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A Family, Real, and Not Pretend

A Family, Real, and Not Pretend

Last updated on: October 22, 2026 at 12:15 am by Mary Pezzulo

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A Family, Real, and Not Pretend 2026-10-22T00:15:52-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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I knocked at Jimmy’s door, but no one answered.

It was the Sunday afternoon I’d planned to take Jimmy’s boy to the pumpkin patch. The pumpkin patch is nearly an hour away, so I wanted to get on the road. I knocked again, and again, nobody came out. But I could hear voices talking happily inside.

Sometimes I am a little bit jealous. I came from a great big Irish Catholic family with siblings and cousins underfoot all the time. I grew up in Catholic circles that work the same way; my friends all had siblings and big noisy chaotic families. But my family was extremely emotionally abusive, and when I tried to set boundaries that made it worse. I ended up going no contact. I always wanted to be the matriarch of a great big Catholic family of my own to fill the loneliness, but I couldn’t be. My health got in the way. I have one child. I only have a handful of extended relatives I keep in contact with. Jimmy’s boy is not my real nephew, but he calls me his aunt, and that feels good. It stings when I remember that he’s not real family.

Eventually, the door opened. There was Jimmy’s boy, with another child I’ve only met in passing once or twice.

“My cousin came to play!” said Jimmy’s boy.

Again, the sting of jealousy. Jimmy’s boy is not real family. I don’t have a real family. “I came to take you to the pumpkin patch. If you still want to.”

Jimmy’s boy’s face lit up. “He can come too!”

After a quick conference with the parents, both boys ran out to the car. I felt awkward, like an interloper, or as if I was somehow kidnapping a stranger’s child. Jimmy’s boy and his cousin chatted in the backseat while Adrienne and I sat in the front, listening to the radio. It was the most perfect day for a Fall adventure: cool, gloriously sunny, with the trees overhead going scarlet and gold, and the asters deep purple on the grass. My lonely disappointment didn’t last too long. It was too beautiful to feel disappointed.

We pulled into the grassy field that the farm used as a parking lot. This was a crowded afternoon, because in addition to pumpkins for sale, the farm was hosting an entire fall festival. There were food trucks and a pumpkin painting booth. There was a hay barn to play in, and a field full of other outdoor activities. An artist was noisily demonstrating his skill at making lawn ornaments from logs, with a chainsaw. The boys watched that with great excitement. I was afraid they’d want a log sculpture to take home.

“Now I only have thirty-five dollars in my purse. We’ll all go on the hay ride and then we’ll get pumpkins, but other than that we can only do the free activities.” As I said it, I realized it couldn’t be true. I had a twenty, a ten, and a wad of ones, because I thought I’d be giving twelve in cash to the hay ride driver. Now I needed sixteen. I spent the twenty at a heavenly-smelling food truck, to treat the little boys to deep fried Oreos, which don’t look nearly as disgusting as I’d expected. And then, of course, Adrienne wanted French fries, which left me with hay ride fare plus a few dollars. I hoped the pumpkins for sale were small and cheap.

The hayride tractor came and went three or four times, taking other passengers on the scenic tour, while Jimmy’s boy and Jimmy’s Boy’s Cousin munched their Oreos. Adrienne finished the fries while the two little boys went to play in the barn. They threw handfuls of straw at each other until their hair was an itchy mess and their clothes looked like animal fur. Finally, they agreed to leave the barn and board the flatbed truck.

For twenty minutes, we bumped along sitting on top of a hay bale through the prettiest woods in the world. The organizers of the fall festival had littered the hayride’s path with comical things like plastic skeletons in silly poses, graveyards with ridiculous pun names painted on the headstones, and giant colorful spiders in webs made of rope. At one point, two farm employees in unconvincing gorilla costumes burst out of a cage and ran up to surprise us.

“FAKE!” cried Jimmy’s boy and Cousin every time we passed a silly sight.

“Not fake,” I said. “Just pretend! For fun!”

After the hay ride, there was a maze. The boys cried out “on your mark, get set, GO!” And pelted through a maze made of picket fencing while Adrienne and I cheered them on. After that, we got to write our names in chalk on a derelict truck that was covered in blackboard paint. Now the boys were coated in chalk as well as straw. There was a muddy space enclosed by another fence where children could race on old tricycles, and a layer of mud got caked over the other mess. Next to that was a place for shooting basketballs into an old grain hopper, and the boys threw balls for awhile. Behind it all was the old rusty wreck of a combine harvester with the header taken off.

“Surely that’s not to play with,” I said.

But it was.

The boys ran up to the great machine, rapt with admiration. They joined other children climbing all over it, yanking the levers, trying to get the harvester to start, which it couldn’t. I don’t think it even had its engine anymore.

“Does this farm own stock in a tetanus shot company?” I joked, as I took pictures of them at the very top of the machine, posing in front of that brilliant blue sky.

They squealed and laughed and played on the machine as the afternoon wore on. Finally, it was time to board that hay ride again. This time it was taking us to the actual pumpkins.

“Get nice small ones if you can,” I begged.

When we got there, there were only gigantic pumpkins. The tiny little ones were sold out. And of course, the farm was selling them by the pound.

I watched helplessly as Jimmy’s Boy and Cousin ran back and forth selecting a huge, immaculate, bright orange round one, to display on Jimmy’s porch. We ended up with the perfectly round orb and a respectable oval, with a total weight of near sixty pounds. I stared at the few dollars in my wallet. I looked at the excited boys. I ended up swiping my credit card because I didn’t know what else to do.

“Those pumpkins are so big I’ll have to make PAYMENTS!” I joked.

Adrienne took the oval pumpkin and I carried the round one, off the final hayride and all the way back to the parking lot.

When we got back into the car, Jimmy’s boy asked to listen to his favorite terrible metal band.

“No way,” said Adrienne, queuing up the Beatles playlist on my phone.

We sang along to “Penny Lane,” “Yellow Submarine,” and “Paperback Writer.” Jimmy’s boy found my little American flag from the last No Kings rally in the backseat. He held it aloft and jokingly asked if we could sing the National Anthem. I burst out into the Soprano line, with Adrienne joining in on the tenor part. We didn’t get through the whole thing before everybody cracked up laughing.

“Billie Jean?” asked Cousin.

We turned on a Michael Jackson playlist and sang along with that, the rest of the way back to Steubenville. We even took an extra lap around our neighborhood, so we could get all the way through the ending of “Beat It.” Jimmy’s Boy’s Cousin has a nice alto voice.

“Can we play football in the yard?” asked the boys.

Adrienne helped get that gigantic oval pumpkin into our house. Then Adrienne and the boys went to play sports in the fading light of the evening, while I cooked dinner by myself.

Now I have two nephews.

They are not my real, biological family, but they’re something else. Not fake, not pretend. A third thing that happens when neighbors love and help one another. When there’s kindness and wanting to make one another happy, instead of spitefulness and putting each other down. When you include more friends instead of leaving people out.

On second thought, that is a real family.

I am happy, for the first time in my life.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows an d Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.

Steel Magnificat operates almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, donate to “The Little Portion” on paypal or Mary Pezzulo on venmo

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