2 Souls 1 Heart

With Halloween approaching we of course purchased a pumpkin for our youngest, and most excitable child to carve. This usually means that he chooses a pumpkin, tells me what he wants to carve on it, and then I summon all the artistic talents that I can find and then attempt to create his vision.

This year he is 7 and that makes him apparently a man, and he can carve his own pumpkin and wield a knife like a knight wields a sword, or so I am told. So after sketching the face he dreamed up onto his small pumpkin we lovingly call “Geoff” he starts his brain surgery, again his words, and begins carving this pumpkin. Now I admit I helped in making sure we didn’t lose any fingers, or stab any body parts except “Geoff Pumpkin”, he did quite well. He even calmly assured Geoff that everything was going to be okay he just needed to have some things removed so he could have a face. This kids imagination is one of a kind.

The entire time I was on baited breath praying he wouldn’t slip or slice anything but Geoff as he got a new face, but he did well and carved his very first pumpkin. This filled me with such a sense of accomplishment, and then I was filled with something else… disappointment. I didn’t get to carve a pumpkin! For YEARS I got to complain about having to carve a pumpkin for children, and I DIDN’T GET TO THIS YEAR. How dare these kids?!

So while I dropped my youngest off at choir practice and had an hour to spare, I ran to the dollar store for glow sticks, I don’t like open flame inside pumpkins, and then went to the grocery store where I proceeded to spend $8 on a giant pumpkin for myself to carve. Yes $8!

I picked up my son from choir, went home and made dinner, and then sat at the table for an hour and carved out my house tree pumpkin with joy. It wasn’t AS satisfying as I couldn’t complain that I was forced to do it, I now had to admit that I liked carving these pumpkins and got satisfaction from it myself. It’s just not the same.

In the end we got two pumpkins for our back step to delight us for the next couple weeks until Halloween, and then we will take them and feed them to the farm animals. But it was something I could share with my youngest son which also filled him with happiness. We won’t discuss the 40 minutes it took me to deguck the seeds from the pumpkins to my oldest son and fiance could enjoy the baked seeds. That is for another day.