Waxing Nostalgic

8/29/12 Heating up the lady peas. That’s all I was doing. Yet, looking at that little pot had all those summer memories flooding back. And just maybe favorably increasing in size because that’s often what happens when one has those "rear view mirror recollections" from childhood.

This, however, was not one of favorable distortion---it’s just favorable. A vivid memory of Mama Davenport sitting on her front porch cradling a white enamel pot with the red trim in her apron-covered lap. Shelling peas. Nowadays we give them all kinds of names from purple hulls and pink eyes to cream peas and zippers. To Mama they were ordinary peas. Field peas with snaps. She would include those snaps because those small underdeveloped ones added flavor to the pot. If she couldn’t shell them, she just threw those small pods right into her pot.

Many baby-boomers have such memories. Mine go beyond the peas and to the small-framed woman, who was not only my grandmother but also my spiritual mentor---a word she probably never even heard. Scooping those peas from the bushel at her feet and shelling them was not easy for Mama D. because she had such crippling arthritis. It didn’t stop her. Perseverance. It permeated every facet of her life. Continuance in a marriage that was not always easy. Sitting alone in a pew, if children or grandchildren weren’t around to accompany her. If Dang-Dang wouldn’t drive us to church, she would take me by the hand and we’d walk. No complaint---just resolve. A woman who “kept the faith.” A role model for me.

In earlier years of marriage, I bought my ½ - 1 bushel of peas to shell, just like Mama did. Though many of hers came from a neighbor “down the road a piece.” Nowadays, mine come from the farmer’s market, already shelled, by those big commercial shelling machines, located right behind the vendors.

And no matter what I choose---white crowders or zippers, purple hulls or pink eyes, shirt and britches or lady peas, they all taste like home. A good reason to wax nostalgic.