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Do you know Maurice Sendak’s Chicken Soup With Rice?
This slim rhyming book for children from 1962 — in which a little boy serves the title dish in different ways for each month of the year — was a staple of my kindergarten class in 1990 and therefore is the basis for some of my earliest memories.
Each month, we’d learn the new rhyme, but I was always partial to October’s entry:
In October
I’ll be host
To witches, goblins
And a ghost.
I’ll serve them chicken soup on toast.
Whoopy once
Whoopy twice
Whoopy chicken soup with rice.
Chicken Soup With Rice
That, and Matt Maxwell’s 1981 song C’est l’Halloween, defined this month for me as a kid. My very favourite month. I loved making haunted houses out of cardboard and carving pumpkins. I loved dressing up in costumes and hosting Halloween parties. I loved the pumpkin-shaped sugar cookies my mom made for the occasion, and their shiny layer of orange royal icing.
Now, October is a beautiful, terrible month for me. Like Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.” I love the coziness, the golden colours, the soup, the good outfits with jackets and boots, the cute jack o’ lanterns.
It’s spooky season.
But I am not kidding when I tell you that every truly terrible thing that has ever happened to me has happened in October. My Grammy died 29 years ago today at the age of 53 — a formative trauma and the first time someone close to me died — but the last few years have also delivered a bunch of shocks, as Nexties know: my mom was in a coma in October 2022, my family had a house fire in 2023 (on Nov. 1, but still) and, last year, my dog Samson died.
I have felt incredibly on edge these past few weeks, waiting for something bad to happen.
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This October, however, has had some relief. After two years, my family was finally able to move home, and we had a very nice Thanksgiving dinner in the house I grew up in — only briefly mired by one of my parents’ dogs escaping the yard (which of course made my brain click into IS THIS THE BAD THING???? mode), but he was, thankfully, quickly found.
A few of you have been asking about my fam (which is so nice), so I wanted to give a small update. They are home.
Phoebe in her Snow White costume
There’s still half of it left, but I am cautiously optimistic about this October. I bought Phoebe, my new dog (though not so new anymore!), an adorable Snow White costume. We’ll give out candy this year after a two-year hiatus. I crafted a bunch of Halloween wreaths. Who knows? Maybe I’ll make some chicken soup with rice.
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