Every year I aim for the perfect pumpkin purchasing day.

Sufficient time to carve for the school pumpkin glow; close enough that it won’t look too creepy on the front step for Halloween. Getting one to last till Thanksgiving, forget it.

This year, the pumpkins disappeared the day after Halloween. From the commercial calendar, that is.

When the huge cardboard pallets full of robust harvest orbs were rolled out for Christmas decor, I knew I’d have to go local and go seasonal to buy a pumpkin for Thanksgiving.

I actually needed one for my Girl Scout to carve at her meeting on November 1, but for several years now I’ve harbored the desire to plunk a big ol’ pumpkin at the center of the Thanksgiving table and ask everyone to record that for which she is thankful. While I did find one at a roadside stand where the proprietor asked me if I wanted it for my chickens while he fashioned memorial greenery baskets for the holidays, my daughter’s leader scored the last of the windfall at a local farm – and let me have one while the girls carved.

Even while the spirits pushed against the veil, I didn’t want to fashion a jack-o-lantern. I decided to go simple, not even cut through the flesh, and maybe, just maybe, have a gratitude-themed pumpkin come Thanksgiving.

I should’ve taken a before picture.

It was glorious. Perfectly etched letters, a simple graphic theme writ large.

It didn’t look quite this bad on the actual holiday, but bad enough that I didn’t dare set it on the dining table. I didn’t even introduce the idea of carving our thanks

When I stepped out the afternoon of Small Business Saturday and saw it slumped there, I thought, whoa, that’s a sad metaphor for gratitude.

Are our ‘thanks’ muscles shriveling up and dying? Molding over and shrinking at the edges? Attracting bugs and starting to smell?

I never even got the candle set up inside before my ‘thanks’ started rotting.

There may be a deeper metaphor of keeping it sealed up (not cutting the pumpkin) and therefore looking better, longer – but, then, aren’t we meant to lay our insides out – in vulnerability, in service to others, in authenticity . . . ?

What’s the sweet spot between plump and crisp and putrid and crushed?