Comfort, Peas - L.

A few posts back, I mentioned that sometimes very small things bring joy.

This weekend, I was reminded of another of those tiny, comforting moments of happiness. My older son, now almost 6, asked me if we could find some purple hull peas to shell.

Now, to put this in context, I have to go back to my own childhood. Purple hull peas are a very Southern food, as I found out later in life when I learned the distinction between Southern and Everything Else. But when I was a kid, they were a ubiquitous part of summer. Somebody in our family, immediate or extended, was always buying purple hulls by the bushels in mid-summer, distributing them by the sackful to resigned relatives.

Now that I think about it, some years the peas were grown in family backyards, not bought at the farmer's market, but I digress.

Anyway, whenever the sacks of purple hulls appeared, we'd head out to the back patio in the late afternoon with pitchers of iced tea, sacks of peas, and mixing bowls. And we would each sit around the patio table with bowls in our laps, shelling peas, drinking sweet tea, chatting and gossiping leisurely, as the sun set through the trees and the day cooled. Sometimes it was just me, my sister, and my mom on our patio. Other times we'd go to my aunt's, and sometimes my other aunts would come over, as well as my cousins. Occasionally, my dad or uncle would join in, but it was usually just the women, as ours was a matriarchal family that ran heavy on girls. At the end, our thumbs were purple from shelling and our bowls were full of the sweet-smelling, green-and-purple peas. The peas were either washed, frozen in containers, and stashed in the standalone freezers, or simmered straightaway with bacon and peppers. The creamy, rich taste of the peas perfectly matched up with pan-fried ham or pork chops. But my favorite was always a big bowl of peas and their pot liquor poured over a slab of buttered cornbread, nothing more.

Being the youngest of 8 cousins, by the time I graduated from college, our family had scattered to the wind and put an end to the communal pea-shelling. Marriages, divorces, remarriages, blended families, and a dying small-town economy sent the clan roaming. Upon graduation, I joined the exodus, leaving my hometown behind for life in the big city.

No matter how far one goes, though, what comforts as a child still brings joy as an adult. And for me, the peas rule. Every summer, I seek them out at the farmer's market downtown, looking for a vendor who has them still in the shell. I get many questions, and many more quizzical looks:

Ma'am, why bother with the hulls? I have them already cleaned right here.
But I want them in the shell. Do you have any in the back?
No, but I can have them for you tomorrow.
No, that's OK. I want them today.

And so it goes, until I find the one perplexed vendor who does, indeed, have unshelled purple hulls in the truck. The oddity of the request always costs me, though, as the farmer's market vendor figures, if ma'am is nuts enough to want to shell them herself, she's probably nuts enough to pay $30 for a bushel. Which I am, because by the time I find them in the shell, I'm hot, tired, and ready to take my peas and go home.

But once I get the purple hulls home, though, I'm happy. I take them out on the patio in the evenings, and let my mind wander contentedly while my hands busily strip peas from their jackets, staining my fingers purple, and filling my mixing bowl.

When my oldest son was four and summer rolled around, I found myself grieving the loss of my family's odd pea-shelling non-tradition, the one we simply fell into by default when I was a child. But as I looked at my son, I slowly realized, it isn't dead. It's just dormant, waiting for the cycle of generations to begin again. So that summer, after I brought the purple hulls home from the market, I took two bowls out onto the patio--a big one for me, and a small one for him--and showed him what to do. He took to it easily, settling contentedly into the rhythm of shelling peas, and gradually, his thumbs turned purple. We shelled peas for the better part of a week, enjoyed some of the fruits of our labor over ham and cornbread, and froze the rest.

Fast forward to this summer. This past week when we visited a roadside farmer's market in search of corn and watermelon, my oldest turned to me and asked, Mama, can we look for purple hull peas to shell? It was then that I saw the seed I'd planted the summer before had taken root and was growing, making me quietly hopeful for the future. The fates smiled on us that day, allowing us to procure a sackful of peas for only $5.00. We spent a placid Thursday afternoon purpling our thumbs, and ate them for dinner.

They were delicious, and I was happy.