The Mess

It was the gasp that made me turn around.

“You’d better have an explanation for this!” my thirteen-year-old daughter shrieked as she entered the kitchen with obvious apprehension.

I was still holding the knife as I glanced around the room trying to see it from my daughter’s point of view. There were pumpkin guts everywhere.

The staff at the long-term healthcare facility where I worked had decided to carve pumpkins and decorate the halls for Halloween, so I recruited my artistic husband to assist and as we were scooping out the pumpkins one thing lead to another and well, we tossed a bit of pumpkin at each other.

As I pulled a clump off my shoulder I turned to him for assistance in explaining this mess to the same girl that we had spent years reprimanding for not keeping her room clean. He seemed to be quite busy carving a smirk into one of our many jack-o-lanterns that I was sure mirrored the smirk on his face at that precise moment.

“Well…um….some of these pumpkins may not have been as ready as others and when we cut into them they exploded. Might have been a pressure thing, I’m really not sure.”

Our daughter looked from me to my husband, who was still working away on that smirk and back to me again.

She nodded. “Ok Mom. Sure. That makes perfect sense.”

She rolled her eyes and dug her hand into the open gourd sitting beside her and I watched in shock as a handful of innards sailed across the room and landed just above my right knee.

She squealed her delight with her aim and as she turned to run her dad landed one square on the back of her head.

It took some time that night to clean up.