My house is usually loud with yelling, roaring and other masculine sounds. My guys love to wrestle and play super-heroes complete with the heroic and villainous attacks. Football and catch-the-ball-while-flying-on-the-couch isn’t complete with out the noisy commentating like Whoa, Not In My House, or my fave, Yea Baby! Halloween only exacerbates all of this loud, testosterone-y type of stuff.
Close to two and a half years, we’ve had this little female creature in our home, and we’re still learning to walk the ever-delicate road of raising a daughter.
She can hold her own usually with the boys. Wrestling in the floor, playing chase and football in the yard; she can hang. She’s tough.
But when it comes to ‘scawy’ stuff, she’s not up for it, at all.
Around Halloween, our home is filled with the excitement of just that kind of ‘stuff.’ The jumping out from behind doors, making that ‘Raaaar’ monster scream; those are the fun things to do all day.
Last year we got this hideously ugly, goulishly scary mask. It has dark gray stringy hair, a troll-looking face and a switch for making the eyes and mouth glow neon green. It’s S-C-A-R-Y.
For the past 5 years we’ve hosted a hayride in our neighborhood for trick-or-treating. It’s fun for the kids and convenient for the parents. Each year after we’ve made the rounds and it’s just getting completely dark out, we go down the big hill at the end of our neighborhood. Usually Daddo pretends his truck dies and he is stuck sitting at the bottom of this dark hill surrounded by dense forest on each side. Then another dad, who had hopped off earlier down the road, jumps out of the trees and scares the kids. We upped the anty each year as our kids got older and started expecting the ‘guy in the forest’ to jump out. We added masks and sometimes more than one dad to jump out. Two years ago, one of the dad’s got his weed eater for the scare. Funny how those sound so much like a chain saw. As soon as Daddo’s truck ‘died’ we heard the sound revving up in the darkness. Last year the super scary, ghoulish mask came walking out of the woods holding the weed eater above his head. You can imagine the screams.
Cora was just 1 at the time and she was content with holding her head in my lap. Rhett was 3 and he laid down on the floor of the trailer hidden. The mostly-boy hayride is always a scary, exciting success. I guess you could say it’s how us parents find the trick out of treating.
I just got my ‘Boo Box’ of Halloween decor out of storage this week due to having our house up for sale and wanting to have an ‘inviting’ home instead of one filled with holiday clutter. Most of my spooky items are fun little light-up toys or glittery signs. But at the bottom of my plastic box was the hideously ugly, ghoulishly scary mask. I snuck it to Daddo without any kid seeing it.
Later that evening while all of the kids were in the den, Daddo decided it was time for the mask’s 2014 debut. Me and all four kids were in the kitchen/den area. He came through the back door, walking slow and creepy and making moaning and other roaring sounds. The lights in the house were off and the patio lights shined just perfectly around his large silhouette, outlining the stringy hair on the mask. I gotta admit, I was a little shaken myself even knowing it was just Daddo.
Rhett ran to the other side of the kitchen island. Will and Cole half screamed, half laughed while they pounced on the furniture. Cora grabbed the back of my leg and squealed real loud. He chose her. He came closer and even picked her up still raaarrring. She screamed a blood-curdling scream like no other. Her body was tensed up. She was completely frightened. Daddo took off his mask and showed it to her. She looked at him still crying and said ‘No. I want Momma.’
She clamped on to me so tight she held herself around my waist and shoulders.
It took her awhile that evening to get to where she could walk on her own and not want me to carry her. Rhett had just run up to Daddo laughing once he saw the mask came off. He loved it. His older brothers were laughing hysterically and wanting to hold the mask closer. Boys are just weird.
About 30 minutes later after I had told Cora about 15 times that it was only a dress up mask and toy, she was brushing her teeth and acting almost normal.
Then Daddo decided he wasn’t done so he wore the mask back into the big boys’ room as they were getting in bed and they yelled and screamed again. Just hearing his raaaaaar and her brothers’ scream, made her throw her toothbrush and wrap around my waist. Daddo took it off and hung it on Will’s bed post (which he was happily scared by seeing when he woke the next morning )so she could still look around and see it. She finally said, ‘I wanna go to bed. I wanna go nigh nigh.’
Fully expecting she’d want me to lay with her I crawled in to her bed too, but she quickly turned on her side, pulled her covers to her chin and squeezed her eyes closed. ‘Night mommy.’
She was done and wanted that horrible night to be over.
The next morning she was attached to my leg. She whined. She wanted me to hold her constantly. She constantly looked around for the mask to be hanging somewhere or jumping out from a corner.
The boys were completely in the spirit of scaring each other. The morning was filled with boys jumping out from hidden places and yelling Boo! and making monster sounds at one another. Just the mentioning of the words scary or mask made Cora tense up and whine for me to hold her. One of the boys brought the mask into the kitchen where we were. They were catching on that this was scaring their sister and of course only fueled their big brother motive. She screamed louder and Daddo took it back away. He hung it on the coat rack stand (which was super freaky looking with all that stringy hair just hanging). Things quieted down a bit until we started to walk out the door and she caught a glimpse of it on the rack in the corner. Another scream and run for my leg. That was it. I told Daddo that things were different now. We couldn’t keep up with the fun, scary Halloween tricks anymore. This was affecting her.
Since then, which was one day last week, the mask has been hidden away in a closet. But Cora’s constant fear is still there. In our house she is always looking around waiting to see the mask hanging somewhere. Any use of the words scary or mask or the monsters raaaaring sounds; even just Boo, and she whines, tenses up and wants me to hold her. Just a sound resembling a spooky noise, like Daddo’s text message alert swoosh on his phone and she starts whining for me to hold her. In the house where the scary stuff happened, she is attached to me. I vacuumed and she was wrapped around my right leg. Using the bathroom, doing laundry, dishes, getting dressed, cooking, she’s right there and usually wanting me to hold her. I’m used to a girl who plays a lot on her own or with her brothers. Not one to cling onto me a lot. We still have the other Halloween decor up in the house and none of it bothers her. Big black spiders on webs, ghosts, witches hats and black bats are some of the things sitting out. They’re fine. Any loud noise that closely resembles a raaaaring or spooky sound and she’s off her rocker scared.
Sunday morning she was sitting at her chair at the bar eating a cinnamon roll. It was just me and the littles as Daddo and the bigs were hunting Youth Weekend. We were trying to get out the door in time for church and were right on schedule when it happened. There was some type of noise, a clang, something fell, who knows and the cute little Avon light up tree that is also noise activated started going off. It sat directly behind Cora on the buffet where she couldn’t see it. Whoooaaaaahhhhhh. Ahhhhhhhhhh. Wooooooo. My daughter went into fight-for-life mode upon hearing this. She took both of her cinnamon-holding hands and pressed them against her head covering her ears. She yelled Nooooooooo! Stop it! She closed her eyes and screamed and shook her head trying to drown out the noise with the cinnamon rolls on her ears. I ran over to the tree and turned it off. Still I had to peel her hands from her head and calm her with gentle words. She was done and wanted me immediately. I grabbed the wet towel and briefly tried to clean the icing from her hair and hands and we got out of the house.
We talked in the car all the way to church about beautiful things like the sun, flowers and trees. We got there and I took her to her little two year old class telling her about all the fun she’d have. Think happy thoughts Cora was all I was trying to do for her. As I bent down to kiss her and leave I noticed the clumps of icing still covering her ear. Bless it. That baby did not want to hear that scary noise. And she loves cinnamon rolls.
It’s Wednesday and almost a week since that mask has been seen. Still, she is constantly looking around our house for it, she doesn’t want to be in a room alone and usually wants me to hold her. We’ve done some fun Halloween activities in the mean time like the pumpkin patch and decorating pumpkins, but she’s still affected. I’m sad for her. We didn’t mean to scare her so bad. Our family of boys is still learning. I’m a girl but was a ‘boy mom’ for 7 years. It changes us too.
All five of us other Jackson’s are learning that things are different and will be forever. She may be tough, rough, dirt-loving and sporty but she has a girl soul. And we’re just delicately different.
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