Halloween
I like Halloween. Having missed the boat on organised religion and coming from a disfunctional family, Christmas was a time of mixed emotions. Even now, as a dad, I follow the lead of Wife when it comes to getting into the spirit of things, because I an sceptical and analytical to a fault and of a melancholy disposition. And I use words like disposition.
But Halloween is all about fun. No gifts, no gatherings, no “they had us over last year”s - just creativity and fun. I carved a few pumpkins, and put a knife into my thumb, as is the custom. Wife was listening to me from the other room as I carved the four pumpkins using a variety of implements. Every time there was a grunt of frustration from me, she called out to see if I’d cut myself yet. I called back to reassure her that I was in no hurry and that the pumkin had simply rolled off the baking tray again.
But once the suspense had built up and she couldn’t take it any longer I placed my left thumb on the blade of a grapefruit knife and lined it up on the pumpkin. Grapefruit knives are fairly blunt at the end but have sharp serrated edges, so you need to build up a lot of pressure to push them straigh down through the skin of a ripe pumpkin. Once that’s done, though, the blade and the teeth go through the soft pulp very quickly, taking with it the edge of the thumb steadying the blade.
I announced to Wife what I had finally done and she grabbed the nearest set of plasters with red smiley crocodiles on, just to add insult to injury as I whimpered “but it really hurts” and “now I’ll never be able to finish my pumpkin”. Wife have given birth to two children without a complaint, and I imagine she was thinking what a lucky woman she was as upwards of a dozen drops of blood flowed down my thumb and into the sink.
I say “dysfunctional” with the greatest respect to my parents who tried very hard to make it work, even past the point where they should have stopped trying. We have feuds that would make Wuthering Heights look like the Cosby show. We were ahead of our time with dysfunction. Both grandparents divorced and had more kids, my folks divorced, my aunt and uncle divorced.