I See Myself

   

"The pumpkin looked delicious--almost perfectly round and deep yellow in colour, it sat on the passenger seat beside her so comfortably as she drove out of the car park, so pleased to be what it was, that she imagined conducting a conversation with it...And the pumpkin would remain silent, of course, but would somehow indicate that it knew what she was talking about, that there were similar issues in the world of pumpkins.

     "She smiled. There was no harm, she thought, in allowing your imagination to run away with you, as a child's will do, because the thoughts that came in that way could be a comfort, a relief in a world that could be both sad and serious. Why not imagine a talk with a pumpkin? Why not imagine going off for a drive with a friendly pumpkin, a companion who would not, after all, answer back; who would agree with everything you said, and would at the end of the day appear on your plate as a final gesture of friendship? Why not allow yourself a few minutes of imaginative silliness so that you could remember what it was like when you believed such things, when you were a child at the feet of your grandmother, listening to the old Setswana tales of talking trees and clever baboons and all the things that made up that world that lay just on the other side of the world we knew..."

     I see myself in books. We read to know we are not alone. It is somewhat reassuring to know that I am not the only one.

     Meanwhile, it is also cheering to know that while my Fairy Godmother did not make an appearance over the holidays, nor was I invited to a ball of any sort, my lovely green pumpkin did its best to turn itself into a golden coach.

     High marks for the laudable effort to reinvent oneself in the new year. However, the discarded pink wand beneath the birch tree raises my suspicions. Look closer dear sleuth. Upper right. Perhaps a genre switch is in order here. Did my Fairy Godmother show up only to be kicked to the curb by Jack Frost? Or is the plot darker, more sinister, the scene of an abduction...or even murder?

     I'll give Precious Ramotswe at the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency in Botswana a call. She has a fondness for pumpkins and quirky cases.

pumpkin quote from The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine by Alexander McCall Smith