The Pumpkin Patch Hayride

Every October, my extended family goes to the same pumpkin patch in Ohio for the hayride. There are twenty-two of us now, ranging in age from four months to eighty-nine years.

We all pile onto one hay wagon pulled by a tractor driven by a farmer named Earl, who has been driving it since my mother was a kid. He tells the same jokes every year. We laugh at all of them.

The wagon bumps through the fields to the pumpkin patch, where everyone scatters to find the perfect pumpkin. My grandfather, at eighty-nine, still insists on choosing the biggest one he can find and carrying it himself. My little cousins race to find the tiniest ones.

Afterward, there's apple cider and cider donuts, still warm, under a big oak tree. We take a family photo with all our pumpkins lined up in front. We've done it for twenty-five years. The photos line my mother's hallway, one per October.