Dressing up

When I imagined children (back in those heady days when children were largely imaginary creatures) they did a lot of dressing up. There was a large box of old, interesting, slightly smelly clothes and they would embark on complicated pretends. I myself wore a Laura Ingalls bonnet anywhere my mother would let me. The reality has been somewhat different.

Daniel finds dressing up terrifying. It seems to threaten his sense of self. This was true from very early on when he would refuse to wear someone else’s hat or march around in his father’s shoes. He would, if you grinned and said, hello Mr. Postman or something equally benign, drop to the floor howling: I’m DANIEL. I’m DANIEL. And while he has dressed up for Halloween the last couple of years, the costume never stays on for long and you have to address him carefully: Daniel, you look very nice dressed up as a dalmation (or a secret agent). He does like playing pretend more than he did, but not with accessories. He tends to narrate more than participate, like with his stuffed animals who are currently starring in a series of stories as the Hypno-Ring Friends.

Helena does what her brother does, so she hasn’t liked dressing up either. Until recently — recently, she has been discovering the fun of wearing odd clothing. She still prefers you to know that she is HELENA in strange clothing rather than Farmer Bob or Fairy Diggory but nevertheless, is discovering a world of pretend. It is interesting to see her separate from Daniel and his well-carved road in this world, and encouraging. It is also a distant echo of days to come when she separates from us.

And Daniel still covers his eyes when Kipper‘s friend Jake dresses up as a fairy. It disturbs both his emerging sense of boy-ness and his innate suspicion of costumes in general.

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