Lev loved to dress up. As a little kid, we had a bag of outfits he could wear, and we also made funny things together throughout the year. As he grew older, he still liked to put on funny stuff, cutting up old clothes, using cardboard and duck tape to make a funny arm cover, etc.
He liked to think of himself as powerful, invincible, somehow greater than a normal human.
Most Halloweens we spent with John, Jeana, Lucas, and Roz. We met in birthing class with Jaal, and we started doing Halloween together when they were two or three. Our neighborhood wasn't good for trick-or-treating so we would go to West Seattle and walk around their neighborhood. We would have dinner together and then go out walking. Everyone enjoyed it.
Two years ago Lev bought a metal knight's helmet. He loved medieval stuff. He wore it to Halloween and we padded the inside, but the darn thing was so heavy he couldn't wear it all night. That was the year that Tony brought his ukelele and we sang to the houses. We were quite a crew.
One year, when we were in Costa Rica, we were both renting a beach house in Playa Hermosa during a week off, and Jeana and I bought some candies and had the kids dress up and come to the different rooms in the house to get a treat.
As the kids got older, Halloween together had to stop. Below is a picture from our last time.
Lev wore a funny wig and painted his face red, with a Disturbed shirt. I'm not sure what he was. I remember listening to a lot of Disturbed that year. Lev would like to play the same songs over and over again, setting it to loop. One day, Jaal figured he had to do something, so he looked for another band that he thought he could introduce him to, and that's when he discovered Metallica. The next year was filled with Metallica. They even got to go to a show. Now, whenever I hear heavy metal I think of Lev. We used to listen every day on the way to school, but now my radio is silent.
