Carving Pumpkins

About six weeks off seasonally, I know.

 

Carving Pumpkins

By Carl Mealie

 

On Saturday, a few weeks back, my family and I made out annual pilgrimage to the local pumpkin patch. We could just as easily drive up the street and pick up several pumpkins at Safeway, but there really is something about going to the pumpkin patch. It’s kind of an inauguration of the season. The kids’ mind seems to change from summer swimming and shorts to fall and jackets in one afternoon.

 

I am unashamedly a fan of the pumpkin patch myself. I don’t much care for the summer. I like cool weather, hot cocoa, blankets, slippers, rainy weather and all of that. As much as anything else, the pumpkin patch signifies that the holidays are just around the corner, and more than anything else, I love the holidays. I truly do.  Even the yucky parts. Crowded malls, love ‘em. Untangling Chrismas lights, unbridled joy. Fruitcake, ok that’s crap, but it’s Italian cousin, Panettone, manna from heaven. Eggnog, mother’s milk. 

 

I love the holidays, but I’m a romantic and an idealist. I have some goofy after-school-special idea of the holidays where everybody is just a little more of the person they always wanted to be and the world is a slightly better place because of it. I know the reality of things, but I have no intention of changing and every intention of imbuing my children with the same sense of possibility. So I look forward to the pumpkin patch.

 

A week or so after we go to the pumpkin patch, it is pumpkin carving day. Like most things, carving pumpkins has changed in some ways but remains very much the same as I remember from my childhood. As a kid, my pumpkins all had geometric faces; my kids go to the store and buy pumpkin carving templates that allow for Star Wars pumpkins and Disney Princess pumpkins. What hasn’t changed is that after the first handful of pumpkin goo, the kids have had enough and pumpkin carving becomes a parental activity with the children serving as artistic directors.

 

My 10 year old son’s pumpkin is first and as I scoop out pumpkin goo, he asks me a number of questions. He’s my oldest and for some reason, maybe it’s a phase or something; he wants to know how I did things when I was his age. “Dad, when you were my age, did you play video games?” That kind of thing. 

 

Today starts with “Dad, when you were my age, did you go to the pumpkin patch?”

 

“Kinda,” I respond. “I grew up in Los Angeles and there weren’t any real pumpkin patches around so before Halloween, people would build fake pumpkin patches in parking lots and sell pumpkins there. Then after Halloween, they would wait a few weeks, then change the decorations and sell Christmas trees.”

 

My son’s face crinkles up and his eyebrows furrow. “Really?” he asks.

 

“Yeah, pretty much.” My wife snickers at me from the other side of the table. She’s a native here to northern California where real pumpkin patches actually exist and she finds my city-ness amusing.

 

“Did you at least get to carve your pumpkins?” my son asks.

 

“Sure,” I reply. “But we just had plain old triangle faces, not this cool stuff here,” I say, motioning towards the stack of stencils on the table.

 

“Is that because you’re old and stuff?” he asks. More snickering comes from across the table.

 

“You know, your mom is actually older than me.” No snickering this time.

 

“Really?” he asks again.

 

“Really, really,” I reply and snicker a little myself.

 

“How old were you when you stopped carving pumpkins?” he asks.

 

I think for a moment and reply “I don’t know. Come to think of it, all the times I carved pumpkins sort of fade into one big memory of pumpkin carving now.”

 

Of course, that’s not entirely true, but I don’t tell him that. I remember one pumpkin carving day rather well. I’m not sure of how old I was exactly, but I was young enough that my parents would still say things that were slightly inappropriate around me thinking that they were being sly, but I was old enough that I understood them.

 

It was also one of those rare periods of time when my parents were living together. My dad always had some degree of wanderlust which in his case translated to a wandering lust. Throughout my middle school years, my dad occasionally would find a new and exciting piece of a*s that he would shack up with for a while until it wasn’t all that exciting anymore and then he’d come home. I think this happened three of four times before he decided to marry one of his shack-ups. Of course, he had to divorce my mom first. 

 

My brother and I spent a lot of time in therapy during those years where an array of shrinks would tell us that our father had some issues that he needed to work out and he was going through what was called a “mid-life crisis.” This was the early ‘80s, before the idea of a mid-life crisis was dismissed as selfish horseshit. 

 

We would spend a lot of time in some shrink’s offices where he or she  would ask us how we “felt” about what was going on. I never knew what to say. What was I supposed to say or feel? “Gee doc, take all the elements of your life as you know it, put them in a cup, cover the cup with your hand, shake the living s**t out the cup containing your life, and pour the contents out on the table. Now tell me, how do you feel?” Of course, as a child I couldn’t articulate that, so I shrugged my shoulders a lot. The shrinks interpreted my shoulder shrugging as hostility and anger which they would report to my parents. This led to more therapy where I was supposed to “deal with my feelings of hostility.” This led to a lot of frustration since I didn’t think I was angry. Eventually, the frustration led to anger, so maybe they were right to begin with.

 

Whatever my father was, or what his failings were, my mother was his exact opposite. Where my father had to be on the go and was always looking for some new experience, my mother was the ultimate home body, content with whatever she had. How those two hooked up to begin with has always been a complete mystery to me. I guess the options in the small town they grew up in weren’t all that great.

 

My mother’s family still lives in that small town back east.  My parents moved to sunny Los Angeles when I was three and my dad was transferred LAX where he worked for TWA back in the airlines’ hey day, before deregulation. 

 

Working for the airlines had its perks in that we could fly for free. Every year we would fly back east to my mom’s home town. Her family belonged to the local Catholic Church there. It was a very old church, or at least it looked it, Gothic in design with moss growing up the walls of the bell tower. It was the kind of place where I often saw impossibly old women with lace doilies on their heads vigorously chanting the rosary in Italian and Christmas Eve services were conducted in Latin.

 

I can’t remember what the name of the church was, but I think it was the Italian words for perpetual anguish. I could never understand why people were so into Christ’s suffering. I understand the significance, but it made life seem so dismal. Maybe people are better able to understand suffering, than the concepts of grace, love, mercy, charity, and peace. The unpleasant stuff is just easier to wrap your head around.

 

We’d leave church and go back to my grandparent’s house where there would be a lot of shouting until dinner. Grandpa would eat dinner, have a couple beers while playing solitaire and go to bed. Grandma would eat dinner, clean-up, watch Jerry Falwell or PTL, and then go to bed. By the time I was a teenager, they lived on separate sides of the same house, meeting only at meal times.

 

With all that, I can understand why my mom kept taking my dad back after these interludes. Suffering and marital discord were her paradigms, what else could she have done? My dad would leave, she would do a novena. He would come back, she would do a novena. I could never understand why the response to each event was the same. It might also explain why it took me so long to come to terms with God. I was suffering anyway, why go to church to legitimize it?

 

This particular Halloween though occurred during one of those periods when my dad was living with us. It had been a pretty good day as I remember it. We carved pumpkins, mom roasted the seeds, made dinner and we all ate together, an extreme rarity. Then we went out for ice cream, still one of my favorite things to do. Everything is better with ice cream. Now when my wife and I take the kids to go get ice cream, we drive around for a while we eat. When I was a kid, we got ice cream and just went home.

 

So we were sitting in out living room, each of us in our spots, Dad in the Lazy Boy, mom at the end of the couch closest to Dad’s chair doing a crossword puzzle, me at the other end of the couch, and my brother on the floor in front of the TV. It’s funny how a family gets into a rhythm like that, each knowing where to sit. Even when Dad wasn’t living with us we all still sat in the same places. It felt as if one of us took his chair, then he would for sure never come back.

 

He was here now though. Mom looked up from her crossword puzzle, turned to my dad and said “Honey, let’s go to bed early tonight, you want to go to bed early tonight honey?”

 

I remember thinking “I’m going to go to my room because this is kind of gross. Don’t they realize that I know what they’re talking about? I’m not a baby here.” Now I recognize how far out on a limb my mother must have felt right then. As a child, she didn’t just go to Our Lady of Perpetual Anguish for church; she went to school there, with nuns for teachers, rulers across the knuckles and everything. I imagine certain conventions were taught, perhaps even in unspoken ways about the way a lady behaved and the fulfillment of wifely duties. Wives were to submit to their husbands, not lead the way. I think she was probably trying to be more of what my dad kept leaving for so she put herself out there, even if it was in a very demure way.

 

I understand more now, but I got the gist of it then and I wanted to get hell out of the room. I felt embarrassed and uncomfortable, a little like I was intruding. Before I could get up though, my dad turned to my mom and said, “Nah, I think I’m going to go for a motorcycle ride tonight.”

 

“Oh, okay,” my mother replied, turning back to her crossword puzzle.

 

That moment sticks in my mind now as one of the cruelest things I’ve ever witnessed. I can’t imagine what my mom must have felt, being that vulnerable and then rejected for a motorcycle. I recognize now that my dad’s motorcycle ride was to some new honey’s apartment, but at the time, I just saw it in an absolutely merciless light, I still kinda do. 

 

A few weeks later, just after Christmas in fact, dad left again to move in with whoever it was that time. My brother and I went back into therapy to discuss our feelings, be told it wasn’t our fault, and work out whatever problems we had as a result of dad’s midlife crisis. Whatever we did in therapy, it had no effect at all. My brother tried to slowly starve himself to death as the only male anorexia patient I’ve ever heard of. He’s okay now. I left home and enlisted at seventeen, a devout atheist. Twelve years and two marriages later, I began to rethink my relationship with God. Since then, life has been different.

 

“Hey old man,” my wife calls from across the table, “how you doing on that pumpkin?”

“Almost finished,” I reply.

 

“You’re being awfully quiet over there,” she says.

 

“Just thinking,” I reply.

 

“What about?” she asks.

 

“Nothing, really,” I reply. No need to dredge all that up.

 

“After we finish these, can we go get ice cream?” she asks, and I remember why I married her.

 

“Ice cream, Ice cream!” the kids chant in unison.

 

“I think we can,” I reply and finish carving my pumpkin.

 

 

Reviews

[Brian Armour]

Your story had an easy narrative tone, that I thought was engaging. I don't usually read first person narrative (don't usually write in it either) but your piece appealed to me. Apart from the voice, I found structure within it which added cohesion and gave it meaning. The icecream which linked memory (and parent's childhood) with present, and own children and current family. I found the `belief in God' connection wanting in resolution. Partly I suppose because the main theme of narrative is the parents. There is also a mental string going on in respect of small-town vs city, highlighted by pumpkin patch experience and references to mother's home town � parents marriage possible not happening except both from small town. But it doesn't have a resolution, and I didn't expect it, though it does it's bit to retain tight story focus.
To be critical:
`I remember one pumpkin carving day rather well. I'm not sure of how old I was exactly, but I was young enough that my parents would still say things (that were) slightly inappropriate around me thinking (that) they were being sly, but I was old enough (that I understood) to understand them.' � this is a very long sentence, and though I had no trouble with it (I'm used to them, and guilty as well) others might. Although you have a good conversational tone, suggest you be careful of use of `that'. I made a few edits above re how they might be omitted. Also I think you need to watch qualification eg `rather' `exactly' `slightly' � these may not be good examples
`It was the kind of place where I often saw impossibly...' � there are other places like this?
`...vigorously chanting the rosary in Italian( and Christmas Eve services were conducted in Latin.)`- the end of this sentence doesn't work � suggest new sentence. � or possible `and where Christmas...' � but it still a log sentence. The beginning is very descriptive and adds character to image of church & town, whereas the end seems a statement of facts.
`My brother and I spent a lot of time...' & next para `We would spend a lot of time in...' � suggest alternative phrase.
`...enlisted at seventeen, a devout atheist.' � this didn't gel with me as a compatible thought. I can see you condensing, but the two things don't follow in my mind and need to be separated. Also `enlisted' is vague (though perhaps commonly understood) i.e. was it the army or the church he enlisted in � yeah, I'm playing devil's advocate .
All the dialogue was sound, well placed. The last exchange between husband and wife were very natural and would the story up in an effective way.
To me this was a wisdom of life story. It couldn't have been written by an eighteen year old. It was personal, honest and revealing, but it didn't give a self-concerned viewpoint � the story makes the reader consider themselves in relation to issues expressed. `...easier to wrap your head around.'
Hope above assists somehow. Thank you for the read.
Regards Brian