Today I finally understood why Cinderella was transported into a magical realm by a pumpkin.
I can’t believe these big round orange magical things grow from tiny seeds into sprawling vines and then sprout these incredible fairy tale globes, the very essence of growth and transformation.
So I decided to visit some pumpkins.
Golden leaves flew through the air like Mother Earth was throwing confetti over my car as I drove by, clouds of sun-catching leaves wafting into the air and fluttering down. I parked and walked past the old cider press, picking up a hot cider and to sip while I walked, inhaling cinnamon, woodsmoke, and apples. I walked by the battered red truck piled high with vibrant orange pumpkins.
I walked further down the dirt road, past the old barn with the spinning pig weathervane. I delighted in the snorts of the large polka-dotted pig in his pen, gobbling up apples and the goat with floppy ears watching me carefully through the fence. I leaned on a wooden gate and watched leaves the color of fire scattering over the heads of the pot-bellied donkeys meandering through another sun-splashed pasture. Ducks with emerald and turquoise feathers glided across the sunset-colored pond, reflecting the surrounding trees.
Pumpkins were everywhere, and I felt like I had landed in a fairy tale realm, and I wondered if the ancient storyteller who first told the story of the girl who swept the cinders; the girl who was kind to animals; the girl who believed in her own worth, no matter how many times people tried to tell her she was worthless; the girl who refused to be crushed by loss and grief; the girl who kept believing in love even when there was no one who loved her; the girl who never stopped dreaming big; I wondered why that ancient storyteller chose a simple pumpkin to take the girl to the land where her dreams might come true.
What is it about pumpkins that enchants us so?
My sister is obsessed with pumpkins, and for years she grew them and I received a daily report on their state. Mind you, these weren’t dry garden reports, these were gushing tales of shining fat pumpkins, palm-sized baby ones, perfect spheres and misshapen wild ones. She rhapsodized about curling vines and curving stems, and most of all, the vivid colors. Her rapture was so all-encompassing, she soon started wearing a bright pumpkin orange coat and sequin orange Ugg boots. If you asked her why she adored pumpkins, she had no big explanation. She would just say, “I can’t believe something so beautiful just grows in the ground!”
Some loves just can’t be put into words.
I sent my son to the store last week and asked him to bring me home big orange fairy tale pumpkins. He returned with three small white pumpkins.
I said, “Henry, where’s the big pumpkin?”
He pointed at them and said, “I got you the little ones because you said you wanted them “fairy-sized” and a fairy could definitely live in those.”
“I meant “fairy-tale” meaning big, fat, with a curling stem!” But I let it slide because his explanation of a fairy living in a little white pumpkin was so perfectly aligned with our family culture.
“Did you at least get an orange one?”
He shook his head. “I figured if you put water on the white ones they would turn orange.”
I couldn’t reply because I was too perplexed that my 17-year-old thought pumpkins changed color with water. Where did he come up with this idea? Does this make him a brilliantly creative future storyteller or a simple-minded pumpkin head? I don’t know. Time will tell.
In the meantime, I am bewitched by pumpkins, and the entire tradition of carving them this time of year and lighting them with candles. When I taught at Waldorf, we did many “lantern” traditions between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice. The theory (you know I love a theory!) was that this is the time of year when darkness is growing, with the sunlight growing dimmer each day, until the Solstice, the longest night of the year, when the darkness is at its peak, the light at its dimmest. Then the sunlight starts to grow again each day. Lanterns or Jack O’Lanterns, remind us to light our own inner light in response to the primal fear of growing darkness, “primal” meaning even if we don’t notice it, our human biology responds to the amount of sunlight each day. In Waldorf, older children carve elaborate lanterns from all sorts of gourds and they are beautiful.
But for me, pumpkins are my favorite.
As I walked back to my car, each footstep a crunch through leaves, I walked by pumpkins bigger than a ballgown and gently brushed my fingers along the rough bark of the trees, wondering if the trees felt like this was the most glamorous time of year for them with dangling red fruit hanging off every branch like they were wearing priceless earrings, more precious than any you might find in a Cartier store. A towering maple tree shimmied, sending a flutter of golden leaf confetti raining over my head, some landing in my hair like I was wearing a tiara.
As I climbed into my snazzberry car and drove away, I pretended it wasn’t a car at all but a fairy tale pumpkin, where love is everywhere, anything is possible, and even the biggest dreams can come true.
