A Bewitched Pile of Paper

Today was a long, bad, terrible, horrible, horrific, miserable day. Tom from accounting was late finishing his report. Patrick from IT spilled his coffee on her blouse, and traffic made her commute home three times longer than it needed to be. But now she was finally home. She was back to her oasis, her safe haven, her refuge. She opened the door with a smile. “I’m home!” she declared. But her smile did not last more than one second.

The twenty piles of leaves in the living room were nowhere near as impressive as the five trees in the kitchen. The new pumpkin garden flourished in the middle of the family room, as owls and turkeys and witches and her own mother danced around the coffee table. “Excuse me. What happened here?”

“Mom, you’re home!” Her daughter smiled at her with scissors and construction paper in hand. 

“Grace, what happened here?”

“Grandma and I are doing arts and crafts!” After she finished cutting out her newest leaf, she dropped it and watched it sway towards the floor. Once the hardwood made contact, the one piece of paper poofed into a whole heap of red, orange, and yellow foliage.

“Oh my gosh,” her mother said to herself. “Mom?” She looked to her own mother now laughing and square-dancing with the witch.

“Yes, my darling?”

“What did you do?”

“I bewitched a pile of construction paper.”

“Of course you did,” she scoffed and smirked at the mute witch now trying to dance with her. “So, Mother, you’ll be the one cleaning this up?”

“No, I’ll be the one enjoying it!” Her dance partner whisked her away for a foxtrot, as a flourish of leaves twisted around them.

“What is going on? ” She now had a turkey pecking at her foot. “Stop!” She jumped as quickly as her mother and the witch did, but not nearly with as much delight.

“I can’t have this,” she said to herself. “Grace, put those scissors down.” She stormed to the back door and pushed it open with the force of a great Autumn-time gust. She took a handful of leaves, threw them outside, turned back to take hold of her next handful, but then only saw that the first handful had returned to the pile. “What? No.” She tried again. No luck. She tried for a third time. Still no luck. “Mom! What did you do?”

“What now?” the grandmother asked over her shoulder while twirling her pointed-hat-wearing friend.

“The leaves won’t leave!” her daughter stomped like her past teenage self.

“Oh, I forgot about that!” She at least had the decency to halt her dance in order to explain the next bit. “I put a seal on the house. It’s for security purposes.”

“A seal?”

“Yes, a seal. For security purposes.”

“A seal? Really?”

“Yes, a seal. For se -- ”

“For security purposes,” she cut off her mother. “I got it!” Just then, the owl landed on her shoulder. She barely had enough patience to roll her eyes at the creature.

“Shoo!” Her mother helped her out, and the bird took off in search of another pair of shoulders for its next landing pad. “Honey, you used to love this.”

“Yeah, when I was a kid,” she started. “When I didn’t have a job or a kid of my own or stupid coworkers or stupid traffic. Mom, how am I ever going to clean this up?”

“Don’t worry about it,” she replied. “I’ll do it. Just grab a pair of scissors and have some fun.” She turned her daughter around and walked her through the trees to join her own daughter at the table.

“You promise you’ll do it?” she asked as she was plopped down.

“I promise.” She smiled, offering her a pair of scissors made for a child and a page of purple paper.

“Thank you,” her coffee-stained, exhausted, surrounded-by-leaves, ultimately grateful daughter replied and smiled. The lady winked and whisked herself back to her dance.

“What are you working on now, Grace?” the mother asked her daughter.

“A tree.”

Looking at the orchard in their kitchen, she asked, “Five isn’t enough?”

“No, I need at least twelve.”

She chuckled. “Well then, you’re gonna need help, aren’t you?” The mother snapped her fingers, and a small sprout of a tree barely had enough energy to break through the hardwood, looking cartoonish next to the massive oak. She shook her head as her daughter laughed. “I'm a little rusty!” She now joined in laughing at herself.

Grace then dropped her latest cut-out, and up sprang the biggest tree yet. It shook the whole house like an apocalyptic earthquake, its branch shattering a window and its top blasting past the roof. “Oh no.”

“Mom!,” the no-longer-laughing woman called for her mother.

“What now?” She threw up her hands.

“I thought you said there was a seal on the house!” She yelled while shaking her hand at the newly renovated hole in the roof.

“Oh, that’s just a scratch,” the woman replied with a smile.

“Just a scratch?”

“Yes, just a scratch.” The grandmother winked at her granddaughter, making her stifle a chuckle.

“No, no, no!” The mother started. “You two don’t get to wink and chuckle! There’s a hole in my roof!”

“Correction,” the grandmother started. “There’s a scratch in your roof.” Grace laughed and she tossed another cut-out, causing a pumpkin to pop up in the middle of their argument.

“Oh,” her grandmother exclaimed. “That’s just lovely, Grace!”

“Thank you.” Grace smiled and bowed.

The mother breathed in and breathed out. “Mother, this is a scratch that you can fix, right?”

“Probably,” she replied with smile intact.

“Probably?”

“Probably.”

She sighed and looked at her daughter rushing to cut out another pumpkin. “Alright then,” she started. “I’ll take ‘probably.’”

“Fantastic!” Her mother skipped around her, making her smile.

“Now, what’s for dinner?” she asked the group.

“Hm,” Grace started. “I really want some pumpkin pie!”

“Pumpkin pie it is!” her mother declared and snapped her fingers. Just then, the world’s tiniest pie appeared before them, amongst the massive-looking scissors and scraps of paper. This pie was built for a mouse. It would take an army of mice to close her dropped jaw.

“Don’t fret,” the grandmother added. She snapped, and a proper pie appeared with polished cutlery for all.

“Show off,” her daughter mumbled under her breath before devouring that very pie.