Better Late

I haven't had the heart to throw away our squatty little Halloween pumpkins. I thought they were appropriate to keep around for Thanksgiving, but after the Christmas tree came out of storage and the twinkle lights mingled with their old ornament friends, I knew something had to be done about the pumpkins. They were suddenly gauche, awkwardly crowding the counters with their generous rumps.

I kept them out of guilt. They are technically pie pumpkins and could feed a village for a day, and I felt as though I should be chunking them, roasting them, pureeing them.

And I've promised the girls, particularly Elspeth, a jack 'o lantern for the past three or four years. And we've never, ever carved one. I remember my dad covering our table in newspapers, I remember the sweet, spicy smell as my mother stirred the seeds in the oven. I always assumed they'd carry around this quintessential American memory too.

But I am mighty afeared of any kind of craft. Tell me we're going to cut out construction paper turkey feathers or tie dye tee-shirts and I break into hives. You think I'm joking? Ask the women who know me on a daily basis. They believe me when I say I'd rather clean toilets than scrapbook. So while other families sport their meticulously carved gourds, our pumpkins always remain unblemished by knife or marker.

Elspeth has made a couple attempts to take matters into her own hands. One morning two years ago, I came downstairs and found my Wustof Chef's knife, seeds, and orange guts all over the play stove. Her friend Ben cowered in the corner. "I told her we shouldn't do it," he whimpered. I checked and they both still had all their fingers.

This year Elspeth found a tiny pumpkin from a trash heap in some yard, brought it home, somehow worked off the stem, and began painstakingly fishing around in its belly with a table knife. "Don't touch my pumpkin!" she pleaded before leaving for school, suspicious of what all my daughters believe is a compulsive throw-away obsession. (Bea just found her Thanksgiving hat in the garbage can, pulled it out, shoved it down over the crown of her head and announced, 'I made this in school!' My friend Sal alluded to unpacking ornaments every year and how the children delight to see their paper Santas and pipecleaner reindeer--years of December school projects. 'You mean you KEEP them?' I asked, aghast. It had never occurred to me that I shouldn't be layering them with discarded papers and banana peels in the trashcan).

Yesterday afternoon, when our table was loaded with my netbook, papers, and crumbs still left over from lunch, Elspeth brought her pathetic little pumpkin to the table and began pulling out seeds again. Enough is enough, I thought, whipping out our paring knife. So there, on our Christmas tablecloth, without newspaper or ceremony, Elspeth and I carved our first pumpkin together. Then we carved a pie pumpkin, too, who Elspeth said was the little pumpkin's mother. We dropped in candles and Elspeth turned off the lights and put her little arms around my neck. "They're so beautiful!" she exalted. So the Advent season found our family eating dinner with the lights low, gazing at our jack 'o lanterns, happy despite the smell of burning pumpkin--someone hadn't quite cleaned out all the guts.

There was a bit of a problem with the bigger maternal pumpkin, though. I had meant to knife in some eyelashes but my attempts made the mama gourd look lost in anxiety. "That's because she's worried her son [the little jack 'o lantern with one tooth] is going to get cut up and eaten," Elspeth told me. Or maybe she's worried she's going to get thrown down the hill for the groundhog to feast upon, which she will just before Christmas. Crafts have a shelf-life, especially edible ones.

Our Christmas jack 'o lanterns. It's better late than never, right? Maybe next year I'll actually roast the seeds.

But let's not get carried away.