Every “autumn” growing up, my dad took my sister and I to the local grocery store (often Fry’s or Bashas’) to pick out a pumpkin to carve for Halloween. I put “autumn” in quotation marks because Phoenix does not have autumn—we used two weeks before Halloween as our indicator. Anyway, many times, as I recall, after we picked out our pumpkins, my dad would let us pick a cob of that colorful dried corn or a fall gourd to take home. I was a gourd kid myself. I think I only chose the corn when I convinced my dad to let me get both corn and a gourd.
While this impromptu tradition is favored in my memory as a beloved fall thrill, I also remember that it was harrowing. This past weekend, I left campus to go to the Apple Festival in Kendallville, IN, as well as the Auburn Fair. At the Apple Fest, I found a huge wooden crate of gourds and immediately dove in. These gourds were much more varied than the gourds at the grocery store in Phoenix! I spent a good ten minutes picking a few to autumn-ify my dorm. Suddenly I felt like I was back at the grocery store as a kid—I had a harder time choosing a gourd or mini-pumpkin to take home than I had choosing a college, years later!
As a child, I was often indecisive about trivial issues, and I had a tendency to personify inanimate objects. While I have since become a confident decision-maker, I have not entirely outgrown the latter tendency. I can picture seven-year-old Isabel, hands in the wicker cornucopia, holding up each gourd to examine its pattern, color, warts, stem, and so on, looking for the perfect gourd friend to take home. Of course, seven-year-old Isabel began to feel bad for the neglected gourds. No gourd should feel unwanted! She would speak simpering little words to the ones returned to the cornucopia, “Oh, it’s not that you’re bad, I just can’t take you all! You’re still cute.”
Hands on the cool, smooth, dense gourds at the apple festival, I did not speak any comforting words, but I did re-inhabit that old skin for a moment. I hadn’t realized until this past Saturday how dear those gourd-picking days are to me. We don’t always realize in the moment that we’ll remember it forever, or in my dad’s case, that something as simple as a $1 gourd will become a symbol of autumn, family, and generosity to a kid in college.
I have several gourds in my dorm at this moment. I didn’t have the self-control to pick one, and even though I haven’t named them or talked to them, I still think they’re pretty cute. I’m glad that as I experience my very first colorful autumn, I have memories of autumn from my family and home to build upon.
