The Potential of the Pumpkin Seed

         December. At the end of this month, it will officially be one year since I last saw my extended family. For some members, it’s been even longer. While my loved ones have been spared a direct hit from this monstrous virus, Covid-19 has taken a toll on me as it has on everyone. By nature, writers are solitary creatures. We may belong to circles, groups and congregations, but we forage and ferment our ideas in isolation. We are well acquainted with silence.

Enter Covid-19. The confusion. The lockdown. The worries. The endless sanitizing of countertops and hands. The limited supply of disinfectant wipes. The darkening red and darkening spread of dots on the map of our country. Sickness. Sorrow. A longing to break through the isolation. To hold. To hug. To fling our masks into a crimson fire, link arms with those we love and dance.

This Thanksgiving was particularly lonesome but rather than focus on what was missing, I was determined to celebrate with a true sense of gratitude. Though it was just my nuclear family, we ate in our seldom-used dining room and I set the table with a decorative tablecloth, heirloom china and festive fall candles. No matter that the table was big and the family small; that my grown children's work schedules forced us to eat in shifts, or that my husband would be leaving early to bring wrapped turkey and fixings to his mother. It was Thanksgiving and I was grateful that even in these troubled times, I was blessed with an abundance of food. I know not everyone was as lucky. 

This year my daughter was bringing a pumpkin pie baked with a pumpkin she had grown in her own garden.

    Months ago my daughter brought me to the overgrown patch of land behind her apartment building. Temporarily laid off from work due to Covid, she wanted a project which would keep her busy and force her outside. I’m thinking of a garden, she said. Nothing big just a small corner plot here where the sun hits. 

A small garden plot seemed like a good idea, but already she was looking beyond the corner.

It’s too bad that the forsythia is so overgrown, she said.  If we just pruned it back a bit, think of all the sunlight there'd be. This whole yard could be a garden!

        I looked and saw a bramble of weeds, vines and overgrown forsythia that would take weeks to clear. Yes, but wouldn't—

        No sense finishing the sentence. I'd already seen the look in her eye. 

       From then on, whenever possible, my daughter could be found working in her garden. Whenever I had a free moment, I'd bundle myself up to help her. Even in a pandemic, it works like that. A child’s dream becomes a mother’s effort— mostly I raked a decade of decaying leaves while my daughter pruned the forsythia or dug up stubborn roots. Soon enough a brilliant sunlight warmed us and I’d watch her wheelbarrow mountains of fresh dirt to mingle with the enriched soil the raked leaves left behind.

The lockdown lifted and my daughter returned to work, but her heart remained in the garden. Whenever possible she'd be found there. Whenever I visited, she'd bring me to the garden and point out the newest treasures. Throughout the spring and summer we marveled at the flowers and vegetables she had cultivated— tomatoes, cucumbers and beans, sunflowers, marigolds, and an assortment of colorful wildflowers. But, from seed to flower, it was the pumpkins peeking from beneath the vine that delighted us most of all. 

A single seed planted in what was once a tangle of decay became the jewel of my Thanksgiving dinner. 

Whether sitting at our table or sheltering miles away, Covid has taught many of us to appreciate the lives of those we love. It has also taught me the astonishing potential in one nurtured seed. After the difficult year we've had, my wish for 2021 is that each of us is like that pumpkin seed.