Halloween is less than a week away. Around my house there is some anticipation about costumes and trick or treaters rapping at our doors. This has me thinking of my past Halloweens...the ones from long ago.
I always loved dressing up. In my world we didn't use store bought costumes. My mother would either sew a costume for me or we would put together something from what we had in the attic. Over the years I have been an array of all manner of imaginative characters from Aunt Jemima to a Radio City Rockette, from a Beatnik to an Alien. Dressing up was fun and great effort was made to conceal identities. We were brazen in our subterfuge, hoping to fool our friend's mothers. We we so bold we even tried to trick the nuns at our church convent by assuming other identities when asked who we were. It was silliness, good fun and healthy mischief.
We always sang songs when we trick or treated. Of all the songs we would sing on doorsteps one was always my favorite....
Who's behind that false face
Nobody knows but me
Who's behind that false face
Nobody knows but me
I won't tell you
You will have to guess
If the guess is right
I will answer yes!
A simple song for a child to learn certainly. My children all sang it. Well perhaps not my youngest....he was a bit shy and would just stand there with his bag held out. Sorry.....I digress.
The song is simple, yes, but it belies something I think about often. False faces, masks if you will. Personal masks, private faces concealed from others. We all have used them at one time or another. I consider them a sort of defense mechanism, protection actually. A sort of armor. We wear a face in public and sometimes it is not our own.
Now I am not talking about people who hide their true self from others, people who claim to not feel comfortable showing their "real selves". People who "act" one way in front of people but claim to be very different on the inside. I am talking about people who do not care to show the world at large what things they are feeling at that moment. People who have control, show restraint, have strength. I was raised in a home where I was taught to keep my emotions in check in public. I might be upset or hurt or angry but I was taught to wait until I was at home, in the privacy of my room, before letting those feelings register and spill out. Nothing was ever repressed, just postponed until I was in a suitable environment for it's unleashing. My parents were big on the concept of .... never let them see you sweat.
For some this goes against human nature. Certainly for my husband who's every thought is displayed on his face in vividly glorious detail. One only need look at him to gauge his mood. He's not one to keep it in check certainly. He was sometimes confounded by my lack of visible emotion early on...thinking I was cold. I am anything but cold....I just don't like to display my thoughts. He'll often point out this oddity to me, interpreting my blank face as a worry of what someone might think of me. The funny thing is I don't worry what someone thinks. I just don't want them to see what I am thinking.
The face I want them to see is my own. The face I want them to see is my calm, cool, collected self. The face I want them to see is one of my choosing. I'll be blowing my stack once I get in my room at home.
Nobody knows but me.
Indeed.
I always loved dressing up. In my world we didn't use store bought costumes. My mother would either sew a costume for me or we would put together something from what we had in the attic. Over the years I have been an array of all manner of imaginative characters from Aunt Jemima to a Radio City Rockette, from a Beatnik to an Alien. Dressing up was fun and great effort was made to conceal identities. We were brazen in our subterfuge, hoping to fool our friend's mothers. We we so bold we even tried to trick the nuns at our church convent by assuming other identities when asked who we were. It was silliness, good fun and healthy mischief.
We always sang songs when we trick or treated. Of all the songs we would sing on doorsteps one was always my favorite....
Who's behind that false face
Nobody knows but me
Who's behind that false face
Nobody knows but me
I won't tell you
You will have to guess
If the guess is right
I will answer yes!
A simple song for a child to learn certainly. My children all sang it. Well perhaps not my youngest....he was a bit shy and would just stand there with his bag held out. Sorry.....I digress.
The song is simple, yes, but it belies something I think about often. False faces, masks if you will. Personal masks, private faces concealed from others. We all have used them at one time or another. I consider them a sort of defense mechanism, protection actually. A sort of armor. We wear a face in public and sometimes it is not our own.
Now I am not talking about people who hide their true self from others, people who claim to not feel comfortable showing their "real selves". People who "act" one way in front of people but claim to be very different on the inside. I am talking about people who do not care to show the world at large what things they are feeling at that moment. People who have control, show restraint, have strength. I was raised in a home where I was taught to keep my emotions in check in public. I might be upset or hurt or angry but I was taught to wait until I was at home, in the privacy of my room, before letting those feelings register and spill out. Nothing was ever repressed, just postponed until I was in a suitable environment for it's unleashing. My parents were big on the concept of .... never let them see you sweat.
For some this goes against human nature. Certainly for my husband who's every thought is displayed on his face in vividly glorious detail. One only need look at him to gauge his mood. He's not one to keep it in check certainly. He was sometimes confounded by my lack of visible emotion early on...thinking I was cold. I am anything but cold....I just don't like to display my thoughts. He'll often point out this oddity to me, interpreting my blank face as a worry of what someone might think of me. The funny thing is I don't worry what someone thinks. I just don't want them to see what I am thinking.
The face I want them to see is my own. The face I want them to see is my calm, cool, collected self. The face I want them to see is one of my choosing. I'll be blowing my stack once I get in my room at home.
Nobody knows but me.
Indeed.
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