With their buffed orange skins gleaming under the arc lights, the pumpkins were lined up in chubby rows in the parking lot of the shopping center. Eric moved slowly from row to row, studying each one, assessing it for size, wartiness, and character. We were the only customers. The Pumpkin Man sat morosely amid his vegetables, hands clasped around a steaming paper cup. It was very quiet. Eric narrowed his choices to three and, being a practical sort of child, wondered aloud if we could really buy one that cost sixteen dollars. We assured him that we could and that further, it was a patriotic thing to do, as we would be supporting the economy, or at least the Pumpkin Man's little corner of it. Settling on a large, handsomely warted specimen, Eric also selected a smaller gourd with the American flag painted on it. As we carried our purchases to the car, he turned to me and said, "I can't wait till you roast the seeds so I can eat them." Roast the seeds?

This is my fifth Halloween with Eric. He'll be nine soon. Although we've carved a jack-o-lantern every year, I've always managed to dodge the seed issue. Nothing against seeds - I just haven't done anything more creative with them than wad them up in a paper towel and heave them into the trash. Roasting the seeds is something that Eric does with his mom. This was the first time he expressed an interest in having me make this particular treat for him. Having no clue how to roast the seeds, and loathing to disappoint him, I agreed enthusiastically to the plan. I was secretly hoping what adults throughout time have always hoped when a child makes a hard-to-fulfill request: maybe he'll forget. It was, after all, early Friday evening, and we weren't planning to carve the pumpkin till Sunday.

Sunday arrived. After much careful sketching and discussion, a design was agreed upon for the jack-o-lantern. While his dad handled the knife, Eric and I played with the baby and debated the scariness of pointy vs. straight eyebrows. As I scooped up the leftover chunks and bits and seeds he brightened and said, "I can't wait to eat those seeds!" Smiling cheerfully, I announced that I was just going in the kitchen to get them ready. Once in the house I stared at the stringy, slimy mess in front of me. I couldn't call Eric's mom for her recipe - she was out of town. At that moment, the phone rang. It was my older brother. Excellent! A father of five and a person I generally turn to in a crisis, I felt certain he'd know what to do. "Um, soak them in brine than cook them at like, 450?" he mused. "I don't know - I just throw them away." Useless! Hurrying off the phone, I raced upstairs to the computer. I went to a favorite address: gourmet.com. Clicking the search button, I frantically typed "pumpkin seeds". Voila - a recipe for Pumpkin Seed Brittle. Ignoring the instructions for the brittle part, I raced back downstairs, turned the oven to 250, and began washing the goop off of the seeds. Drying them with a paper towel, I coated them liberally with extra-virgin olive oil and a generous dusting of popcorn salt, spread them out on a baking sheet and popped them in the oven. An hour and twenty minutes later, I pulled them out. They were caramel brown and shiny. I tasted one. It tasted like... a toasted seed. Not bad, mind you, just very seed-like. And salty.

Eric had gone to bed, visions of pumpkin seeds dancing in his head. With a sinking feeling, I wrapped them up and stuffed them into his lunch bag. They're all wrong, I told my husband. He'll hate them and be disappointed tomorrow at school. Failure that I was, I slunk off to bed. The next morning after I'd left for work, Mark told Eric, "Look, these probably aren't the way you're used to having them. But try them, okay?"

That evening, Eric's mom called. Mark handed me the phone, whispering, "It's about the seeds." Taking the receiver I said, "Hello. He hated them, didn't he? I tried, but I didn't know how to make them, and I couldn't call you, and he had his heart set on them." To my surprise, she was calling for the recipe. She told me that Eric did think they looked a little weird, but that they tasted really good. She also told me that I shouldn't have gone to so much trouble, but just as there are things that only a parent can understand, there are things that only make sense to a stepparent.

Stepparents do homework and laundry, fix meals and mistakes, bandage cuts and write checks and stand cheering on the sidelines at games just like parents. We're awakened in the middle of the night for bad dreams, and at the crack of dawn on Saturdays for no good reason at all. We make sacrifices of time and freedom and money, just like parents. The difference is, the sweetest, stickiest kisses usually don't come our way. A child very seldom runs into our arms after a school play or soccer win. We're special, but we'll never be mommy or daddy. That's as it should be, of course, but sometimes it hurts. A stepparent can seem, to a kid, like the reason his life has been so disrupted. A stepparent can become a place where all kinds of bad feelings get dumped. And a stepparent, no matter how tough it gets, is supposed to be serene and mature and almost impervious to rejection. Being a stepparent is a tough job and not for everyone. There aren't a lot of perks, and the rewards are mostly long-term and invisible.

Eric isn't a demanding child. He doesn't come right out and ask me for much. When he does, I take it seriously. That's why I waddled pregnant and sick to his soccer games last year. It's why I've played countless games of Candyland and Cootie and Clue Jr. and Sorry over the years. It's why I buy Reese's Peanut Butter Puff cereal, even though I think it tastes gross and suspect it has no nutritional value. It's why I drove myself crazy over a handful of seeds. I'll never be his mom and I'd never try to take her place, but I want him to know that he matters to me. I want him to know that I listen, especially now, with his baby sister taking so much of my time and attention. The heartbreak that ended his parent's marriage and brought him to my doorstep wasn't of his making. I ''t fix that for him, and I can't make that hurt go away. All I can do is not make it worse. Roasted pumpkin seeds aren't anything special - but he is.