Shelling Peas

 I shelled a big basket of sweet garden peas yesterday. It reminded me of being at my grandparent's home in Kannapolis, NC back in the good old, magical days of childhood. My grandparents always had a huge garden out back and I remember hulling peas, stringing green beans, and shucking corn. People don't do these things anymore. I can remember sitting in my grandparents' backyard along with my grandmother, aunt, and my mom. There may have also been some neighbors or great aunts or other friends and family there as well. But I can remember as a small child how they would sit around shelling the peas or snapping beans and talk. Nobody had meetings or ball games or bars to rush off to, nope, they were just sitting there snapping beans in the company of their loved ones on a Saturday afternoon.

It seems like such a simple, idyllic time of life. It feels that the world has been spinning way too fast to go back to those kind of days. But I believe those ingrained memories I have (and many more I've forgotten) are the substance my dreams fed on all those years. I've always been a simple country girl at heart. Too much of my life I spent chasing down somebody else's version of a dream. We can't live in contentment if we're forcing ourselves to live a life that goes against our natural state. As my dad used to say, "you can't fit a square peg into a round hole." But we try. We try to be all those things our society tell us to be. Life isn't fun when you're not living it they way YOU were designed to live it.

What type of lifestyle and life would you build if you weren't worrying about mortgages, electric bills, lawn mowers, Rotary Clubs, and Volvos? If you could do anything you wanted to do, what would it be? Tell me! I really do want to know, I love hearing other people's dreams and visions! Instead of planning and anticipating my next vacation, I'd rather build a life from which I don't want or need an escape. Doesn't that sound nice?

An extraordinary life is made up of ordinary moments.