For her pumpkin my daughter chose a little green one, not quite soft but a little "flexible." My son chose a large, perfectly orange, endearingly crooked one. They wanted to carve them. I was strongly encouraging painting.
This afternoon I yielded, and we carved Ranita's pumpkin. (Chinchita was angy; I promised we could do hers tomorrow!)
As I made the first incision around the stem, I was suddenly flooded with memories of one October two decades ago at Wheaton College in Illinois. It was my sophomore year of college, and some friends invited me to their dorm to carve pumpkins. I'd never carved pumpkins before, but we made this an adventure!
The others made very cool Jack-o'-lanterns. Mine was different: a nose, an eye, a mouth all on different sides. (I knew I wasn't an artist; at least I could be unique!) We dried the seeds and then ran around in the dark throwing pumpkin innards at each other. (Could that have been my idea? We used to throw rotten tomatoes at each other at the end of tomato season on the farm . . . very well could have been!)
How we laughed!
We divvied up the seeds in plastic bags. When we went to snack on them the next day, they were not crisp. They were soggy. We called each other to figure out what to do. Over to my room they came, and my hairdryer went into action. Very effective!
The pumpkin, however, did not last long. It created a bit of a spiritual dilemma for one of my roommates, so in solidarity we tossed it. (Really, can you blame her? A nose, a mouth, and an eye . . . not even in appropriate places?! Even I found it a bit weird!)
That was the first, and last, time I carved a pumpkin. Until today. My son helped separate out the pumpkin seeds (which I dried to perfection) from the guts. We had planned on our own pumpkin fight, but the cold was prohibitive.
When it came time for designing, I was relieved to hand the marker to him and let him draw to his heart's content. Then I carved. It is perfect! I told him about my last foray and assured him that he was a much better designer than his mother, though he insisted I was "the best pumpkin carver in the world, Mom!" Gotta love my babies! Then, because I fell victim to the moment, I found a small candle and lit it inside. A few moments later, my daughter reached for the open mouth of the pumpkin. I knew she couldn't reach the flame, but I yelled, "Stop!" all the same. And then another memory.
My mother has a picture of my brother, my sister, and me when I was about my son's age. I am sitting on the floor with my sister on my lap, half-suffocated by my embrace. My brother is sticking a finger into a lit Jack-o'-lantern. By the expression on my face, it is clear that I am yelling "Stop!"
I find it funny that a woman who has a total of 3 Jack-o'-lantern memories suddenly saw her entire life summed up by a pumpkin, some seeds, and a small flame.
And she found it to be very good.
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