For the first time since 1997, I have reached October 31 without buying a pumpkin or a neep. It feels odd. For almost three decades, the rhythm of late October has been the same: pumpkins appearing in the shops, little faces planning designs, and the smell of candle wax and slightly singed squash in the dining room. It is such a small tradition, but it has been part of the fabric of family life for so long that letting it go feels like closing a chapter.
In the early years, I was the one who did everything. I bought the pumpkin, chose the design, and did the carving while small people watched in awe and occasionally tried to poke out an eye or add an extra tooth. Later, in the 2010s, the job shifted hands. Charlotte gathered her minions around her to pick the perfect pumpkin and sketch out faces that grew increasingly elaborate every year. Thomas, ever the traditionalist, sat beside her with his turnip and a range of tools, determined to keep the old ways alive and prove he was the most Scottish of us all.
The last few years have been quieter. The two youngest still asked for pumpkins, but without the same energy. They were busy with friends, homework, or phones, and the carving became a quick afterthought rather than an event. And now, suddenly, there is no one left waiting for me to bring one home. Anna is buried under assignments, Amaia is off to a Halloween party that apparently involves cocktails rather than pumpkins, Léon is living half an hour away in the city, Charlotte's living in Madrid, and Marcel is currently living in Mexico City.
I stood in the kitchen and realised that there was no reason to go out and buy one. For a moment, that small fact hit me harder than expected. This is what it feels like when family traditions quietly slip away, not with drama but with a slow fading. You notice it in these tiny absences - the empty seat at the table, the quiet house at the weekend, the October without a pumpkin.
It is not sadness exactly, more a soft ache mixed with pride. This is how it is meant to go. The whole point of parenting is to raise people who can build their own lives, who are too busy doing things that matter to them to need you for every small ritual. It is what we hope for, even as we secretly wish they still needed us just a little bit.
So, resigned to my pumpkin-free fate and feeling slightly adrift, I grabbed the shopping list to go to Netto. At least the fridge would get stocked, even if the windowsill to the courtyard stayed bare. But as I reached for my car keys, I spotted an item on the list added by Thomas.
'1 pumpkin'
And that was it. The universe’s small way of reminding me that parenting does not really stop; it just changes shape.
It made me laugh, standing there in my jacket with the shopping list in my hand. Maybe I no longer need to buy pumpkins for the kids, but apparently, I still have one overgrown child who is not ready to give up the tradition. Thomas may have a grey beard and a mortgage, but he still wants his pumpkin. I suppose that’s comforting in a way, at least one of them still believes in Halloween magic, even if he needs reading glasses to carve it.
Watching your children grow up is strange because it happens so gradually that you rarely see it in real time. You go from tying shoelaces to teaching them to drive in what feels like a handful of summers. They slip away gently, one small independence at a time, until one day you look up and they are fully grown. You feel proud and amazed, but also a little redundant, as though you have been quietly laid off from the best job you ever had.
Every so often they still need something. A recipe. A bit of advice. Or just a chat. That is when you realise the job description has not vanished at all, it has simply been updated. You are no longer the project manager of daily life, but the trusted consultant, the person they call when comfort or common sense is required. It is a promotion of sorts, though the salary remains the same.
So, I guess I will go to Netto and thereafter to the pumpkin farm to pick out a good, solid pumpkin for my husband.
