Pat Hitchens

Halloween in our town has never been for scaredy-cats -- at least not when it comes to decorating the yard.  Any Helicopter mom or dad worth an ounce of candy corn is expected to strew their lawn with tombstones and back-lit talking skulls, phony cobwebbing two stories high stretching above, interspersed with dangling bats and tarantulas.  Some folks festoon bushes in twinkling purple-and-orange, as well, like Christmas decorations offering their souls in exchange for more yard time. And 2021 has brought us the Inflatables, a looming horde of Macy’s Parade-worthy gargantuan goblins, spiders, and the occasional Frankenstein. I suppose the kids help to fill these with air, or do they come with electric pumps?

Hard for a mere pumpkin to make a showing against that backdrop.  Yet our family has always thought of ourselves as modest yet shrewd competitors in Halloween décor, able to cut through deco-overkill with ease.    We allow ourselves one pumpkin per family member – among whom, however, we count our cats.  Four humans and three felines mean that on our most show-offy Halloweens, there are some seven pumpkins getting in the way of trick-or-treaters walking up our path. 

My husband Bob, usually chief sculptor, fashions a face suitable to each family member as well as its chosen pumpkin.  Every one of them a deft character study.  Approachable versus scary.  But edgy, in our own way.

And then our son Sam married Yoko.  Yoko’s native Japan has limited cultural affinity for the ghosts and goblins of All Hallows’ Eve, but given its own spirit heritage, Japan has begun to adopt our Halloween.  Minus pumpkin Jack-o’ lanterns, however, perhaps because the Japanese prefer more dainty whittling, as in the sculpted cucumbers and radishes gracing sushi plates. 

Two years ago, I showed Yoko how to plunge a knife through a pumpkin’s leathery exterior.   Then last year, our carving enthusiasm stilled by the Pandemic, our daughter-in-law surprised us with her own version.

I know what it takes to hack into one of those uncompromising squashes.  How had she worked it into a compliant medium for her delicate renderings of Zoomers?  Of lock-downers reaching out to their fellows in isolation?  And how did she cut so easily to the heart of that year’s event? 

Her Jack o’ lantern message was whimsical and paradoxical – and dead on.  It brought to mind our deeper hopes for holidays – a bit of humor, a dash of truth – fused by kinship.   What’s more, no fake spiders or twinkling purple garlands distracted from the refrain of togetherness beaming from the Zoom boxes of Yoko’s pumpkin.