We all know to adventure without leaving home, all you have to do is open a book. You can travel to faraway lands, take on giants, slay dragons, fall in love, cast a spell, solve a mystery — all while lying comfortably under a fluffy doona.
I think books are wonderful (of course a writer is going to say that, right?). So if there’s one thing I don’t mind putting effort into, it’s a Book Week costume for a child willing to dress up and get involved.
Anyone who’s had children go from primary to secondary school will be well aware of how quickly they grow up after that transition. One minute you’re allowed to kiss them goodbye in front of their friends, the next you’re switching out their Harry Potter doona cover for a much more mature and sophisticated plain grey one at their request.
My youngest is in Year 6 this year and was plagued by a series of illnesses in term two, which sadly meant missing seven weeks of his pivotal final primary school year.
Of course, that also meant missing opportunities to participate in several key school events for the last time. It also meant I’d been given my last precious gift chosen wholly and solely by one of my children at a school Mother’s Day stall and had my “last supper” (the last Mother’s Day breakfast) that went with it, last year. Completely unaware that it would be our last time at the time.
So when his school announced a Book Week parade date, I wasn’t going to let that opportunity die an irretrievable death, too.
My son is a horror fan. He has every Five Nights at Freddy’s book written, so he chose the character Moondrop from the series to dress up as. But as you can probably guess, specific scary costumes don’t often sit abundantly on the racks between the superhero and princess costumes — they’re a little harder to find. And when school gives you but a week to prepare for the event, ordering online isn’t really an option. (Just quietly, it would be fab if schools put their Book Week dates on their calendars at the beginning of the year!)
So what option are you left with to fulfil your son’s final primary school Book Week wish? D.I.Y.
The only reason I was able to even attempt pulling off a homemade costume is because I found myself with one of those scarce free weekends.
After dropping 40 bucks on fabric at Spotlight, and another 20 at a couple of department stores, I’m sure it would’ve been one of the pricier outfits on parade. But I guess being homemade makes something pretty priceless anyway, right?
Of course, how do you put a price on a whole day and night of swearing at and tussling with my arch nemesis, the sewing machine, before banishing the poorly behaved beast back to the dark depths of her cupboard and taking a flustered 15km round trip to my parents’, mid-seam, to borrow my mum’s more co-operative machine to finish the job?You can’t. That exhibition is 100 per cent priceless.
Oh, the memories I’m creating. (Insert eek and oops faces here.)
Not only am I not a skilled sewer, but I had no pattern (and probably wouldn’t have been able to follow one if I did anyway), so I just winged it as best I could.
It came up a treat. That is, of course, as long as you didn’t look at it from the back or want it to last longer than a day.
I see these things and giggle internally at myself, largely at my own absurdity believing this time would be any different to all the other times I thought I was capable of mastering such a thing. But when my son — through his still ingenuous primary school eyes, void of a high schooler’s attitude and the harsh judgment that comes with it — beams at me and tells me I should be a sewer who sells costumes, you absolutely know your efforts were not in vain.
Our weekend sewing adventure was supposed to salvage some of the remnants of our last experiences with primary school, replacing some of the bad memories he’s collected this year with much better ones. And that would’ve been absolutely worth staying home for. Except after all that, he woke up sick again on parade day and missed the whole thing! I guess there’s always Halloween…