I am six years old. 1993. Halloween is approaching fast. I am filled with wonder; it's my third year of truly understanding it, celebrating it.
I am on the phone with my Aunt Trish. She is the reason I started trick-or-treating. The reason I faced my 'fear' of Halloween and was able to embrace it as my own. We're discussing the upcoming holiday, the plans, hoping for no rain as I have been sick the last few weeks.
Somehow I get on the subject of a Barbie doll I saw recently a local store. She's a friend of Barbie I've never seen or heard of before, Kayla. I'm not sure what it is that enchants me so much about her. She's new, she's different, her name is somewhat close to mine...It could be anything, but I want her. I'm not sure why I'm telling my aunt this, maybe a hope that she'll buy her for me. Kids do silly things out of desperation. It feels urgent.
Aunt Trish doesn't offer to buy the doll for me, though. However, she tells me that maybe, if I'm good, the Great Pumpkin will bring it for me.
My ears prick up at that. The Great Pumpkin? How have I never heard of him before? I know, of course, if Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy...Is there a Halloween creature who brings presents, too? Why does no one speak of him?
I think about the fact that I'm the only child I know who prefers Halloween to Christmas. And I think, for a moment, that maybe that is why.
Aunt Trish takes me to rent It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. I feel like I'm being let it on an amazing secret. Suddenly it doesn't hurt so much that I'm never invited to join the exclusive clubs on my school playground. I'm clearly about to become part of something truly elite. Something much more meaningful.
I watch the movie, and am disappointed that the Great Pumpkin himself, never actually appears. Somehow, though, I miss the point that he's not meant to be real in the first place. Perhaps I am just like Linus Van Pelt. Besides, I can very easily conjure the image of the Great Pumpkin in my mind. Suddenly certain types of decorations I've been seeing around, make a strange, secretive sense. I envision that Great Pumpkin as a Jack O'Lantern head on the body of a ghost. Ethereal. Special. The truest symbol of Halloween.
Aunt Trish tells me the Great Pumpkin will come on the night before Halloween. We do a little chant to summon him, something like
'Great Pumpkin, Great Pumpkin, you are such a fright! Great Pumpkin, Great Pumpkin, make my dreams come true tonight!'
And that night, I go to bed more excited than I've been about Christmas Eve. This is Halloween Eve...it's a different kind of excitement. I lay awake, imagining the Great Pumpkin in my own living room. Every slight noise I hear, I wonder if it's him. At one point I'm certain I hear what sounds like a doll box being placed on the coffee table. Could it be?
When it's finally time to get up in the morning, sure enough, the doll is there waiting for me. The Great Pumpkin has come through! And my father has a story. Perhaps the greatest story he has ever told me.
He tells me that he saw the Great Pumpkin last night. That he was so curious about this being that he spent part of the night in the living room. The Great Pumpkin arrived, and initially placed an action figure on the coffee table. My father awoke and explained to him that no, a little girl who wanted a doll lives here, and the pumpkin shook his head, as if to laugh at his own mistake, and quickly swapped the presents. I wonder about the little boy that the action figure was for. Do I know him? Is there another child in my town, maybe even in my own neighborhood, who loves Halloween as much as I do?
I listen as my father continues his story, telling of how the Great Pumpkin does not speak, but there is a rattling in his head when he moves. A magic candle of sorts. An almost-voice. Looking back on the previous night, I'm certain that I heard it. That all of the noises I heard while lying awake were real. I am a chosen one of the Great Pumpkin himself.
*************
A few years later, I witness a gift being handed off between my aunt and my mother, thus ending the myth of the Great Pumpkin as a magical gift-giver. I take it hard, possibly harder than I did a few years later when I found out the truth about Santa Claus. Losing the Great Pumpkin felt infinitely more personal. It was a gut punch.
However, the older I've gotten, the more I've realized, year after year, that the Great Pumpkin is still, in fact, very real to me. No, he doesn't bring me toys on the night before Halloween anymore. He is a much more constant presence in my life. He is the wind that flutters dry leaves around me in the dead of winter. He is the forgotten decoration on my neighbor's front door. He is the cloudy, stormy day in the middle of summer that reminds me of what's to come. He is the constant reminder that Halloween is out there. He is hope.
There has always, in fact, been a Great Pumpkin. And I have, from a young age, been lucky enough to know him personally.
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