Its A Pumpkin Thing

One of my favorite traditions around Halloween is pumkin picking and carving. I would patiently await the day as a kid that my parents would announce that we were going to the pumpkin patch. We would all pile into the car and look out the window at the plethora of colors that the trees had on them. We would arrive at the pumpkin patch and immediately set out to find the perfect pumpkin. My brothers would always try to find the biggest, and i would try to find the “prettiest”. As we found our pumpkins my dad would load them into the car while mom picked out apples, cider and a few gourdes to decorate the house with. We would take them home and spend the entire night carving while listening to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and watching our array of cartoon halloween tv shows. We were never allowed to use anything but our hands to gut the inside of the pumpkin. “That’s the best part!” my dad would always say as he grabbed the insides of the pumpkin and threw them toward us. We would decide what to draw on our pumpkins and watched as dad would carve (it seemed we were always too little to use the carving knife). We would then put our little candle into the pumpkin and place it on the porch to display our creativeness.

It was such a memorable tradition for me as a child, I have tried to bring that tradition into my adult life. Though I don’t have quite a nuclear familyof my own yet, I have people who I consider my family. Though they may not see the significance of this tradition or even undersatnd it, they know how important it is to me, and that is enough. I think Halloween is one of my favorite holidays because I have such a fond memory of family time. Yes, every holiday has family time, however, this was always just my immediate family, just the five of us–somehow that made it a little more special. I guess that is what I am trying to do in my life now. To make intimate memories with those who I consider my family, so that maybe one day those people can look back on the memory with fondness.