SNOW WHITE AND THE LEMONADE PENDANT

 It had been my idea to have a Halloween party for the kids in the neighborhood of the church we attended at the time. This was in the early 1990’s. I chose the costume of Snow White—about as far on the spectrum from the witch as I could get.

Envision the costume for Snow White made famous in the Disney movie—I wore a yellow dress with a very full ankle length skirt with a white blouse with short puff sleeves and a blue and black bolero vest that laced in the front emphasizing my waist which appeared tiny.

I was beautiful just as I was…I do not to this day understand a decision I made that night. I guess superb was not sufficient for me at the time.

To add to the elegance of the costume I chose to wear a pair of real blue topaz and diamond earrings. Oh, sure, they added to my sense of myself as a “princess” character—and I guess Snow White became a princess and she was the step daughter of the wicked queen.  On the other hand, while we live our lives forward we can often better understand our lives looking back on them.

The party was being held in the church parish hall which was decorated for the occasion. There were refreshments, dim lights and spooky Halloween background sounds, courtesy of a tape borrowed from the library.

You know creaking footsteps on the stairs, etc. There was the sound of a door-- badly in need of WD-40-- that screeched and whined as it was  slowly being opened,  When Kate who was five at the time heard that,  she bolted out the back door and "escaped" into the darkness!

I ran after her and scooped her up. She was really scared! That was a serious miscalculation on my part—spooky was okay, but really frightened was certainly NOT what I wanted for Kate or anyone else.

After she was safely returned to the party and the background sounds turned off, I crossed the grassy parking area to the parish house backyard to the Haunted House.

The very tall young man who was hosting this event was attired in a tuxedo and a cape.  He had those fangs which really made him look the part of Count Dracula. The kids were squealing and shrieking as they in the dim lights gingerly put their fingers in cold spaghetti and peeled grapes.

Later, exhausted, and exhilarated as I was resuming my pre-Snow White identity I realized that one of my blue topaz and diamond earrings was missing.  I was upset of course but it was night. 

I consoled myself that in the light of day I would simply go back to the church yard and look for it. I had only been those two locations: the parish hall and the parish house backyard.   You can guess what happened.  The earring was irretrievably lost.  

This, too, perhaps falls under  the category, "lessons learned".  The moral of this story is: "Don't wear valuable jewelry to Halloween parties!"   But you would never do that, would you?

Epilogue

In an effort to make lemonade from the lemon of having lost one of a pair of diamond and blue topaz earrings, I had the lone earring made into a pendant, which I love to wear…only not as Snow White or on Halloween!