Baby Pumpkins

It is 8 pm when Audrey marches down the hall, her red silk purse in one hand, her pumpkin basket in the other. "I halfta go on a trip," she says.

"Where are you going?" I ask.

"On a trip."

Audrey reaches the living room and twirls around as if fatigued. "Oh, may I come back now?"

"Yes. It's bedtime."

"Oh. May I bring my baby pumpkins?"

"Yes but only until I'm through reading your story."

"O-kay, Mom."

We climb into Audrey's bed and she removes her pumpkins from her pumpkin purse, one by one, and places them precariously on her lap. They tumble onto the bedsheets and she throws her hands up like an old mother hen. "Oh, my baby pumpkins! I halfta hold them!"

For the next eight or ten minutes Audrey is bending over, clucking and grunting, picking up her pumpkins and then dropping them again, sighing, "Oh, my baby pumpkins! I need them! I need all of them!" setting herself into a frenzy and her mother into hysterics.