A girl with long black hair and torn jeans sat cross-legged on the cold ground that was on the edge of freezing, but not quite. The pumpkin had served it’s purpose in being part of the autumn display at the entry to an apple orchard where families and infatuated couples came to welcome all things belonging to a change of seasons: apples and their offerings of cider, pies, pastries, and butters; pumpkins in shades of orange and green, perhaps even striped; straw bales, and hay rides. Of course the celebratory mood had left with the customers who now were making lists and checking them twice to have ready after their day – one day – of Thanksgiving.

The woman recognized it, though. The careful collecting of pumpkin seeds to roast and salt, not for a seasonal tradition or treat, but for food. She pulled her car to the road’s shoulder and got out.

“No, no! You don’t need to leave. Please. Stay.”

The girl sat back down, placing her her half-filled bucket on the hard ground beside her.

The woman walked to the now unused entrance, and picked up a pumpkin. As she sat near the girl, she said quietly, “I was reminded of myself when I saw you. I used to do this very thing.”

She deftly pulled out some seeds and rubbed the stringy insides from them. Chuckling, she commented, “Slippery.”

“Yea,” said the girl. Her hands were chapped.

And as afternoon turned into the gray of anticipated mist, the two shared individual stories. The girl told of family struggles and unmet needs and the woman told a similar story of her own girlhood with slight variation. As the bucket filled, two souls looked through the lens of similar experience into God’s provision in the midst of empty buckets and the conviction that hard times and good times could mesh together. And somehow it warmed them.

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