The Age-Old Alchemy of Growing a Pumpkin

I planted a seed in the ground and mused on our shared origin

Illustrations courtesy of the author

There is a pumpkin seedling in my flesh. It bends and stretches with me each day, parallel to the tendons in my leg. Sometimes only the leaves peek above my shoe, but when I’m barefoot the roots show, too. Their beige threads trickle toward the earth beneath my heel — threads that, if it were a living pumpkin seedling, would be underground, hidden to human eyes.

In a way, it is a living pumpkin seedling — it’s made of my living skin. It’s tattooed life-sized to my left ankle. It has hot blood flowing through its capillaries instead of sugar-water through xylem and phloem, pulsing instead of trickling. It’s nourished by the food I eat, rather than by sunlight.

It’s an extension of my mammalian cells. Still, I feel it’s alive in its own way. And like any seedling, its form grew from a specific seed.

My seed’s journey began in a clear plastic jar with a screw-top lid on a metal shelf in a walk-in refrigerator.

Not really, of course. There was more journey before that — tracing backward through time, I imagine…