Never Going Back Again

 A few days ago, riding in the passenger seat of my car...

ME: (Teared up, sniffling) You know, (laughs), the shitty thing no one ever tells you about decolonizing your love is that once you do, even romantic love songs usually meant for lovers, end up reminding you of your grandmother. Because once you break down all those degrees and compartments--Once you start breaking down all the different levels of love, you find yourself loving everyone in your life on a sort of-kind of, equal plane. Your brothers, your sisters, your mother, your cousins...All your relatives, your lovers, your friends. You just sort of love everyone you love. The other night I heard a song--It’s a romantic song meant for lovers, but it reminded me of Grandma. (Talking through tears) I can barely keep myself from crying just thinking about it, again. It’s mostly the chorus that reminded me of her. I guess it has something to do with intimacy. Not sexually intimate, obviously. But there are other types of intimacy. 

I wanna sleep next to you…  

I thought about all the times we stayed at their place, when we were kids. Grandpa always insisted we take his spot, to let us sleep on their bed in the back bedroom. Grandma would stay in the back bedroom with us. We liked to pillowtalk with Grandma and we would try to stay up late and ask her to tell us a bedtime story. She would be telling us a story and we would start giggling and laughing. We never let her end any of her stories. Grandpa had a small reading lamp in the back bedroom. Grandma used the lamp and showed us how to make hand shadow puppets on the wall. I remember watching her hands and watching my own hands practice making shadow puppet animals--Dogs and rabbits and birds--And I remember touching her hands...Strong. Soft. Her hands holding up my little kid hands.

Then I remembered the way her cool fingers soaked in water, felt, as they wiggled their way thru my hair tangles. Then, starting at my temples, she would rake her thick finger nails over and across my scalp. Her fingers and hands tightly gripping, twisting, and turning the thick sections of my gathered hair strands into one single long braid.

I thought about watching her hands as she traced the outlines of my feet onto blank pieces of paper when she made patterns for my leggings... Her hands and her eyes focused on manipulating the thin sewing needle and thread she used to pick up each tiny bead when she was beading belts on her loom. She told me one time that all of her beadwork had at least one mistake because, “We are human beings and only Our Creator is perfect.”

I kissed her hands on the night-just after she passed away. Her skin was cold. Her hands were thin, fragile to the touch.

I’m trying to be patient with myself. I'm letting myself cry when I feel the urge to cry. I am letting myself grieve. I knew her time was coming. Losing Grandpa was hard for her...I just didn’t expect to feel this way. It’s hard thinking about never being able to go back. Never being able to go back to their house and see them, ever again...I grew up in that house on their land. I lived half of my life with both of them being a part of my daily life.

MOM: You know, you’re one of a few. You don’t have to go on ancestry.com or some other website to look up your family. You know who you are. You know who you come from. 

ME: I know and I am grateful. But you know something I realize now, in hindsight?

I believed in her immortality more than my own.

She broke down and let me in

Made me see where I've been

Been down one time

Been down two times...

You don't know what it means to win

Come down and see me again

Been down one time

Been down two times


I'm never going back again.

--"Never Going Back Again"/FLEETWOOD MAC

MourningBraids_12_25_2017

One Word sprint

From oneword.com :

ON THE COVER OF THE ROLLING STONE

Back when I was in Jr. High, I used to hang out with this girl. Her name was Sadie. Sadie was pretty cool, at least I thought so because she was always nice to me and growing up in rural Carnegie Oklahoma, if you didn’t play basketball and you weren’t Kiowa, you weren’t exactly popular. I didn’t play basketball and I am Comanche. Sadie was a really good basketball player.

I don’t know why she hung out with me. I certainly had nothing to bring to the table of friendship.

There was this one afternoon when Sadie and I were hanging out at her house. There weren’t any adults around, (so goes the story of Carnegie), and Sadie asked me if I wanted to smoke some weed. I obliged and we smoked a joint together. Afterward, we were being silly and giggly, jumping on Sadie’s bed, then she randomly asks me...

SADIE: Have you ever heard of Dr. Hook?
ME: Dr. Hook? You mean like…Captain Hook? Peter Pan?
SADIE: (Laughing) No, no, no.

Then Sadie leans over the bed and pulls out this stack of vinyl records and shows me an album by Dr. Hook. It looked pretty weird and backwoods to me.

SADIE: Dr. Hook is the best band of all time!

I smiled, and took her word for it, but that wasn’t enough for Sadie. She conjured up a record player from underneath the mounds of clothes piled all over her floor and put on one of the records. I continued to smile because I didn’t want to lose her friendship.

Now here I am years later, and I got a song stuck in my head the other day and I had to look it up. Turns out, it’s a song by Dr. Hook. I guess sometimes, it takes a while for things to develop, particularly tastes in music.

Anyway, coming back to that memory made me realize that Sadie was way ahead of her time.

But they totes do.

My short prose response to a hotel/casino customer satisfaction survey...

There was a funky fragrance that loomed in the air throughout nearly every area in the hotel and casino. It was particularly pungent on the floor of the casino, as well as in the hotel elevators and hallways. The only place I didn't smell the scent was in my hotel room. I found it interesting that there were open non-smoking areas alongside smoking areas on the floor of the casino. I certainly don't mind the smell of tobacco product smoke, as that's to be expected at nearly every casino in the universe. The odor didn't smell like it came from anything natural or organic. It smelled sort of like gas-station, bargain-rack stick incense mixed with a dollop of Love's Baby Soft perfume. My guess was that the smell was caused by an air freshener meant to combat the smell of tobacco smoke (and if that was it, perhaps the casino's air quality could be made better with an investment in a more efficient air filtration system? Neutralizing a smell works better, usually, than attempting to mask one). My other guess was that the smell came from a cleaning substance used throughout the casino and hotel. The more I think about it now, the smell may have possibly been from electronic cigarettes, too. People say e-cigarette "vapes" don't possess an odor, but they totes do. 

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One word, writing spring from oneword.com

One word + 60 seconds

Today's prompt from oneword.com and oneminutewriter.blogspot.com. As for the one word prompt, it wasn't exactly my first choice subject, because I spend so much time writing about my family life, already. 

There is no set, standard philosophy or answer, or meaning to life. Life is what you make of it, it's all perception. Some days are great, some days are awful, some days are boring, some days you might find yourself wishing you had nothing to do except stare at a wall for four hours straight. My personal favorite part of life is finding the beauty in the mundane. If I had to say life should reach a particular goal, I imagine being content in all of the above is a good start to that path.