."

In a rare moment without an acerbic comeback, I employed what seemed the most logical way to deal with our differences. I poked my tongue out at him and scampered up the stairs with my prize to where the girls were waiting to giggle over our loot.

Everyone is in bed now, so no one can laugh at me. So, I took the wings from their cellophane covering and tried them on.

They're beautiful. They are the perfect size. Just perfect, like they were made for me. They fit comfortably. I love them. I caught a look in the full-length mirror at the foot of our stairs and I burst into delighted giggles. They are lovely. I look funny, but not in a bad way. I wouldn't be surprised if they are functional. I covered my mouth with both hands and tee-hee-hee'd like a four year old. I am thrilled.

Silly? I'll tell you what is silly. Never having fun, always being proper, never wasting one penny on anything frivolous, closing oneself off to possibilities, folding wishes and dreams and putting them in the drawers and closets in mothballs. I have found that wishes and dreams do not keep. All too often when we go to retrieve them, they have disintegrated. Sometimes we cannot even remember what they look like.

I have wings. I am going to wear them tomorrow. If I were forty years younger, I would insist on sleeping with them on. I'm not sure what I'll wear with them, but the girls and I will find something.

And maybe late tomorrow night, I will stand in the back yard (NOT on the third-floor balcony, I'm a lunatic but I'm not ALL the way round the bend yet. Yet.), and I will ....just see.

If I see you on my way past, I'll wave so you know it's me. I might be too far up for you to tell. :)

Hugs to all, and Happy All Hallows Eve,

city poem

There's poetry in a city;
it escapes us while we find
things needed to survive.

Concrete warriors, angels and gods
tower over ribbons of yet more concrete
grey, sulphur, ash and asphalt,
clanking metal, screeching tires,
sparkling glass and occasional crash
to the music of horns, engines and shouted greetings,
an occasional curse or raucous laughter
and footsteps, still many footsteps
in an age of transportation.


On the slate-grey lake a freighter mourns,
lonely for a tug
to pull her down the river
her gravel burden to be borne
round the snaked curves of the Cuyahoga,
a labored spilling on the docks.


Wind slices down a corridor of steel and stone
and metal bones;
we clutch our collars closer
and hurry faster
as if to outrun the falling temperature.


Cathedral bells admonish us in song
to mind our manners
say our prayers
eat our lunch and catch our buses
and to watch the skies
for further developments.


There is something of a lullabye
in a city
to one who was born there,
a rhythm never found
in peaceful mountains or beside a pond
or in the grand green suburbs.


A city child sleeps better to a siren's wail
than to any gentle tune;
it tells of someone brave enough
to rescue the burning
and catch the burglars
and keep us safe
until the bells
sing morning songs again.


- October 2002