Fairies

All my life my favorite thing to do with my girl friends is play dress up. It's about 50% creating the costume and 50% playing the character you have created with clothing. You have to wear the character you've created inside and out. Playing the role makes the costume and provides most of the fun, assuming a personality that is not your own.

My friends who volunteer in the shop are playful women, young at heart, creative, and playful in spirit. If I had known them when I was growing up we would have played Dress Up together. But we didn't meet until we were all 30 or older, so we play dress up once a year. But we take the entire month of October to prepare for the big night. It's like a rehearsal, working on our characters and costumes in preparation for the performance on Halloween.

In past years we have donned whatever costumes were left after the clients took the cream of the crop, making the best of the left-overs. More recently we have plotted and schemed and planned, with sewing and gluing and sewing some more to create group costumes of glamorous witches, a harem of belly dancers, a dead wedding party. We fantasized about being the Bulgarian Olympic Synchronized Swim Team. We even ordered the swim caps and planned to neglect shaving (yes, armpits and legs). But we couldn't find the time to choreograph, much less rehearse, our act to be executed on a dance floor in a bar.

This year, in the midst of creating pirate costumes (yes, we all love Johnny Depp's Capt. Jack Sparrow!) the spirit has moved us to be fairies. We've been watching the Bard's "A Misummer Night's Dream" and Drew Barrymore's "Everafter" to get ideas about fairy costumes and to figure out the mechanics of attaching wings to a costume.

We have decided to sacrifice several 1950's cocktail dresses adorned with tons of tulle to the Fairy theme. I plan to be a Tooth Fairy with a tool belt woven from dental floss and equipped with a door knob and string, a roll of quarters, a wand of tooth brushes, a box of baby teeth, miniature toothpaste tubes, bead-head for hair, and some dental whitening strips in strategic locations. I'm practicing my a buck-toothed speech pattern.

Mary is going as the Wacked Fairy, we're not sure if she crazy or loaded - but she'll be cute. Barb plans to be the Fairy Goth Mother in black - and her playful husband Mike avoided tights/leggings again by choosing to play Dracula to her Goth theme. Linda will be the flower bedecked and lovely Garden Fairy. Beth will be in stark and striking black and white gambling and giggling as the Poker Fairy. Phyllis, true to her nature, will be the Cleaning Fairy with a feather duster for a wand. We don't know if Janet or Kathy will join the Fairy Fun - Peggy is contemplating several options - she'll surprise us all with an amazing creation.

Friday night last, as this Fairy theme was sweeping up our collective imagination, I found myself upstairs with two of my closest friends, trying on costumes, improvising with accessories. We were playing Dress Up. I was transported back to 1972 playing the same game from the sanctity of my closet, pulling costumes from my mother's boarding school trunk with my best friend Margot, trying on a deeper level of character with each layer of whimsical clothing. I literally jumped up and down with excitement, thanking my friends for coming to my house to play Dress Up. Thank God that at almost 45 years old I still have the ability to play whimsical games. I am even more thankful for the friends with whom I have been blessed who also have a playful and imaginative streak, and a willingness to take the risk of playing, too.

We'd love to include you in the game. Come let us help you Dress Up this Halloween.