The Place Called Halloween

Halloween had always been a favorite holiday growing up. My big sister Morgan and I would start building our costumes weeks in advance, often in collaborative duos like pizza and coke, Angelical Cats complete with full fur headpieces and even a homemade cell phone/beeper combo.

In the days leading up to the event, I’d proudly neglect the remnants of glitter and spray paint lodged in the crevasses of my fingernails. Just like Dad’s grease-covered hands after putting together bicycles in the garage, and my grandpa’s rubbery plastacine stink after a day in the studio, my markings reminded me that I was creating something.

I’d pass time in spelling class sketching my character’s imaginary script along the margins of my composition book, and fantasizing what theatrics could make Morgan’s and my costumes stand out. All the strange obsessiveness paid off; we'd have a great time and always win the costume contest at City Hall.

While McKenzie’s Halloween occurs in the same house and neighborhood, hers is a completely different holiday. She doesn’t have a partner with whom to raid Dad’s prized collection of electronics boxes to build a cardboard body suit. If she does steal a box, she can’t blame the absent sibling when Dad asks where his box went. She doesn’t have a sister in the top bunk with whom to stay up late brainstorming costume ideas from November to October, or a resident friend to trade candies with at the end of the night.

McKenzie in her Halloween costume "from the computer"

This morning there were no last-minute costume adjustments; Dad took Kenz fishing instead. Today she reported that she’s "going to Halloween at five," (Halloween is a destination rather than an event), and she will wear the costume she and Dad got "from the computer." At Halloween, she’ll find Joseph, who’ll be dressed as a gremlin “but not a scary one because [McKenzie isn’t] afraid,” and Parker and Kylie, who hadn’t picked out their costumes as of the time Kenzie last spoke with them.

The fab four will run around the same cold tile-floored auditorium space we’d looked forward to visiting each year. They’ll put candy worms in their punch and brave the haunted house maze as many times as possible before their parents tire, then on the way home they’ll collect silver dollars from the big house at the end of Codrington Drive.

The next day Mom will add a Baby Ruth from Kenzie's pillowcase of loot to her lunch bag, on which Dad will have carefully scribbled a cartoon reflecting the last night's events.

Don't want to talk about it.

"Hey Peanut!"
"...Hi, Courtney," McKenzie said.
Clearly I'd caught Kenz in the middle of something more important.
"Enjoying your four-day weekend?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"OK. Did you and Dad make palas* today?"
"No. He's on a diet. And I don't want to talk about it."
"OK."
"How's it at Boston? I mean, Atlanta."
"It's great," I said. "Lots of homework, but my roommate and I have been helping each other get through it piece by piece. We live in a complex with four other people from school, and the six of us make "the six pack." Two boys, Matty and Ben, are cool and sometimes come over, too. You'd like them a lot. How's Sam?"

[For those of you who don't know Sam, he's a boy from school. For those of you who do know Sam, he's a boy from school. It's nonconditional. The debatable part is whether there's a good friendship or a budding romance between McKenzie and Sam. When some people ask, "how's Sam?" it's clearly a sensitive subject because of the romantic implications. She knows I mean "her friend" Sam, so we've always been able to talk about it. So far.]

"Don't even mention, Courtney. I don't want to talk about it."


Today McKenzie didn't want to talk about anything. I asked Mom if something was wrong, and Mom said it was just one of her new favorite phrases. "You were secretive like that, too, when you were her age," she said.

What makes some young people so secretive? Is it one of the preprogrammed pieces of personality that we're born with or without? And is sharing everything really healthier than not sharing much at all?

I hadn't thought about it before, but there were quirky aspects of my life I'd kept very private growing up. I'd collect lizards and stamps and other weird things and put them in boxes behind the stereo in the cabinet no one ever used. With art projects, I'd find an empty room with a door to close and work behind it for hours. When I was old enough to bike to the next street over, it was one of my favorite pastimes to pick up and go, singing along the way -- in secret. Maybe my tendencies toward introversion steered me to work solo. I didn't tell my family these activities were secret, it was just part of who I was.

Perhaps working in secret is a kid's way of finding out what she can do on her own. All those hours sculpting and beading and weaving macrame defined me for a while. It wasn't as though Kenz didn't want to talk at all (if she's anything like me, this blog will really dry up in ten years when every answer is a one word, "yeah" or "nah," and the occasional eloquent "mumble-mumble-andisaid, like, duh"); she just didn't want to talk about major developments on her end. Perhaps Kenzie and I are wired similarly, and "I don't want to talk about it," is less a secret, and a more way of saying she's growing up.


* Palas, short for Palačinky, are a Czech traditional food that my grandfather and Dad are in charge of making the morning of a special occasion family gathering. Sometimes Sunday qualifies as a special event at White House South. You start with a crepe-like foundation -- except far superior because it's Czech and made by my grandfather or Dad -- then, according to The Clare and Jan White House Cookbook, "Spread apricot jam liberally, roll up, and cover with real sour cream. There is no point being skimpy about any of this for the sake of diet. You either pig out on palačinky or don't even start."

83 degrees and sunny

I told Kenzie about the blog, and offered to send her the link.
"Oh, no thanks," she said. "I don't want to see it."
"Why not?"
"Me and Isis have stuff to do."

This blog entry is short because I've got stuff to do, too. Happy Friday everyone.

Today I called Kenzie and had a ten minute conversation with the cat.

This afternoon Kenz was dressing up her wooden angel dogs ("angels because they don't have buttons"), so I asked her why she wasn't dressing up Isis, the cat, too.
"She's sleeping."
"Oh, that makes sense," I said. "When she wakes up can you say 'hi' to her for me?"
"Would you like to talk to her now?"
"No, let her sleep. Tell me what you're up to?"
I heard rustling sounds over the receiver as Kenzie adjusted the phone up to the cat's furry face. Click. I was on speaker phone now.
"She's trying to get away from it, but speak, Isis, speak," Kenzie said.
There was a long beat of silence on the other line. Uh oh, I thought. What is she doing to the cat?
"Kenzie? I can call Isis back later. Are you there?"
"Meee-eee-eee-ew."
Isis is the kind of cat who's in every room but you'll never know unless she's hungry or really pissed off. In this case, she was not hungry.
"Mew to you too, Isis," I said. "Kenzie, how'd you get her to talk?"
"I don't know."
"What did she say?"
"Hello, hello, hello. And thank you for petting me."

Isis is not an angel cat, but she sure is a saint. And McKenzie knows how to push her buttons.

Copy that (a very serious post)

As soon as I got home last Friday, my phone rang. It was Kenzie calling to see how the first day of school went.
"Not bad," I said. "Each student had to stand up in a big lecture room, introduce themselves, then say where they came from and why they were there. It was scary. Have you ever had to stand up in front of the class?"
"No," she said, "but today we had to sit in a circle and have a talk about peeing on the toilet seats."
I laughed. Not because the subject of peeing on toilet seats isn't a very serious matter, but because it was the honest and unexpected. And completely relatable in degrees of scariness, especially if you're the culprit of toilet seat urination.
"Why are you laughing?"
"I'm sorry. It is a very serious problem. I agree."
"Yeah. It's not funny, Courtney. It's not funny."

After our very serious conversation, I popped open a bottle of wine Dad had left in the fridge from move-in, turned on some mellow Shakira tunes and reflected on the seriousness of the first day of school. I'd been mentally preparing myself for this day for weeks, but I still got knots in my stomach before standing up to say my name. It's because I care so much about this, I'm afraid of screwing up. Fear is creativity's greatest enemy.

Kenz fears nothing. She's hard-wired to hold herself and her friends to high standards, but that does not limit the risks she'll take. She has internalized that there's more at stake in not trying something and missing out on a great experience than in trying something and maybe not succeeding in some form or another. As a marketing communications rookie, I need to adopt her neophytic wisdom. I'm here to take risks and to make kick-ass ads. I am Courtney White, and I am a copywriter.


EDIT: Somewhere between peeing on toilet seats and an affirmation to self, this post digressed into a Plath-ian Confessional. I'd down a bottle of Ambien and retreat under the house for this, but my apartment's concrete foundation stands in the way. Oh well.
Loyal readers, please bear with me while I learn how to blog!

Long-Distance Sistering

The prospect of starting a blog is a little overwhelming and a lot self-indulgent, but as my Dad always rightly said, I've never found a mirror I didn't like. Hopefully this blog will serve as more than a reflection of my exceedingly good looks and will provide some perspective and entertainment as I forge my way through advertising boot camp with a little help, encouragement and inspiration from my six-year-old sister, McKenzie. We live 700 miles apart, or one speed dial, postage stamp, or click of "send" away.


little sis (Kenzie) and middle sis (Courtney)


Here's the story of how we first met.

One fateful night in my junior year of high school, Mom and Dad sat my big sister Morgan and me down for a family dinner. A beautiful spread of cheese and fig compote, succulent grapes and a toasted ciabatta lay before us.

I knew something was up when Dad opened a special bottle of wine and didn't say much about it. Just when I noticed that there were only three glasses on the table, Mom announced that she was pregnant, and she was going to have a baby.
A Baby? I thought. How was that possible?
My older sister Morgan's response was complete unfounded excitement.
"A baby!" Morgan said. "That's awesome!"
Morgan was leaving in a year. She would hardly see the terrible twos.
Mom and Dad shifted their stare at me next, as though waiting for a reaction. But I was stunned.
"Why aren't you saying anything?" Mom said.
"Don't you guys know anything about birth control?" I said.
I regretted those words instantly. But as a rebellious hormonal teenager, I had fallen into a habit of not thinking about what I'd said until after I'd said it, or, more often, not thinking at all.


Nine months and several pounds of chocolate, pizza, and white death carbohydrates later (the white family nearly doubled in size before the baby was born), Mom went into labor. Morgan and I got the message at school. We immediately raced to the parking garage and heavy pedaled it to the hospital. When we got there, Mom was having contractions but not dilating. I heard the doctor explain to a nurse that half an hour of that was dangerous, for my Mom and for the baby. Twenty-nine and a half minutes later, the doctor announced that she would have to have an emergency C-section. A few nurses escorted Mom to a back room, and Dad signed some papers.


(Morgan, Dad and Courtney preparing to meet the little nugget.)


Hospital policy was that the patient could bring one guest into the emergency room, but Dad's policy was All for One, and One for All. Dad handed us some hospital scrubs while the medical staff prepared for the procedure. Then a nurse accompanied us into the operating room. Mom lay on the cot with a large blue sheet dangling from the ceiling separating her head from the rest of her body. Her face was what Miracle Max would diagnose as "mostly dead." I started to cry.

I watched as the doctor made his incision. The skin flared open the way a chicken breast does when you cut the trimmings. There was a short lag time before blood started pouring out, Mom's body resisting the doctor's unorthodox birthing scalpel. I looked up to maintain consciousness, where instead I found a ceiling-mounted mirror reflecting the doctor's view of the entire bloody dissection.

The doctor carefully removed organs from my mother's body -- red ones, brown ones, lumpy ones, round ones -- and placed them on a metal table on wheels beside her. Which one was my sister? I looked to my father, who held Mom's hand as the surgery continued. A drop ran down his cheek, a combination of consternation and perspiration accumulating along the rim of his face mask. I don't think he'd expected the doctor to take my mom apart, either, but he wasn't about to leave Mom's side to tell the doctor what to do. Morgan was behind me. I could feel that she was just as afraid as I was about what would happen next.


(Crying Baby White.)


Morgan was crying, I was crying, and then - suddenly -- a baby was crying, too. She had a great voice. I wondered, were we all feeling the same surge of emotion simultaneously? The same all-consuming familial bond? Morgan went to see the baby, who seemed pretty siked for her first bath, and I remained fixated on the rest of Mom's procedure. Mom has never lost any fight, but when she was completely knocked out and knocked up and knocked out with her body parts on a rolling metal nightstand, I feared for her life.
What if she doesn't wake up, I thought. My mom could die.

The doctor reassembled her parts, and before stitching her up, he lifted the last glittery ornament -- Mom's uterus -- off the side table and waved it in the air.
"Morgan, Courtney; look!" he said. "You were here once!"
Not the time or the place, Doc. Don' mess with my Mom!

[imagine family portrait here; mom would kill me if one actually surfaced on the internets]

Mom woke up eventually, and we got to have a heart-to-heart with the baby to-be-named McKenzie. She was way cooler than I'd thought she would be, and didn't even complain when I put my fingers behind her unusually large ears so she looked like a bunny.


(I'm so not a natural at this, but getting the hang of things.)


When McKenzie was two, I left for college, and we've been in a sororietal LDR ever since. Sistering one state apart isn't easy, but I do the best I can. And she does the same for me.