Pumpkin Problems

I love autumn.  I’m not certain if it’s the fog, the falling leaves or the frenetic squirrels but the season makes me happy.  Despite the return of the rains, the moments of sunshine are frequent enough to make fall exquisite in my part of the world.   We trek to local farms to sample fresh apples, cider and view the pumpkin harvest. Speaking of which, did this year’s crop not produce some of the biggest pumpkins you have ever seen?** Of course, when I think of the harvest, with its back breaking labour and cornucopia of heavy root vegetables, I hope the next generation will be able to work hard and enjoy the bounty the land provides. This ironically, is exactly what those adorable little freeloaders will do this week, as they venture outside to harvest sugar infused treats from their neighbors.  

Children everywhere will gather in teams, armed with pillow cases and set to canvasing urban landscapes.  They will walk, perhaps hundreds of feet, climb stairs and will press buttons with chilly fingers.  When this has been accomplished, functional adults will pick up treats and drop them mercilessly in their sacks, and the children will then forget to say thank you and turn into the darkness, to repeat this action until their parents gather them up and drive them home.

Yep. It’s Halloween again.

If you have the gift of discernment you have deduced I have a complicated relationship with Halloween. It’s most likely a Christianese thing. A spiritual incongruence that I can’t get around: what do Reese’s peanut butter cups, a vast array of oversexed adult costumes and pumpkins on door steps have to do with each other?  Where else can a desperate desire for community and a good time manifest in a society where community has moved into a realm that isn’t even physical?  It’s all rather peculiar.

As far as traditions go, jack ’o lanterns have never been my favourite thing.  The pumpkin part I love, but carving those critters is next to impossible.  The internet is filled with brilliant people who carve majestic orange masterpieces: politicians, Marvel characters and movie sets.  Utterly astonishing, some are jolly clever. How they do it is a mystery, though I expect they aren’t using a dull steak knife and a cheap plastic saw from the dollar store.  That could be my problem.  This year however, I hit a new low.  I thought if I shared it with you, you’d feel better about yourself as a person and maybe your life in general.

To start with, I like the white pumpkins.  They might not even be real pumpkins, I have no idea.  Maybe they are a gourd – nope, internet says they are a pumpkin variety.  With that out of the way the next confession is that I often carve my pumpkins (white) into owls.  This year something went slightly sideways.  The trip to the patch was lovely but very busy.  Post patch-visit, my pumpkin sat a week in the garage without being carved.  That wouldn’t be a big deal except it discoloured and became a speckled, albino pumpkin.  When I brought it inside to carve, I was disappointed and tried to scrape off the mildew spots.  That was a bad idea because those spots instantly started to weep moisture.  Something about this was super discouraging and slowed me down, resulting in the children getting all the good carving knives.  It was about then, with my pox-plagued pumpkin, that I decided that I would just put candle eyes on my jack’o lantern and call it good. 

That was a really bad idea.

Not because it wasn’t easy to carve, because it was; but the end result was sort of awful.  The eyes went in easily enough but when lit it looks like my pumpkin is weeping wax tears.  It’s truly damnable.  Burning the tea light eyes resulted in severe burnt-on eyebrows, which my youngest tried to fix by washing one off, which makes it look like pumpkin face lost an eyebrow (which he did) to fire ( which he didn’t. )  I don’t think I have ever failed at holiday crafts quite like this one.  I’d be impressed with myself if my children weren’t so horrified.  Strangely, I’ve developed affection for this woe begotten fellow.  My family’s only hope is that it rains so badly on Halloween that the tea lights are blown out and no one sees it. This is unfair considering I was only doing the best I could with my appalling attitude and lack of enthusiasm.

In order to deflect attention from myself, I thought I would ask how your heart attitude is these days my friend?  Because I wanted to remind you, if you heart isn’t in something, the end result will be some form of ugly. However, if your heart is invested in your actions, the results can be stellar, doesn’t matter if we are talking pumpkins or people.

So I’m praying this week, for myself mostly but I’ll bring you in on it, that our hearts will be malleable.  That for love’s sake, we will rally and invest our best, so that the return isn’t outright horrifying.

Be safe, stay away from open flame,

xoxKaren

**No idea why I write sentences like this.  None whatsoever.