SEEDS

Kaya and I were taking a walk to the pond this morning when along the roadside I noticed a locust tree that still had some long felty pods hanging from it. As Kaya watched, I jumped way up high and grabbed a branch and pulled it down to lower another branch that had a big pod on it. I broke off the pod and gave it to Kaya, who, being just two years old a couple of days ago, had never seen such a thing, or anything even remotely resembling it, in her entire life; and here I was giving it to her as a gift. She was dumbfounded at this magical event, and stood there open mouthed for a long time, looking at this strange object in her own hand. Then I took the pod from her and split it neatly into two magical halves, each half nestling four or five large round flat brown hard shiny seeds, like gems in a fitted box. Kaya looked at them in amazement, then at me in amazement. I took one seed out and put it in her hand. She stared at it with two years of intensity. Then we took the other seeds out and she put them carefully in her pocket and went to the pond rich, and went back home rich. The seeds are all now carefully stacked on Kaya's little table, gaining interest.