The Pumpkin Patch

I spent this morning out on Sauvie Island, taking Zo to the pumpkin patch. It was lovely. We went and visited the petting zoo, took the hay ride out to the patch, played on the hay bales and picked out our pumpkins for October. I got a large yellow-orange beauty with a flat side and Zo picked out two decorative pumpkins for herself. She was very serious when picking out her pumpkin, rejecting the pumpkins her size, the fairly large ones and the normal ones. She needed a pumpkin at her scale, which is how I somehow got away with only spending $6 to kill two hours with a toddler and snag three pumpkins.
I was so happy to be there, stomping around in the mud in my big boots, with my favorite girl, breathing in the air of my favorite season.
A lot of people weren't happy to be there though. I passed parents yelling at their children, kids throwing fits, couples bickering, even a man screaming at his elderly mother-in-law as she tried (and failed) to take a picture of his family sitting on a hay bale. I turned around when I heard him raise his voice and watched his two sons wail, his mother in law fumble and his wife burn up in shame as he went on and on.  I felt my face fall. I know that all I was seeing was a miniature slice of these people's lives but it killed me a little. There is no reason to go to the pumpkin patch but to have fun and enjoy the season; there's no pressing business to be done there, it's not on the way to anyone's work or anyone's errands. Maybe I'm being naive about what my future life with children will be like, but I hope that my interactions with my own kids will be like my day with Zo today: fun, easy, full of the joy of watching a child's wonder at this brand new world they've found.