"Happy Mother's Day"

Yeah I know, I know, my calendar is way outta wack as far as aligning with actual dates, but this is here on account of it also being my mom's birthday. With mine on Xmas it made for quite the holiday-centered traditional family event calendar every year. And on darker days it's also a reason I sometimes stay off line and get ensconced within a buffer zone because paying attention to sad feelings is something you sometimes can't afford to do and not fall into depression. Mostly I just miss her.

I often credit the foundation of my cartooning as probably due to the influence of both parents. Which is rare since I normally attribute my ah, extremes to my father, and the more measured, centered middle as stemming from my mother's influence. Neither was particularly artistic or creative (though my father was a poet before teaching English, French and Latin) but but both were very literate. That's what one would expect from a reference librarian and bookstore manager: with an only child who represented rich, ripe and fertile ground to cultivate creativity and imagination in my budding brain. That's indeed where the metaphor for a mental mulch-pile grew.