The Pumpkin Seed & The Magic Of Stories

Sometimes, I am compelled to be practical. Sometimes, I write to inform, offer suggestions, or provide an opinion on speech therapy and aural rehabilitation.

Sometimes. This is not one of those times - not exactly, that is. This time, I am compelled to be impractical.

As such, I am compelled to say that few question the power of fairy tales, magic, and gardens.

This, begs the question (at least to me) - what is a garden without pumpkins, and what is a pumpkin without magic? Common knowledge dictates that where there are pumpkins, there is magic, and where there is magic, there are stories.

Stories give life. Stories evoke feelings of lost hope. Stories bring tears to eternally dry eyes and free stifled emotions. Stories breathe and shape the world as they see fit. Stories are wild and unexpected. Stories are magic, and so are pumpkins.

Bear with me. I promise the ride is worth it.

Back to magic. Does magic erupt from storytelling, or is it the other way around? How do fairy tales and legends begin? Is it a character? A setting? A catalytic event that forces an improbable hero into the fray? Is it the simple words, “Once upon a time?”

What of gardens and pumpkins? Does a garden only count as a garden if it possesses a seed? A plant? The soil? Is it only a garden with the scoop of a shovel and the hopeful placement of an idea in the ground? Are stories and gardens not as tame and malleable as one would think, especially those grounded in reality?

Fairy tales and gardens. Magic and pumpkins. These are the things that bring light and nuance into our lives.

Watching a sunflower open in the midday heat may as well be the same as watching a fairy godmother create Cinderella’s coach out of a fruit (or vegetable, depending on your perspective). Breathtaking, astonishing, enchanting.

Except.

What happens if the story isn’t what was expected? What if the seed planted isn’t the one that takes root? What if the task at hand feels bigger than finding a lost shoe - after a ball and before the school bus arrives?

What about caring for a child with unexpected challenges? What if reality feels insurmountable and the impracticality of stories means they must be discarded?

I am compelled to ask: Do fairytales have a place in reality? Cinderella needed a pumpkin, after all. Like a fairy godmother, caregivers have a profound impact on the lives of their children by enriching souls, creating magic, and watching unexpected, everyday events become extraordinary ones through imagination and storytelling.

Let’s go back to the beginning. I am a storyteller. Not a distinguished one, but a storyteller nonetheless. Let me tell you a story…

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Once upon a time, there was a mother. She lived in a little brick house with her husband, a gardener, and their three children.

The mother was tired and worn. All was not well, even though her children were safe and fed. Her youngest needed extra care.

Care that meant her life would never be the same. Care that felt impossible to create from the endless void inside of her. She was overwhelmed and discouraged. A cloud hung over her, a haze enveloped her.

She wanted her children to be happy, even though she was not, so the mother bought pumpkins to carve and shape. These seemed to be ordinary pumpkins by every measure of the word, yet they were anything but.

These pumpkins, though the mother did not know, were magic. Of course, it’s common knowledge that all pumpkins are magic, but it is easy to forget this when the practical screams on all sides. As it stands, pumpkins can be insufferably impractical.

Her children squealed and giggled as they cut the pumpkins, grimacing as they pulled seeds and gloop from the insides. They were delighted and bewitched as they placed the newly smiling pumpkins on the steps of their home.

In the midst of the joy around her, the mother was still sad. The light of seeing her children laugh and dance left almost as soon as it arrived. Like a winter snowflake floats to the Earth and melts on unforgiving ground, so did the sadness consume her; it sucked away the air she tried to breathe and spun her senses. The world moved, yet she stood frozen in place.

The pumpkins sat in front of the mother’s house for several evenings, and her children were enraptured by their’ wayward grins and gentle glow. The pumpkins were magical, by all accounts, after all - at least to her children.

After a month, the pumpkins sagged, their smiles aging with cracked wrinkles, and they no longer held their full magic. As such, they were thrown away with the other rubbish, except for a few scattered seeds left in the dirt. The mother thought nothing of it.

The mother’s husband, wishing to please his wife and make her happy again, planted sunflowers, for they brought joy to the mother. As their sprouts began to stretch through the earth, the mother smiled at the colossal, confident blooms.

The sadness, however, remained like a puncture in a boat or a scab from a festering wound. The world moved on, but she remained still, mourning the life she thought she would have.

Each day, she would sit, and each day marked another hole in the calendar of her life. One day,, the mother noticed something peculiar only a few feet from the towering sunflowers. Pumpkin leaves.

“Oh,” Claire says as she stumbles back into her car, smiling in feigned gratitude to avoid upsetting the individual further, “Thanks for the heads-up!”

As I have said, pumpkins are magic. This is important to remember even when the world compels us to forget. Now, this is not what the mother expected.

She wasn’t even sure they were pumpkin leaves. For all she knew, they might be pestering weeds, intent on strangling her beloved sunflowers and the only remaining sliver of joy she felt. Yet here they were, swaying in the breeze in large, lobed waves as if to offer a greeting or a truce.

The mother felt a shift. The magic touched her, if only for a moment. She relented and permitted the pumpkin plant to stay.

The pumpkin plant grew, reaching well beyond where the mother anticipated. At times, this concerned her, at others, it delighted her. The plant was wild as if it couldn’t be bothered to follow the mother’s rules.

The mother surrendered to the saboteur’s way of existence, even becoming attached to the unfettered plant. She guided vines, watered the earth underneath, and pruned the unnecessarily voluminous leaves (there were too many to count). She allowed it to spindle and climb as it wished, perhaps against her better judgment, through and past the sunflowers. Life wasn’t perfect, she surmised, so why did this plant have to be?

Her children also grew and thrived, in their own ways, and their mother loved them, and loved their lifves. Perhaps their story is not typical, but it was theirs, and theirs was magical.

Then one day, she saw it. A pumpkin.

Round, small, green, but a pumpkin nonetheless. The magic of it cracked her soul and opened her heart to a reality she never knew existed. It was a reality of lost dreams, of heartbreak, of new life, and of courage.

She was never the same again, but perhaps she didn’t want to be anymore. All of her confusion, fear, apprehension, and eventual acceptance materialized into something impractical, and the impractical.

These are the stories that breathe, live, weep, crack desperate souls, and flourish. These stories are magic, and so, it seems, are the impracticality of pumpkins.

And the mother was happy.

© WendyOlsenPhotography from Getty Images Signature