Tag Archive for 'love'

Coming Home Again

Published by Jamie on June 24, 2008 in On Becoming Human, Writing and Writings by J. Lee. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

We just got home from Washington D.C.  We went for the Silver Docs film festival in Maryland and Milt went to lots of movies and I wandered the city and played with beads.  It is good to be home again–always.

This morning I was searching the web for some information on another person who is doing video letters from prisoners to their children at home–very cool.  Anyway, I came across a blog called “Writing the Line Between Heaven and Earth” and I recognized that as one of my own titles.  I stopped and clicked onto the blog and it WAS one of my own titles.  I had completely forgotten that I tried to start a blog almost exactly a year ago (the only post on there was July 17).  It made me wonder how many other remnants of myself are floating around out there in cyber space.  It is like outer space where all these tests and trials have been jettisoned into space and never brought home so they just . . . float.

Who cleans up the web?  A question.

I am sitting at my kitchen table and the smell of the white peonies I cut yesterday is almost overwhelming.  I shook the ants off and put them in a blue vase for my mom and dad.  Peonies were the flowers they had at their wedding.  In my family, June 18th is a significant date:  the date my parents married, the date they had their first child, and the date which marked my father’s death.  In the year that he died, it was also Father’s Day and he died with all eight of his children and our mother in a circle around him.  I think just in his honors that I will post a small piece I did called “My Father’s Hands”. 

 

My Father’s Hands

 In last night’s dream my father gave me a tiny bag with trails of heart-shaped beads wandering the pale cloth.  Something in my soul wants to finger the tiny heart-shaped beads wondering what he meant by this gift.  Did he mean follow this little trail, my darling girl, and you shall carry anything that comes after with ease. 

So many books are about mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, but what of the daughter caught by a golden thread to her father’s soul?  What of that child? 

I am a grown woman, a grandmother now, who looks down at her own stubby fingers one day and sees her father’s hands.  They are not the hands of a piano player or a dancer but the sturdy hands of labor, of getting things done, of endurance and strength.  I remember his hands in one scene and then another; tying myskates in winter, sketching the walls of his new house or solving an intricate problem on paper as if each knubby fingertip had its very own brain and only when his hands moved could he think. 

I remember the warmth and strength of his hands as he kneaded the calves of my legs late in the night when growing pains hurt bad enough to wake me up crying.  I see his hands holding cards in a favorite game of whist or bridge or gently patting the shoulder of a friend he met on the street.  I see his two hands on a steering wheel driving to grandma’s house or holding the very edges of the Sunday paper after church, a plate of powdered donuts hidden on the other side of the news.  I smile and remember the way my father’s hands would pick up myneedlepoint project and run the yarn through six rows, tugging just a little too tightly so that Icould always see in the tapestry of the finished work his rows beside my own.

I see his hands holding the Louis La’Mour book late in the evening, letting go only to take a sip of the beer warming on the side table; his hands building two houses to shelter those he loved most, his hands fashioning the ugliest boat ever out of wood and plank, his hands turning wood, twisting metal, picking berries and then building a special screen to roll the berries down gently to clean them.

I see his hands playfully slapping my mother’s backside or holding her against the fridge to steal a kiss, and his hands wielding the razor that plowed a smooth path through his lathered chin and me, sitting on the closed lid of the pot, waiting for the moment when he would turn and growl and try to kiss my cheek like  a rabid dog.  I would squeal and run out of the bathroom giggling. 

All of this I see in an instant when I looked down and saw my own small, square hands, so sturdy and strong. 

And she see his hands, swollen and bruised, a blueberry stain on the back where the IV had kept him alive for three more minutes, five more minutes, and then that last and final breath, of death.  And he was gone, living on in the short fingers of my own hands that crack in the winter . . . just like his did. 

 

All My Relatives

Published by Jamie on April 9, 2008 in Short Fiction. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Below is a story I wrote a number of years ago.  The genesis of this story is my own husband’s adoption story.  This story still touches my heart.

Jamie

 

 

All My Relations

by Jamie Lee

(Published by Heartlands Magazine, October 2005)

 

Bill carried the plain manila envelope around all day but every time his fingers reached toward the small metal clasp holding it shut they pulled away.  He drove home with the thing, like something alive, on the car seat next to him.  Normally he loved driving through the soft valley to their house tucked up against the Black Hills, but today he saw only the envelope.  He carried it into the house.  Jessie, his wife, knew instantly what it was. 

He went to the couch, sat down, opened the envelope, read the thin file of adoption papers for 13 minutes, got up, silently handed the papers to Jesse, and walked into the kitchen.  He polished the stainless steel teapot with a scratchy green pad and a pearl of dish soap.  He filled it with water, lit the stove, stared at the dancing blue flame, and then Jessie was standing behind him, arms circling his middle, saying, “Such a sad story, honey.  I can’t believe that this baby is you.” until sharp slivers of thought caught in the back of his mind.   

The soft, mothering part of Jessie made him want to tie feelings like small pouches of tobacco and hang them from her branches like prayers.  Later, she said what broke her heart was that he had no name, not for three months, except the names the nurses and nuns attached the nameless baby; Daniel in the hospital, later John or Peter in the mission.  And Jessie was furious at cruel, cutting notes scrawled into the records by well-meaning nuns referring again and again to how “fortunate” that Boy Daniel (or whatever) does not look too Indian. 

Bill was half Lakota, some Cherokee, some Cree, and who knew what else.  A breed, he thought.  It always comes down to that, breeds and pedigrees, a race of people forced to carry papers and proof of blood quantum.  It pissed him off.  Royally.  It did.  His only goal in opening the adoption file was to register with the tribe to get financial aid as an Indian for graduate school.  He hadn’t anticipated questions of place, and belonging, and blood quantum to thicken like blood pudding in his mind. 

It became the Indian Question.  What does it mean to be Lakota?  Blood, birth, state of mind?  He caught himself staring in bank windows at his own high cheekbones and wondering about Lakota, or staring down at the flat fingernails on the ends of his fingers, another sign.  And he didn’t understand Jessie saying “No wonder, honey!  Good God, no wonder.”  And when he questioned her she said only that he was always waiting.  

He didn’t quite get her meaning but the adoption papers had lit a lamp on the screen of his mind.  Scenes of a young mother staring through pane glass at the tiny bundled boy that is her son.  She is small, hair braided, cheek pressed to cold glass whispering “My son.”  The babies hair is dark like night sky, flying from his scalp.  She considers that it was his feet poking against her womb these many months, his fingers now uncurling and reaching–seeking her–only her.  And then she disappears, unable to sign the papers, unable to stay. 

How?  How could she do it?  It wasn’t a real question in Bill’s mind.  He knew how.  After years wandering around these South Dakota reservations, he’d seen a hundred girls just like her; scared, young, foolish, drunk, incested or raped by uncles and strangers, girls like his mother.   

The birth record said her name was Forrest.  What had it been before?  Had it been Stands in Timber or Catches the Wind?  What would his name have been if she had not given him up for adoption, if she hadn’t died, if the white man had not named her grandparents ‘Forrest’ to make the bookkeeping easier?

Three days after reading the papers Bill blew up at a guy who hung a Sundance skirt on a wall like a trophy animal.  The guy said he was a real Indian.  Bill told him to stuff it.  Sure he wasn’t raised on Pine Ridge.  Sure he’d had whiteman advantages, raised by a nice couple in eastern South Dakota, didn’t talk Lakota.  So what?  He’d trade it all to know a single grandfather, to have one uncle guide him into his vision, to sit in the Inipi ceremony and know just who the hell he was. 

Not Indian.  Not white.

If it weren’t for Jessie, he’d be a crazy man.  Jessie was white but had spent the first twenty-five years on a reservation in northern Minnesota.  Talk about racial confusion–she seemed more Indian than he.  Oh, how he loved watching her bow to the flowers, or spread her arms above her head to greet the sky or a tree.  She seemed born to the land although no Indian blood ran through her veins like red water. 

Bill tried to shake off confusion like a dog crawling out of a creek.  His confusion was compounded by Jessie’s odd delusions.  Last night she’d wrapped her arms around his middle and said once again.  “I think I’m pregnant”.  She crossed the room, sat down in the old orange, uglier-than-sin rocking chair that was too comfortable to throw out, and rubbed her belly in small circular motions.  Her face was round and soft and smiling as she stared at an oily spot on the wall across the living room. 

Bill didn’t understand.   “No honey, you know you aren’t pregnant.  You know that, so why do you keep bringing it up?”

“I don’t know.  I feel it.  I feel like I’m pregnant, that’s all.”

“Look honey.  You aren’t pregnant.  You couldn’t possibly be pregnant.  You know I had a vasectomy.  I’m forty-four, and you’ve had your babies and I’m sorry you didn’t have them with me, but you didn’t.  You aren’t pregnant.”  He didn’t want to sound exasperated but he was.  Bill loved Jessie, but strange things were about and he didn’t understand why or how it coincided with wanting to understand what is Lakota? 

To tell the truth, she looked pregnant.  She hadn’t gained weight or showed any physical signs, but her skin was clear and shining, her eyes bright and expectant. 

“Have you been dreaming again?” he asked her.

“Oh yes.”  She looked straight at him “Do you want to hear about it?”

“Sure.”  He smiled for the first time that day.

“This time we were up on a high trail at Bear Butte, almost a ledge, and there were others with us, all others, all of our relatives were there.  Oh Bill, it was the holiest place ever.”

She sounded like a young girl–not his thirty-eight year old wife and mate.  He crossed the room, sat on the floor at her feet, and rested his head against her knee, suddenly tired of thinking, and questions.  Jessie told him of her dream. 

“Part of the trail was buried with rock that had tumbled from above.  It had the strangest sound.  Bones, I thought.  It sounded like bones and broken crockery and I knew right away why this place is holy.  The whole mountain is nothing but bones; mountain bones, Indian bones, bones from animals, and god bones, and bird bones.  So many bones.”  She stopped talking and fanned all ten fingers out to feel his scull beneath her hands.  His scalped tingled as if her fingertips were fireflies emitting tiny chemical jolts into his scull.  His middle grew mossy, and he was afraid to breath, afraid that if he moved she too would fly off and leave him.  Waiting.  Waiting. 

She talked on.  “Then you took my hand and said come on.  I wanted to take one of the bones with me so I went down on my knees and found a small stone shaped like a scull.  I stuck it in my pocket but it was hot.  When I stood up, it felt like wind prayers coming from out across the plains and surrounding us.  Remember the sound of that silence, and that wind?  God, it was something.”  She laughed quietly and leaned her upper body to form a soft feminine shelter over him.  “Maybe that’s what made me pregnant.” 

He loved her dreams, words spreading over him like yellow cream, or surrounding them like an oily, rainbow-bubble flown from a child’s lips.  He wished he understood what gentle force gave her these sweet dreams but feared if he discovered the source, it would prove to be illusion only with no sweet blend of pious gentle love wrapping them both like a swaddling cloth. 

In this space it only mattered that he loved her.  All that was lost could be found again if he just stayed in this place with her.  He knew that.    “I wish I could give you a baby.  I do.”  He was apologizing. 

She shook her head and kissed his warm brow.  “I don’t need a baby silly.  I just need to be pregnant.”

Bill closed his eyes for a moment and saw a range of hills, dark-skinned and feminine, wearing the golden prairie like a skirt of soft, yellow buckskin.  Mother Earth.  She had birthed them all–that’s what the stories said.    This gentle mother had not given him away but, rather, drew him in closer and closer until his own heart beat a single rhythm with hers.  His painful questions suddenly lost their end marks and their power to wound.   

Jesse was pregnant.  So was he.  So were all the people, both on the reservation and off, because the earth herself was expecting, poised in a single breathless moment of waiting for the new time and in this time, they would all be born new.  Didn’t the old stories say it? 

And the Earth took the ones closest to her inside of herself…

 

The Other Great Love of My Life

Published by Jamie on February 5, 2008 in Essays and On Becoming Human. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

 I was wandering through old journal writings tonight and came across this one.  I am thinking of spring coming and planting berries on our new piece of land–and wishing my parents were still there and feeling nostalgic.  So I share this post with you.  A “timed writing” is just practice where anything goes.

jl

July 30, 1992–timed writing

I remember the low-bush look on the forest floor and me kneeling or crouching, sitting where the berries dance heavy all around and I can pick sitting down, my fingers bluing with time like my grandma’s hair.  I remember the feeling of berries rolling from their ripe, loose hold on the low bush and dropping into my hand and the tiniest sound of berries dropping into the bucket. 

The forest makes sounds.  It buzzes, sometimes too near-and even with sleeves and jeans and scarf, the mosquitoes find my skin and bite down like my own teeth into berries.  Juice, blood red, blue, and tiny pale green leaves that land amidst the berries like green lace.  “Mom?”  I call out.  She murmurs, still near-even a hundred years later, still near.

And the blue blush of my father’s face in the hospital bed.  Why did he die on their anniversary?  Why not sooner?  Later?  His face was plumped and his skin loose and cool like berries gone too long on a bush.  He didn’t like to pick berries.  Only mom and I liked the soft prayer of a berry patch, the pull of muscles too long bent over, and the contagious quiet that always left us with little to say.  “Mom?”  “Here.”  “Okay.”

She cried when he died.  Even with her tears and soft choking voice she leaned near him and told him, “It’s okay, it’s okay for you to go now.  I’ll be alright.  Really I will.”  She kissed his cheek, and stroked the hand that hosted the IV needle in his blueberry stained skin.

How I loved picking blueberries.  And my father.  The forest knew my name–would give me songs to sing and wind so sweet with green smells that I would stop, small animal, and sniff. 

My father knew my name.  I remember his soft hand with its short fingers walking through my hair as he threatened to kiss me with his face all white with shaving cream and me sitting, legs swinging, sitting on the stool watching him shave.

Later, I couldn’t take my eyes off his hands, so still on the bed.  I was glad he was unconscious.  I kissed his fingers, touched the blueberry mark softly.  I put his fingers to my eyes so his heart could feel my tears.  Salt.  Sweet.  Sweet love filling my bucket.

Dad liked to fish.

I don’t remember when we drew apart, what blue water flowed cool between us and made it so difficult to say I love you.  I need to know your thoughts, your inner yearnings.  Talk to me, Dad.  I don’t remember what went by or past or when.  A decade snapped its fingers and then another and soon I was not six or sixteen but thirty-six and I watched with envy as my little girl, Lisa slipped quietly into my seat in his heart.  A child is so easy to love.  Curtains of age hid him from me but flew open at the sight of my own child, so like me-but not me-in his arms.

Not anymore.  I never wanted to remember the ache gathering at the base of my skull that made me want to draw my body up tight and small and have him lay his fingers in my hair and stroke and one more time call me, “Pappy”.  Now, I never want to forget.