It was Halloween. I had just entered my  trick-or-treating age. I could hear some of the Van Dyke Road kids already stomping a path. Explaining who they were in front of porch lights in exchange for candy. Standing in our entryway, no costume, I could feel all of the good candy slipping away. Tired from a day’s work, maybe my mother simply forgot. But then she saw me. Desperate in the entry. She grabbed the nearest solution. Down by the shoes. Under the coats. A stack of paper sacks from Red Owl. She poked two holes for eyes and one for mouth. I stood motionless. Unimpressed. How would I look in a sea of store-bought costumes? Seeing my hesitation, she pulled another sack. Poked the same holes. Her always red rouged lips mouthed the words, “Look, we’re owls.” Maybe it was how her lips matched the logo of the sack, or seeing them move independently, as if floating in space, I couldn’t help but giggle. Both of our sacks began to wrinkle with the uncontrolled laughter. That was one of the countless times I saw my mother become directly before my eyes. She transformed from mom to someone extraordinary, my super hero, as she pulled the sack from her face. 

Yesterday, in the throws of a new painting, I was nearing the end of the day. Paint was still being placed, but the energy was dwindling. And then, a shadow under the eye. A change of hairline. Just a few strokes, and I could feel it, her becoming. There she is! I exclaimed to no one, as if I were standing in the entryway of our green house on Van Dyke Road. 

Of course our neighbors knew who we were that Halloween evening. Still they asked politely as I reached out my sack. “We’re owls,” I said, not with the pride of costume, but the joy of my mother.