My oldest son and his new wife hosted a Siwinski Family Halloween party at their house this year. With our unofficially adopted son and his girlfriend, plus the significant others of the oldest four, the count has grown to fourteen. Peaceof8 sounds pretty easy in contrast. When we are all together, it can sometimes be a lot and I find myself longing for the days when I could just send them all to their rooms. I also wish we all lived in a commune together. Just one with five hundred acres and separate houses.
Prior to the party, names were put in a hat for a drawing: all were tasked to dress up as one of the fourteen.
Oh boy…
One thing that we Siwinskis are really good at is making fun of each other.
Grant and I were the only ones who didn’t draw a name. We opted to dress up as each other. As the king and queen of our small, unruly tribe (think Lord of the Flies) we felt it would be best to make fun of each other. For the good of the kingdom and our own frail egos.
Now, I’m going to go on record that Grant looked a LOT more like our ancient Washington State hag senator than he did ME, but I later got to keep the sexy cheaters and the cute dragonfly necklace he and Maria got at the thrift shop. And while my boobs are definitely not that big (I think mini basketballs were a little bit overkill) he did a pretty good job with the bohemian flouncy shirt.
Grant was easy. All I had to do was rob his closet: gray shorts, a black sweatshirt, black compression socks, and put a baseball hat on backwards. With sunglasses and a fake chew in my bottom lip I realized that the longer I live with Grant the more I look like him.
Now, I’m not going to go into how each of the others depicted their drawn name. One, because I’m not sure it would make sense to anyone who doesn’t know “US”. We all have our quirks, insecurities and tells within families and close knit communities that are not easily seen by outsiders but sometimes brutally brought to the surface in the circle of “safety”. Second, it would take me a few thousand words to describe the hilarity of the evening. We’re a study of each other, especially the stuff we are possibly most insecure about: like big boobs and compression socks.
But I will say that everyone fully committed to the challenge with brilliance and for a very brief time we exemplified a bit of what I think the world needs more of, which is both the ability to laugh at ourselves AND at someone else’s perspective OF us which can be pretty dang funny when wittily reflected with love, affection and a slight touch of asshole.
peaceof8 