I apologize for the lateness of this, but this was a hard post for me.  I found myself overwhelmed by emotion while writing it.  Remember when Halloween was all about the candy and not about getting shitty drunk and wearing slutty costumes?  It’s been a minute, people, I know!

This has been my favorite day of the year for a long time, but the motivations behind that have evolved.  Today, it’s hard for me to say goodbye to summer, knowing what I do about Appalachian winters, and Halloween is a last shout, falling not long after Lughnasadh, is the day that everyone recognizes, for a minute, that death really is eventual.

A good cure for the morbids is having a child to make things look warm and fuzzy – Elle and I are childless because we like being morbid, but I do keep a few young people in the wings for nostalgic moments like this when I want to reminisce about my own childhood and attempt to relive it through other people.  So I went trick-or-treating in Belle with my friend Jess and her tadpole, Hunter. Continue Reading →