Last week I took a day off from work to help Noah’s class with pumpkin carving. I know we need the little money I make, but I decided long ago that money would never be more important than spending time with my children when they need me to. If I had any doubts (which I didn’t!) about taking the day off, seeing Noah’s face light up as he walked into the classroom and saw me waiting for him erased them instantly.
While the children were at recess, one of the dads and I began the pumpkin carving by cutting open all the tops where the children had drawn their “circles.” Some of them had drawn tight zigzags and some were loops. Most were impossible to cut with the equipment we had, but the kids didn’t mind our clumsy attempts to follow their intricate designs at all.
The students got right to their seats and began their part in the pumpkin carving by excitedly plunging their hands into the gooeyness to pull out strings and seeds. One girl made me laugh as she kept repeating to herself, “Tolerance. I must build up tolerance,” and bravely reached into the slime again and again.
The boys and girls used Sharpies to draw faces on the pumpkins and then used little knives from pumpkin carving kits to do the actual pumpkin carving themselves. The concentration they had was amazing.
Halloween music played in the background and occasionally the children broke out in grins or a few choruses to songs like Thriller or Monster Mash. They then would return right back to their pumpkin carving.
Noah’s pumpkin was a creative mix of eyes, nose, mouth, eyebrows, and scars that only an 8 year old boy would want on his pumpkin. He was so proud of it and I loved every minute of it.
It showed me again how important the time we spend with our children is. How precious. How short. Nothing is as important as those few moments that we get to teach them that Mom will do anything for them. Nothing on this earth is more important than that child and his siblings and showing him he is loved, that we can smile and laugh and live and love no matter what life throws at us.
Noah is my most challenging child, but he is still a really good kid and absolutely precious to me. I love him “100%” as we say in my house. I wonder if maybe he is challenging because he needs the reassurance of a mother’s unconditional love more than the other children but doesn’t know how to express it. I hope he remembers all of my love for him in the pumpkin carving, and I hope that I do something to show him how precious and loved he is each and every day.
Thank you for inviting me to your classroom Noah, and thank you to Noah’s teacher for letting me look in that precious window of my child’s world.
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As you come to him, the living Stone–rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him
1 Peter 2: 4
God Bless…
