When Your Hallow Doesn't Ween 🎃

Don't worry if Halloween didn't turn out the way you hoped...

The teacher in this comic was Mrs. Barkley, who was perhaps the best of all my teachers in Elementary school. She was a golden one—she was the first person to suggest that I should write and illustrate my own stories, and she had a great sense of humor. She loved books and animals and her classroom was filled with both—at one point we had a rabbit, two rats (who had babies), two guinea pigs, a hamster, and a cockatoo.

She died of cancer a few years ago—just a little too soon, as it often goes.

I felt so free to be creative back then, both in her class and generally. Being the spooky child that I was, I had lots of grand ideas for Halloween.

My mom (BLESS MY MOTHER) tried her best, but she had six kids. And during this particular Halloween, she had a six-month-old baby. Though she was a far better seamstress than I will ever be (she sewed matching Easter dresses for us every year) my mom could rarely make my elaborate costume fantasies come to life. This was also before Amazon and Pinterest and the age of shared Internet creativity, so all we had to go on were my ideas (I was eight) and any costume patterns we found at the local fabric store.

After the wild thing, I mostly chose more traditional costumes—a witch, a spider, a dinosaur, a witch again. It wasn’t until I got a bit more experience creating things on my own that I started going all-out for Halloween.

These days, I host a big, sprawling Halloween party for all my beloveds. I love getting together to make mischief and eat delicious food and send all our kids to bed with their heads full of terrors. With the exception of COVID, we’ve held a great big Hallows Eve party every year since 2015.

This year, at the request of our ancient Egypt-obsessed child, we had an Egyptian Halloween party. I spent the past two months (with the help of my good friend Robin) crafting and building props that we could use to decorate our yard and driveway (where Father Laurence resides).

So, if you want to know why I have missed a week or two of comics, is was why: