Amena Brown:
Hey, y'all. Welcome back to another weekly episode of HER With Amena Brown, and I welcome you all to our living room. Welcome back to those of you that are here every week or almost every week tuning in. We've had a wonderful year of episodes, y'all. I know, I'm already feeling like sentimental as the year is about to end, which is usual for me.
Amena Brown:
I'm already like in the recap and just thinking about all of the wonderful conversations we've had, all of the great guests we've had. Thank you so much for listening, and for those of you that popped in here and it's your first episode today, welcome. This episode, you are potentially listening to this the week before or the week of Halloween. I have actually been talking with my sister, Jamie about Halloween traditions, and I thought it would be cool for us to talk about that, and I would love to talk more about this on social media, so I'll try to put out a question when I do the social media post for this episode to hear what are some of your favorite Halloween traditions for those of you that celebrate. For the most part, I did not grow up celebrating Halloween.
Amena Brown:
Both sides of my family, my mom's side of the family and my dad's side of the family are church-going folks, so for the most part, I just remember long swatches of life where I did not celebrate Halloween in the traditional sense that a lot of the kids I went to school with would have, but there are certain Halloweens I remember here and there where I actually got to dress up, and it didn't have to be a biblical character. I want to give a shout-out to those of you who are listening that grew up in a church or religious setting and the countless ways that those spaces tried to give you some semblance of what Halloween could be like without encouraging you to do the devil's work, which is basically how Halloween was viewed in my religious upbringing, okay? My earliest, it's kind of interesting because I was going to tell y'all my earliest memory of celebrating Halloween, but I think it's actually out of order because I'm like, "Surely, I had to be eight years old at what is one of my ..." What I was going to say is my earliest memory, but I actually have a memory before that, so I'm going to tell you my ... Maybe it's my earliest memory now that I'm thinking about it, y'all, because it was the first time I really had a vision for a full costume.
Amena Brown:
It might actually have been the only time that I really had a vision for a costume that I remember having to work at somewhat. I'll start with this, and then I want to share with you a couple of other memorable Halloween things for me. I remember when I was eight years old, I was very much a big fan of Janet Jackson. Obviously, I'm early entry into this moment. I'm right there, loving the Control album.
Amena Brown:
Even as a six-year old, I was loving that album, so anything that Janet Jackson subsequently put out after that, like please. I had the posters on my wall, any magazines I read that interviewed Janet Jackson during my childhood. I had those cutouts on my wall. I believe I wrote to Janet Jackson's fan club twice, y'all, and included my school picture for her as well. I never got any correspondence back, but I do remember doing that, and I kind of wish that I had electronic versions of that, because I would be very curious as to what I thought it was important to tell Janet Jackson, but it's important to tell you that I was a fan of Janet because my first Halloween costume that I ever envisioned for myself was to be Janet Jackson for Halloween.
Amena Brown:
I'm going to tell you right now that the actual implementation of that, I don't think if I saw a picture of myself or if you saw the picture, that you would be like, "Got it. That's Janet Jackson," because I didn't really have like a look. You know how Janet in the early days wore like a lot of black? It was sort of like a black blazer, black kind of fitted pants, or it was black jeans with like the black T-shirt tucked in. Those would all be things that would subsequently make one think of Janet Jackson.
Amena Brown:
I think that I decided to dress very well for the '80s, and I think now that I have talked to y'all about this, I don't think I actually ended up dressing anything like Janet Jackson. I think my original inspiration for my costume was to be Janet Jackson. I think at the end, I ended up dressing up as a Janet Jackson fan. I remember I was wearing a stonewashed jeans skirt with a lavender top, and I had lavender socks to match, and I think I put on ... I can't remember if I was wearing church shoes or sneakers with those lavender socks, and I think my mom may have let me put a little bit of like some sort of lavender eyeshadow on or something, and I went out there with my little pumpkin pale and received my candy, but that's my strongest, like I had a vision for my outfit, Halloween costume memory, but let me tell you one of my most embarrassing moments in life, is also connected to Halloween.
Amena Brown:
When I was six, which this is why I told y'all, these stories are out of order, right? I was eight years old when I attempted my Janet Jackson costume, but my most embarrassing and probably earliest memory of dressing up for Halloween was when I was six years old. This was the year that I was in first grade, and I actually lived with my grandmother in North Carolina. My grandmother lived in a small town in North Carolina, same town where both my mom and dad were raised, and so I lived with my grandmother for that year because my mom was in basic training, I believe. I may be getting the actual training, or my mom was in training because she had joined the Army.
Amena Brown:
She was going to become a nurse in the Army. She was already a nurse, so she was going into the Army to further her work in the medical field, and a part of that, which is true for most folks in the military at some point, a part of that means if you have kids, if you have a family, you have your sort of community base, you have to leave them for a period of time, and my mom was at the portion of that, where she would've needed to leave me for so long. It made more sense for me to stay with my grandmother for that school year versus going with her when she went to her training in Denver. I'm living with my grandmother, and I have talked many times here about my grandma because she's just wonderful and entertaining as well, but I have a lot of foundational memories with her because I spent a lot of time with her when I was a little girl, and of course, now that she and my mom and my sister, Makeda live here in Atlanta, I've had even more time to have all these wonderful and hilarious memories with her. This year, I am going from having lived in closer to Durham, North Carolina, so I wouldn't consider Durham to be this like huge, bustling city, but it's definitely a more city place.
Amena Brown:
It's more of a big city than the town where my grandmother lived at the time, and so I had gone to kindergarten there, and then now living with my grandmother. Living with my grandmother wasn't like a foreign concept because we visited her all the time, she visited at us all the time, so I remember having a lot of memories, spending time with her there. I'll tell you what's interesting about celebrating Halloween with my grandmother. My grandmother grew up just like my mom and dad grew up in a Pentecostal Holiness Church environment. When I lived with her, she was still attending a Pentecostal Holiness Church, and there are some things I realized about my grandma's chosen rebellion that I love very much as a grown woman, like the type of church that my grandma was raised in, and subsequently continued going to as an adult, it was a type of church where women weren't supposed to wear makeup. You weren't supposed to do what were considered secular things, right?
Amena Brown:
Obviously, celebrating Halloween would be included in that, but that would also include, they would've deemed secular music, which meant music that you would not be singing in church or music that was not written to be about God or sung in a congregation of some kind, right? This would include the movies. The movies would've been considered secular. This also influenced the way that women were supposed to dress, women were supposed to be "Very modest," which in Pentecostal Holiness tradition meant skirts down to the ankles. It meant women didn't wear pants.
Amena Brown:
It meant we should never be seeing your cleavage, we should hardly even see your collarbone. Maybe we won't even see your shoulders because all of those things were considered to be potential stumbling blocks for men. I'm just going to have a moment of silence right there. Anyways, so I want you to imagine that my grandma, with her Pentecostal Holiness roots, had decided long ago, before I ever went to live with her, that she was just wearing pants because of the type of work that she did. She worked in a institutional hospital setting, where she had to work with young boys that had been institutionalized, and so a part of that was you had to play softball sometimes, you had to be able to do different things that you needed to be able to move however you needed to move, and she discovered me doing this in a skirt is not going to do, so she was like, "The church people going to deal. I'm wearing my pants, and that's that."
Amena Brown:
That's my young memory of my grandmother, that she went to church every Sunday, she played the piano for the church choir, and she wore her pants, and they could just be mad about it. Looking back on it, it really is surprising to me that she let me dress up for Halloween that year that I lived with her. I had a cousin named Al, and Al's birthday was near Halloween, and Al came from ... Y'all, y'all know how family is. Okay, so my great-grandmother, my grandma's mother, she had eight siblings.
Amena Brown:
Most of whom were all still living either in or near the town where my grandmother lived, in Goldsboro, North Carolina. A lot of my cousins, they were really sometimes second cousins to me or third cousins, but because of my grandma's station in the family, even though my grandma was my great-grandmother's daughter, a lot of her cousins really viewed her as an aunt, as if she were an additional sibling in a way. I go to my cousin Al's house, and Al is the same age as me, or close in age to me. We're probably within a year of each other, and because his birthday was near Halloween, I mean, why wouldn't he have a Halloween-themed birthday party? I don't remember if it was my idea.
Amena Brown:
I'm thinking it was my idea, that I mentioned to my grandma I wanted to dress up as a witch, and I'm going to tell y'all, if you didn't grow up in a Pentecostal Holiness type of church situation, or if you didn't grow up just religious, you may be like, "What's wrong with dressing up as a witch?" When you grow up in a certain religious environment, that is the devil's work, period. No one is interested in you being dressed up as witch. No, but for some reason, that's what I wanted to do. I don't remember why, so she kind of let me have ...
Amena Brown:
I wouldn't even say it was a half-costume. She let me have a 25% costume. She took me to the toy store and got me the black, pointy hat, and it also came with some plastic fingernails, but instead of you gluing them, they were made so that you could just like pop them on to your fingertips. They were like little plastic circles, and you would just pop them on to your fingertips, and then when you flipped your hands around, you would have the "Witch nails." Then, I basically had on my usual kid stuff, pair of jeans, shirt, sneakers, went to the party, so we went to the party at my Aunt Daisy May's house, who was my great-grandmother's sister, and my Aunt Daisy May was Al's grandmother.
Amena Brown:
Okay. Yes, I did say Aunt Daisy May. That's spelled what would seem like it should be pronounced, Daisy May, but no, no. We're from North Carolina. That's Daisy May, and I can't argue with you about it. It's just how it is, okay?
Amena Brown:
I'm at the party, this place is crawling with children, and then there are like few adults in the kitchen, a few adults kind of on the back patio, and all us kids just hanging out, having fun, playing games, having a good time. Okay. Well, my memory of Aunt Daisy May's house is that it seemed like it was such a huge house to me as a kid, but I only remember there being one bathroom, and my Aunt Daisy May raise so many kids in that house. I can't imagine that there was only one bathroom, but I'm going to tell y'all, that there was only one bathroom I knew about, okay? It was on the hall.
Amena Brown:
We all typically in our homes have the bathroom that guests are allowed to use, or for some of us, we just have one bathroom, and then we have to try to make sure things are swiped off the counters and thrown somewhere where guests can't see if they have to use our bathroom that we use every day. There was the one bathroom that all the guests could use, which meant all of the children who were there, there was always a long line to use the bathroom, and I must have played and played and played and played until it was like a pressing matter for me to have to go to the bathroom now, so I had to go really bad, then I get in line, and I'm already behind five or six people in line. Finally get into the bathroom. Y'all, I had to go to the bathroom so bad, I pulled my jeans down, but I forgot to pull my underwear down, so I peed everywhere. Like everything, like underwear are done.
Amena Brown:
There's pee on the jeans now, and y'all, this is actually true to form for me. When I think about this moment, I'm like, "This is very true to form for something that I would feel in a moment." I felt so embarrassed that it just stunted me, and I just sat in the bathroom. I didn't know what to do, so finally, I think behind me, there was a mother who was with her kid, and she asked me, could she come in? She wanted to make sure I was okay, and she came in and assessed the situation, and she went to get my grandma, so my grandma comes in, and I don't remember if I cried about this.
Amena Brown:
I just remember being very still and very like, "Oh my gosh, I'm embarrassed. I don't know what to do," and y'all, I'm going to tell you what my grandma decided as the problem solving for this moment. My grandma decided that the best solution was to get a bunch of paper towels and stuff them inside my jeans because it would help them dry. I'm going to have to bring grandma on the podcast and see if we can get an answer to this, but she stuffed the paper towels in there and tried to dry everything off as best she could with the rest of the paper towels, got me back, dressed again and sent me out to play. I probably stayed and played for another hour or two, and every now and then, the other kids would be like, "It smells like pee over here," but they could never figure out that it was me.
Amena Brown:
Of course, I'm thinking back on this moment, and I'm like, "I wonder why my grandma didn't take me back to her house and change my clothes, bring me back to the party," because Goldsboro is not that big of a town, you know? Then, I thought to myself, "Hmm, now that I'm an adult ..." Not that I would advise stuffing paper towels down the pants of a child that's had this type of accident. However, I understand the fatigue an adult experiences, and I understand my grandmother may be thinking to herself, "Hmm, if I go back to my house, I'm not coming back, so this child can either decide if we going home right now or if we going to try to come up with a short-term solution so you could continue playing and celebrating cousin Al's birthday, and then we go home." I want you all to know that that was one of my most embarrassing moments.
Amena Brown:
I don't know, maybe that's why I don't really celebrate Halloween today, but shout out to those paper towels, I guess. Anyways, after that six, eight ... I just don't remember Halloween anymore. I don't remember celebrating that or going trick-or-treating, although I'm certain I did. My next memories are church related memories, because when I turned 12, my mom and my sister and I had moved from North Carolina to San Antonio, Texas. Actually, no.
Amena Brown:
I'm skipping a step. We went from living in North Carolina after my mom finished her training, and now she was officially in the Army. Our first place that we were stationed was in the D.C. area, so I went to school in the DMV. Shout out to those of you that are from that area. I went to school there for a few years. My sister was born there, and then my mom actually got out of the military and decided to get back in the military, and so the military moved us to San Antonio, Texas.
Amena Brown:
When we moved to Texas, my mom had had a period of time before that, that we weren't really going to church, unless we were at my grandma's house, or maybe every now and then. There was a Sunday we went, but that wasn't like a regular part of our routine. When we moved to Texas, I was about 12, my sister was about two years old, my mom started going back to church on a regular basis. She really wanted to work on her relationship with God, right? That was my life from 12 all the way through high school, was church life.
Amena Brown:
I spent most of my extracurricular time, for the most part, was in church activities, and I remember our church used to have a Halloween event, but instead of it being called Halloween, it was called Joy Night, and you were typically encouraged at Joy Night to either dress up as a historical figure from Black history, because we were attending a Black church. You were encouraged to dress up as someone from Black history, or you were encouraged to dress up as a biblical character. There was basically like fun and games and stuff at the church, and then we were either getting bags of candy at the church or there was some other arrangement where you could kind of feel like you got a chance to trick-or-treat. I also want to make a note for y'all, that Joy Night stood for Jesus Over You, and for those of you who grew up in church, be blessed that I know that made you laugh. Then, I also, of course, once I married my husband, at the time that we got married, my husband was a youth pastor, so the church that he was a youth pastor at, their Halloween tradition for the kids was a trunk-and-treat.
Amena Brown:
That was my first time experiencing that, where different people from the church park in the church parking lot, but with all of their trunks facing out. Everybody's like, instead of backing in, everybody's like pulled in that way. Trunks are open, and then each person with their car there brings candy, and then the kids kind of go from car to car as their trick-or-treat experience, and then there were other games and food and stuff, which was like pretty fun, like communal type of activity, but I don't remember dressing up for that, and I don't remember any of my costumes when I used to do those church events as a child. I just, I don't remember that. Now, here I am as an adult. Halloween has become a very lazy experience.
Amena Brown:
It's turned into a very lazy experience, everyone, and part of that is because the house that my husband and I have lived in for, oh my gosh, seven years this year, our street is not populated with a lot of children. I think there are only three or four children, like school-age, that live on our street that I can think of. Our first time, our first Halloween in this house, we were super prepared. We turned on our porch light and bought our little candy, and we were like ready for everybody to come to our door, and no one came and we kept looking at the street and no one's walking down the street. That was when we learned we will not get the plus of being able to have sort of like neighborhood Halloween celebrations, which I would totally love if our street were like that, but we didn't have that.
Amena Brown:
We would have friends sometimes who would invite us over to their neighborhoods, where they were doing this kind of celebration for their kids, and then we would sit out with them while the other kids came up to them for trick-or-treating stuff. I have basically chosen, for the last 10 years of my life, one Halloween costume, and I have stuck with it. It's a Halloween costume that I started out calling a B-girl costume. Basically, this is me wearing an Adidas track suit, and if you have followed me on social media or have seen me perform live, you know that I just wear Adidas track suits. I don't even know that this counts as a Halloween costume, but it's what I do because I have it, it's easy to put together, it doesn't require a lot of to do.
Amena Brown:
I don't have to buy a wig. I can just really wear my hair just like I normally wear it. I can put together an outfit with some sneakers I actually have. I don't know if that means I just have clothes. It look like the '80s all the time anyways. Apparently, I have affinity for this era for some reason.
Amena Brown:
That's my outfit. The one how Halloween costume that I've always wanted to do in my adult life but I haven't done is, it's like a onesie, but it's black, and then it's just like the skeleton, the bones. I feel like if I'm going to trade lazy Halloween costumes, I'm going to go from my Adidas track suit B-girl situation to that, and I'm probably just going to wear that every year. I feel like those are my vibes. I want to give a special shout-out to the love of candy because that's really, for me, what Halloween is about.
Amena Brown:
I do still enjoy that feeling of glee after you would go trick-or-treating as a kid. You'd come home with all this wonderful candy. I want to give a shout-out to the people who are giving out regular size candy instead of the snack sizes. I mean, what a bonus you are giving to the trick-or-treaters. I want to give a shout-out to you, and I want to give a special shout-out to all the Halloween candy that's on sale the day after.
Amena Brown:
Now, as an adult, trick-or-treating is way less enticing because first of all, I have particularities about candy. Sometimes you would go trick-or-treating, and you'd pass by that one person's house, and they had like the Boston baked beans instead of the Snickers you were hoping for, or you got the Butterfinger out of that variety bag, and you didn't get the KitKat or whatever, but you had to just ride with it because now, it's all in your bag. You had to kind of divide it up, hope you could trade some of it the next day at school or whatever, but a plus to becoming an adult is just being like, "I don't even want the rest of those candies. I don't want to suffer through your bad candy choices. I can literally go to the store and buy the candy I like."
Amena Brown:
For me, I mean, top five off the top of my head, I mean, Snickers is really right off the top on that. I'm not going to lie about it, y'all. Snickers, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, that's a find. KitKat is going to go on there, and I'm just going to tell y'all as a special mention that there are a lot of varieties of KitKat now, some of which I'm interested in the innovation, some of which I'm a little concerned about. I'm going to say Twix on a number four.
Amena Brown:
Who doesn't love that cookie and the caramel mixed together? I'm going to go for that, and then I'm going to put number five Halloween candy for me, it's going to be the M&M's. I really, for the most part, haven't met an M&M I didn't like, you know? I like it with peanuts. I like it without peanuts.
Amena Brown:
I like those mint ones. I like the ones that have the peanut butter in there. I really haven't met one of those that I didn't like. All M&M's are welcome with me. I mean, those are my top five candies. If you start getting into like you're about to put lemon drops in my little pumpkin that I'm putting my candy in, who cares?
Amena Brown:
I can go to the store and just buy those five things I just named and just what, eat them, okay? Special shout out to being able to go the day after Halloween, and what, rack up on all that candy on sale. Mm-hmm (affirmative). If you celebrate Halloween, happy Halloween to you. If you don't, I still hope you get some candy that you like.
Amena Brown:
Talk to y'all soon. HER With Amena Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Sol Graffiti Productions as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with iHeart Radio. Thanks for listening, and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast.