I have just returned from my last field trip to the pumpkin patch. While I will not miss the itchy, scratchy feeling from the hay, or the multiple trips to the porta johns, it was surely bittersweet. My babies are growing up; gone are the days of field trips to the library, post office, and now the pumpkin patch. The hordes of screaming children racing up and down the rows trying to find that one perfect pumpkin, the dusty, dirty air getting in and on every surface, the sharpie in my back pocket so that I can write each of their precious little names on the bottom of their very own pumpkin; it makes me sad.
My children have grown so quickly, the days I volunteer in my daughter’s kindergarten class; I look wistfully down the hall to where my son’s class was just a few short years ago. He is in the fourth grade now and kindergarten for him seems like a distant memory, another life. I have watched not only him, but his friends, grow so much. It makes my heart ache. I adore all of these little people in our lives. I remember taking the same children that I see cheering on squads, experimenting with makeup, having crushes on my son, discussing Pokemon to the point I want to gouge my eyeballs out, and playing sports, to the pumpkin patch when they were all in kindergarten. It seems like I blinked and they all grew, and what kills me inside is that in another blink, my daughter and her friends will soon be the same way.
I’m trying to soak it all in, but it didn’t occur to me until I sat down to write this that this was the last pumpkin patch field trip. After kindergarten, you’re done; we have moved on to bigger and better field trips, but I will always hold a special place in my heart for the pumpkin patch. I hope you all hold on dearly to your little ones, enjoy the seemingly endless pumpkin patch field trips through preschool-because as surely as you can say big kid, they are over. Happy Fall everyone, go out and find a big pumpkin in the patch!
