My Favorite Purim Costume of All

My Favorite Purim Costume of All

This year for Purim my 7-year-old Tsofia is dressing up as a yo-yo.

While I was impressed by Tsoofy’s creativity, I also felt a ping of sadness.

For the last 18 years I have had a daughter young enough that she still yearned to dress up, like all the other girls in her class, as a bride or a princess or a queen.

You might think this would get boring, but my 5 daughters have taught me that there is actually a stunning variety of queens a little girl can dress up as– a Butterfly Queen, a Flower Queen, a Rainbow Queen, a Candy Queen, a Shabbat Queen (a personal favorite)…And of course, Queen Esther.

In the costumes of little girls, we see their dreams.

And now my youngest daughter has turned 7. She’s a big girl, and wants to have a creative costume like big girls have. Thus, the yo-yo. The bittersweet end of a Purim-poofy-dress era for me…

Today is the day kids around Israel wear their costumes to school. So this morning, on the way to gan, with 5-year-old Yaakov, the IDF soldier, on my left and 3-year-old Yoni, the clown, on my right, I enjoyed checking out the costumes of all the young children on their way to gan.

I saw a lot of little boys dressed up as soldiers, like Yaakov. And clowns, like Yoni, And policemen. And firemen. And race-car drivers. I also saw a few Cohen Gadols, and at least one Chassidic Rebbe and a Rav Ovadia Yosef.

And among the little girls…You guessed it. A pink princess. A blue princess. A yellow princess. A few Queen Esthers and a few more brides.

And then I saw something unusual.

A proud little girl wearing an exquisite headscarf, pushing a baby carriage.

She had dressed up as a mother. As me, and you.

How lovely, I thought, that the life we live is her dream.

So lovely, I think this Purim I will be a mother too…

8 comments

  1. sarah mandel

    My five year old also dressed up as me for the second year in a row – only glitch is, he’s a boy!!!!!!

  2. Vicki Belovski

    When our oldest daughter was about 4, she said she wanted to dress up as a Mummy. So I said, “Great, you can wear a scarf and a housecoat and hold a broom.”
    But she said, “No! Not that sort of Mummy – I want to wear makeup and high heels and a sheitel. That sort of Mummy!”

  3. Hadassah Aber

    I am dressing up as a mommy from mitzrayim with six babies in a sling! If I get a good picture I will send it to you. I always like to dress up as someone I taught about in the Parsha….

  4. Where did you see that girl?? It might have been my Orah! Ironically, she was all set to go to school as a kalla (for the 3rd year out of the last 4!) and literally at the last minute she decided to change and go as an Ima and push her doll stroller to school! I happened to see more than a handful of girls in head scarves and sheitals with accompanying paraphernalia. It’s both amazing and funny that we are seen as something to dress up as, along with Rav Ovadia Yosef, soldiers, and poofy-dressed princesses!

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