Spellbound

Magical things can happen in your house when your kids are little. I personally feel the PRIME GULLIBLE ZONE lasts until they turn six. (Case in point: We took RE to Disneyland when she turned five and she believed parrots were singing in the Tiki Room and jungle cruise piranhas were about to eat us alive. We went to Disneyworld when she was 6 and she reported, "Everything here is fake. We need to go back to California.")

When RE was in kindergarten I accompanied her class on the pumpkin patch field trip. Each student was allowed to pick a free pumpkin. Ever the cheapskate I encouraged her to get the largest pumpkin on the field. A lover of miniatures she picked the teensiest mini-pumpkin Farmer Ben grew. It fit in her palm. Boy did she love that thing.

Grandpa Herb happened to be staying at our house for a few days and was a first-hand witness of her gourd affection. RE was reluctant to go to bed that night without her new treasure so we quickly devised a reason for pumpkin to stay downstairs: it needed to sleep on the windowsill so it could grow bigger in the night just like she grew bigger every night. She bought it and went to bed alone.

I went to bed, too. But Herb went to the store. That sneaky guy bought a pumpkin JUST bigger than her original pumpkin, swapped it on the sill, and went to bed himself.

When RE came downstairs for breakfast she could tell her pumpkin had grown because it didn’t quite fit in her palm the way it had at the patch. Her eyebrows were raised and she was thinking. She went to school and Herb swapped the pumpkin for another size up. She came home and ran to the sill...yep! It was growing even more! That night Grandpa swapped it again, the pumpkin now up to a 6” diameter. Mom! Come see how my pumpkin growed! This continued for three days until my sweet father-in-law had to drive home to Colorado. The final pumpkin was so big it had to sit on the floor, not the sill, and she couldn’t lift it. I could hardly lift it. It was a prize-winning size if you know what I mean. Little RE accepted the sun and bedtime with confidence from that point on and just knew that things grow when they rest and feel the sun. Period.

I’ll never forget those few days. Those were days she wore a Cinderella dress-up over her real clothes, pink suede boots, and a metallic blue headband 24-7. I can still see her racing to the window to check on pumpkin with a dropped-open mouth, gasp, and wide eyes. Every check-up was the same. Oh, to be a child. They accept magic at face-value instead of looking for an explanation. They are excited every three hours because the sun is still shining and working its miracles all over the place.

Photo of 18-month old RE sitting on the biggest pumpkin we ever grew in our garden. "Big Max" was almost 100 pounds! If you love pumpkin and want to make your own purée for pumpkin chocolate chip cupcakes, click here.