My ninety-eight-year-old grandfather, always called “Pa” by our family, likes to give his gifts in a big way.
When I was about ten years old, Pa gave me one of the most memorable, and definitely the largest gift I’d ever received. It taught me a lot about love.
My family went to visit Pa one July evening after supper. As the grown-ups admired his yard, we kids clambered up the granite boulder we had fondly dubbed “The George Washington Rock,” our own mini-Mt. Rushmore. When the grown-ups disappeared behind the arborvitae hedge, we followed. That’s where Pa grew his vegetable garden. I remembered how extraordinarily tidy he always kept it. Straight paths separated neat rows of well-trimmed plants and set off a border marked by marigolds. Every year, Pa carefully staked and tied his tomatoes and built intricate moats and mounds around his gourds, winter squash and melons. Even to a child who despised vegetables, his garden was pleasing to look at: its variety of textures and vivid greens.
When we caught up to the grown-ups by the garden, I gasped in surprise. This was not the model of vegetable geometry I had come to expect.
Instead, most of Pa’s garden was covered with bicycle-tire-sized dusty leaves and vines as thick as handle-bars. Pigs’-tail tendrils curled and stretched in every direction. Here and there star-shaped flowers bloomed, bright as orange California poppies. In a few places where the flower had puckered into a fist, I could see a green, tennis-ball-sized fruit growing.
With his arms akimbo, Pa announced he had only put in a “postage-stamp patch” of his usual garden produce this year because he was “going whole hog into pumpkins, giant pumpkins.” He explained how he had started “Atlantic Giant” seeds indoors in paper cups (“Only one seed per cup, mind you”). About two weeks later, he had transplanted the most vigorous seedling into some specially prepared, extra enriched soil in his garden. He gave the vine plenty of room to spread out - a square at least twenty-five feet per side - and mulched the soil with straw. He said he planned to put white sheets over the pumpkins when they grew. I laughed, imagining squatty ghostlike bumps haunting the garden. But Pa explained that without a covering, the skins of the ripening fruit would get sunburned. I slipped away as my mother and Pa started discussing what he should put under each of his prodigies to keep their undersides clean and free of rot and scarring. With the rest of the summer ahead of me and fifth grade in the fall, I soon forgot about Pa’s pumpkins...
Until the middle of October, Pa invited us for another visit. As soon as we tumbled out of the station-wagon, he greeted us. Right away, I could tell something was up. Pa has never been the apple-cheeked, twinkly eyed, merrymaking kind of grandpa. He isn’t demonstrative, except with his gifts, and always looked rather professional with his wool vest and pipe. But that day, he was different. He took us straight back to his garden.
Huge as harvest moons, there they were: two behemoth pumpkins.
“Wow!” we said.
“Oh, my goodness sake!” my mother said.
Convinced we had been awed from a distance, Pa took us in to get a closer look. My younger brother and I stepped tentatively over the prickly vines and through the scratchy leaves. We touched the smooth, cool skin of the pumpkins and tried to nudge them with our hands. We might as well have tried to move The George Washington Rock. Those bruisers would probably have sent the scale’s arrow spinning to at least a quarter ton each.
But it was the silver scrawl across the top of one of the pumpkins that caught my attention. As the fruit grew, Pa had scratched my full name and birth date into its skin. The other pumpkin was inscribed with my younger brother’s name and birth date. As a lower-middle child in a large family, I never assumed that anyone knew who I was or recognized me as an individual; I was just part of the passel, usually just the little sister of one of my older siblings. I often felt lost or left out, or simply overlooked. So when I discovered that Pa knew my whole name and exact birth date - when I realized he had grown that pumpkin thinking of just me, planning to surprise me at just the right time - I whooped for joy. Later, the thought of how much effort and time he had joyfully and secretly poured into that pumpkin touched me, too.
Carved into the jack of all jack-o’-lanterns and then made into spice-scented pies and muffins, that pumpkin was definitely one of the most unusual gifts I’ve ever received. But more than that, it was just the right size to express Pa’s giant generosity and fill a little girl’s heart with the surprise of being loved.
Red may connote mere passion, but for me, orange is what real love looks like. For me, orange - bright, pumpkin orange - is definitely the color of love.
- Allison Harms