Debra called me tonight. She’s a friend of my mictother-in-law. She’s a wealthy woman, pushy and competitive and kind of phony, but she also has custody of her little granddaughter and the granddaughter and my daughter are friends, so I put up with her.

She was calling to tell me that her granddaughter, Faith, wants to be the same thing for Halloween that my daughter (Little C) has been planning on being for months now. Debra wants to know if I’m making the costume, or where I’m getting it, and do I have any advice about this situation. You should also know that we invited Faith to go trick-or-treating with us again this year because she doesn’t really have any friends to go with in her neighborhood. Got all that?

Now Little C’s costume (she’s going as a character from Avatar) involves vintage clothes that we just lucked into and a kimono that I ordered from work and some props that we’ll be making. We love Halloween around here, and we always try to have a unique costume. So I was a little disappointed that Faith was copying C’s costume idea.

Then I started thinking about this past 4th of July. Little C usually spends the 4th with her grandma and Debra and Faith at their vacation house, which is a lot of fun because it’s on the beach and all the kids in the community have a parade. This year, Debra organized the parade and decided on a Wizard of Oz theme and she also decided which kid got to be what character. Naturally she made her granddaughter Dorothy and she told my daughter she could be Glinda a chipmunk.

C didn’t want to be a chipmunk. She wanted to be Glinda, and she had a Glinda dress already in her dress-up box. But Debra wouldn’t budge. She’d already picked someone else to be Glinda, and there couldn’t be two Glindas in the parade! No Way! This may not seem like a big deal, but it was hard for C to understand and seemed really stupid and arbitrary - I mean, we’re not talking about the Macy’s parade here, you know?

After a few teary nights and talks about the unfairness of life, C decided not to go with Debra and Faith for the weekend and ended up getting invited on a camping trip with another friend and had the time of her life. But I guess I hadn’t let it go because boy did it come bubbling up to the surface when Debra called asking me to help her crib my daughter’s costume idea.

I thought of not calling her back. I thought of telling her she had a lot of nerve and that maybe Faith would like to be a chipmunk for Halloween. I was getting all twisted up about this, ranting at my husband: It’s more that just the costume! It’s the way they treat C because they’re loaded and we’re poor! It’s bad manners! It’s the hypocrisy!

Then I asked Little C what she thought about it.

It will be fun, we can be twins, is what she had to say.

So I picked up the phone and called Debra. I told her what we had planned, and she said she’d been having a hard time finding anything to fit Faith. We talked for a few minutes and that was it.

I’m letting go of this resentment, and I’m taking note once again of an important lesson learned from my six-year-old kid. She’s got it right, and I know it. She feels things deeply, expresses the feeling and moves on. She resolved the issue with the parade and the costume way back in July when it was happening and she wasn’t carrying that around any more. And she knows that having a good time with your friend is more important than having the most original costume.

It’s amazing, everywhere I look lately I find lessons that I can apply to my recovery.