Keepers of Time

Some of you are probably aware of the garden my dad and his wife keep during the summer, but if you aren't, there's a fairly large section of the front lawn dedicated to growing peas and corn. Well, it's getting that time of year already. The snap peas are ready to be picked now. So this evening after dinner, Dad, Sharon, Mark, and I went out to the pea patch, got our buckets, and went to work. There were three rows, and Sharon, Mark, and I each took a row. Dad set about pulling up the grasses and weeds growing in between the bushes. After gleaning about half the row of their small, green pods, I stood up to rest. I looked out over the red earth and the orange sunset, wiped my brow, and pulled my thick black hair up under Mark's cap that I stole from him. I looked at my husband and father, each dutifully tending to his task, and my mind raced back to when I was a little girl in the same fields with my grandmother. With her linen pants and big straw hat on, she would carefully attend to each plant on each row until her back would give way and we would have to stop. Afterward we would take the overflowing bushel basket or baskets home and set about stringing and snapping each and every pea before washing, blanching, and freezing them.

And so it is that my grandmother, who lived through some of the most trying times the century knew, continued to practice the skills that got her family by on what little they had. It is a skill, and artform, that has all but died in our age of convenience and contrivance. I couldn't help but think of her as I divided out my six gallons of peas and brought them home to do just the same thing. I know that somewhere, my grandmother is looking down on me and she is smiling because at least one of her grand children took something that was so basic and fundamental to her and made it a part of their life. I feel as if I'm keeping alive part of the past, like I'm taking something out of time and putting it in the timeless. It makes me feel a deep connection with her and with those who came before. It makes me proud.