Two Peas in a Pod

A few days ago at the last minute, I decided to take Hammy for a stroll. It had been a while, maybe since my last post about spring flowers, since I had done so. It was getting pretty close to sun down so I tried not to waste anytime getting Ham in his stroller.

We decided to take the more scenic route that day, because the tree with the red hairy flowers that overpowered the sidewalk had been trimmed back, so that path was now perfectly clear for us.

Ham was twisting and turning in his seat. He can't ever decide which view is the best.

We turned the corner by the Baptist church and as we walked along I looked over at our favorite tree across the street. On our last walk it was filled with beautiful white flowers. I meant to take a picture of it but the traffic was so bad on St. Joseph day that I decided I should wait.

I really wish I hadn't. Now only a few flowers were left and from what I could tell hundreds of stringy green leaves that I hadn't noticed before. Looking at it now, it reminded me of the aftermath of a party with streamers and decorations thrown about when only two weeks ago it was a well-orchestrated beautiful event.

It was still beautiful to me though.


I wheeled Ham over the curb and across the street, if we only had a little time before the sun set we might as well spend it here.

I pulled Ham's stroller under the branches and I glanced up to pull some flowers down for him. That's when I realized that the green stringy leaves that I saw were not leaves at all. They were pea-pods. Well I guess not real peas but something similar.

I sat down on the concrete sidewalk and showed Ham the pea-pod and how you could peel it open and see the seeds inside. He said "Oh!?" Because it's his go-to word these days.

And all the times we sat at this tree and we looked at its flowers and leaves. All the times we pointed at cardinals and blue-jays that hopped around in its branches, I never realized until that moment why this tree fascinated me. Why it was my favorite stop.

When I looked at that pea-pod in my hand I remembered that my Aunt Carrie must have had a tree near her house that had pea-pods hanging from it too.

I remember showing them to her when I was playing outside.

"That's like us,"she told me. "Two peas in pod."

I never forgot that or what she meant by it. We were different but we shared a bond because we had the same name.

I smiled thinking about her and thinking about what she might think of Hammy if she were alive today. How she would be crazy about him, I just knew it. And I wondered if maybe she was sitting right there with us when we stopped by our favorite tree.


The sun was finally setting and I crossed the street to take Hammy home.

I glanced up at the sky and I saw a silver lining behind our tree. I smiled again thinking about another memory I had of us in the parking lot of the grocery store. I was maybe five years old. I spotted a silver lining in the sky and I pointed up at it. "Carrie Leigh, do you know how special that is?" I shook my head. "That's a sign from God letting you know that your loved ones in heaven are peeping down on you." she said. "I bet it's my mom and my dad, let's wave to them." So the two of us waved to the sky to tell our loved ones not to worry that we were doing just fine.

And as Hammy and I strolled along and looked up at the silver lining in the sky, I told her we were doing just fine, but we sure do miss her.