Jamaican Dogs

Dogs are all over the place in Jamaica. I have never met any who were actual pets and lived in the house, though I am sure some of them live that way. Just as I have become familiar with a certain segment of Jamaica by coming to know the people at the children's home, and also the family of our bus driver, I have only come to know a certain segment of Jamaican dogs.

And this segment is all over the place on the paths beaten and unbeaten by tourists. They run loose and they do not wear collars. They sleep curled up on the side of the road; they rest their heads on curbs as cars whoosh by at the gas station. They sleep on graves in the cemetery. They are un-neutered males with swinging balls and females with large swinging nipples. Rarely have I seen puppies. I think, in the absence of the funds to spay and neuter the dogs, the method of preferred population control is neglect. Sick puppies die. The strong survive. Such is the way of it.

The dogs I have known don't let you pet them very much. I don't try to pet them either. And I love dogs! But these dogs have skin ailments and who knows what other kinds of parasites and whatnot. They also bite. They do not seek human companionship. They don't run up to you in that friendly way, smiling and wagging their tails. They have each other, they run in little packs. They have their alpha males and females and their low-down-on-the-pecking-order youngsters. They have scars of bites on their muzzles, their sides, their thighs. They know exactly what it feels like to be kicked. The kids at the children's home think it is great fun to maltreat the dogs until they cry. They think it is funny. I have seen them chase them and kick them and hold them down and slam their heads in gates. I have seen them corner them and beat them and laugh while the dogs cry. When we tell the kids to stop it, they laugh and run off, only to come back later and do it again. Once I was asked by one of the older girls (this was Evelyn, 15 years old and a bed wetter, low down on the pecking order herself, treated badly by the other smarter girls, the savvy girls), "It is wrong to hurt the dogs, Miss?"

"Yes."

"But we think it is funny, Miss."

"Would you want someone to do that to you?"

"No, Miss."

"Well then, neither do the dogs."

Last summer the children's home had 11 dogs. One or two of them were the grown up pups we had seen the year before. The director uses them for security. She also lets some of the girls 'adopt' a favorite pup and care for it. By which she means, the girl feeds that pup. There is no bonding in the sense we understand with a pet. No playtime, no walks, no cuddling up together. None of that. And only minimal care. They get the leftover food. They get scraps tossed to them, chicken bones, stuff we are told not to feed them here. The alpha male of the pack, the one the kids call the "King Dog" had a perversely swollen ear last summer. It was blown up like a balloon. It bothered him. He tilted his head to the side and rubbed his ear on things. He came up to me with a pleading look in his eyes and tried to rub the ear on my leg. He sat close to me. He wanted help. There was nothing I could do. We asked about him and were told, oh yes, he will be taken to the vet.

Uh huh.

I had promised myself that this year I would not look at the dogs. But it is impossible! They are everywhere! On the bus ride up, a terrified female running for her life on a dark narrow road, trying to avoid speeding cars. In the center of the town of Port Maria (a place our driver Peat tells us is cursed because once they killed a mermaid there), in the very middle of the road, a road lit by the lurid red light of the KFC and congested with cars and people walking, and with trotting packs of dogs, there is a pair who have just mated, but they are still stuck together in that way that happens before their muscles relax. They are twisted at an odd angle and joined at the genitals. They have embarrassed doggy expressions, tongues lolling.

Or the last day of our visit, 2 years ago. It is at the end of worship at the large concrete church with wide open windows. We walk out of the shade into the sunshine and there is a white dog lying on the cool marble of the top front step. She is emaciated. She lies on her side, licking away at an open wound in her belly. Open, so that you can see the organs inside. The wound is very clean and she is definitely dying. Was she drawn to the prayers and the singing? Why is she there? And why can't I help her? Because I can't. I am not a vet. Nor do I have the luxury of of being able to do something for her as I would here at home! I do not have drugs to euthanize her. I can't take her anywhere for help. She must simply die, of infection, or attacked by other dogs, or killed by a car on the road.

Or the 2 litters of pups born at the home, within a week of each other, that same year. Twelve puppies in all, and I know that next year I will not meet 12 new dogs. The kids handle them all the time, even when they are too small to be moved (but I see one of the girls moving them, the whole litter, she carries the tiny pups in her hand wrapped in a plastic bag, and I wonder, is she going to go somewhere and suffocate them?). If they die, they die. Sometimes it is the mothers who die, suddenly outcast from the pack, not let close to the food, staggering around alone and emaciated, accustomed to kicks and thrown stones. We gave just such a young female applesauce one year; it was what we had to give her. She was too afraid to eat it. We feel moved to respond but our responses are too small and too feeble. Too self serving, perhaps, gestures to make us feel better. There, we did something. And even though the affluence we bring to the place is more than material-- it is an affluence of spirit--, we can clearly see that material affluence or the lack of it is at the base of survival. It is only when everyone has enough that everyone can have enough. Until then, it is the strong who prosper and cruelty becomes a game of power, a way of showing you are strong. That is true not just in the bare bones reality of a children's home in an impoverished island nation. It is just as true here--we are simply buffered from much of it because of the relativity involved. Here in the US, the poor have more than the poor of other nations. That is the relativity of scarcity. It is a continuum, like any other.

So, it isn't just the children that tear at my heart there. And honestly, by the time I get home from a Jamaican mission trip, I am so overwhelmed by unattended suffering, that I cannot stand to see even wilted plants as I walk down the hill to work. I want to water every single one. I want to feed and tend and love all who are in need. And I can't. It takes me months to get over this trip, it takes me months to grow into the person I will become after experiencing what I have experienced. It takes me months to assimilate what I have learned and seen. I tell myself, This is only the Caribbean! Imagine the scale of suffering in Africa, or parts of Asia! And just like the Grinch in the Dr. Suess story, my heart stretches and grows. I hope it makes me a better person. I hope it makes me more able to share the healing light of love. Otherwise, what is the point?

Rest in Peace, Tatiana

Quote from New York Times article dated Dec. 28, 2007: "Big cat experts have said Tatiana must have been taunted and provoked to attack."

(photo courtesy of San Francisco Zoo)

"You Come Back Next Year, Miss?" -- Pt. 4

The third trip to Jamaica almost didn't happen. We had gotten advance word from the trip leader that extensive renovations were being done on the children's home, and that the kids would not be there. Rather, there would be a construction crew from Kingston staying there. People from our church raised the issue of safety. I raised the issue of if there are no kids, surely what is the point of going? Our pastor told us she had our permission to not go, despite the fact we had already paid the bulk of the money to the church we partner with on this mission. I called the leader back and told her our side of it. She was flabbergasted and upset. She tried to assure me that there would surely be some kids there--albeit only half of them, and that we would be safe, because of course the work crew would not be staying on the grounds. I reported all this back to the people on our end, and we decided to go. There were 2 of us traveling that year--a young woman I had traveled with on the previous 2 trips, and of course myself.

All that said, this was also definitely the year I was telling myself, Last trip. This will be my last trip. I hadn't slept for a month prior to leaving, my anxiety was so strong. After the difficulties with the girls the year before, and the physical and mental exhaustion I had felt, I did not think I could do this trip again. I was still depressed but I was at least taking the vitamin/herbal supplements that help me stay on a somewhat even keel.

We were in customs longer than usual, it felt like, and we got to the children's home quite late. It was very dark. We drove up the dirt road that circled the hill upon which the home sits, and arrived on a scene that was desolate and bleak. Looming beside us was the gutted home. Live electrical wires hung down in front of the bus. No one came out to greet us. No one. We got out to silence. The young woman traveling with me turned to me and her face was full of sadness and anger mixed. Finally, some of the work crew guys filtered out from the building they were staying in and began to pull up those dangling wires. I could see stars through the roof beams in the home. It was very quiet. Normally the windows are lit up and the dogs are barking and clamoring around and the kids run out to greet us and help carry our bags. We silently unloaded the bus. I was holding back a huge I TOLD YOU SO for the group leader. That huge 'I told you so' would accompany us for many days, sitting in the room with us like an invisible elephant.

Eventually the cook came out to find us. She told us the children--the ones who were not at camp or staying with relatives for a brief holiday-- had all been moved to a house over a mile away. Only the boys were staying up there, along with the director and the guidance counselor and the cook. There were 4 boys. One of them was Morris. They had not been able to find a local home to place him in. I felt so relieved for him.

After I put my stuff in the room I was staying in--we took the best room, we figured the leader owed us at least that--, I heard the guidance counselor outside. I went out to greet her. The boys were with her. Two of them were very small, and the smallest, Germaine, told me he was cold! So I scooped him in my ams and held him to warm him. He was shivering! There was another boy named Ricardo who was partially deaf, a boy named Dominique who had been there all the years I had visited, and there was Morris, smiling at me. I said hello to him and I could tell by the light in his eyes that he remembered me. But it was time for them to go to bed and for me to go eat. I told the guidance counselor we were very happy to be there and very excited to be with the children. She assured me they were excited to see us too.

Morris and his sister kerry Ann are not the kind of kids you run over to and scoop up in a hug. They are the kind of kids who flinch at physical contact. They are the kind of kids you approach slowly. The look in their eyes that says, "Why are you paying attention to me?" never quite goes away. I would grow very close to both of them this trip. It was not something I had planned. It simply happened. Partly because there were half as many kids there as usual, and so we could pay even closer attention to the 15 or so who were there. Also our contact with them was limited since they were staying over a mile away, and we had to catch rides over there as our group leader did not have the physical stamina to walk over there. So, the time we had with them was quality time. When we are with them all day and into the night, it quite frankly gets exhausting. There are so many of them and they are so lively and needy. We saw them for only a few hours a day this trip. I missed them terribly! It was sad without them around. And so, when I was with them, I made the most of the time.

I was also fortunate to get to see Morris first thing in the morning before he and the other boys were brought down to be with the rest of the kids. We had some special moments together, sharing a piece of sugar cane, or talking about singing. This was after I had found out he really could talk! He could talk and he could sing and he could drum and he could draw really, really well. As I waited for our breakfast to be ready one hot morning, Morris sat beside me and sang me all his favorite reggae songs. Every single one. He sang shyly, looking at his feet, and I sat beside him, head tilted toward him so I could hear his soft voice. I did not look in his eyes as he sang; I did not want to embarrass him.

On another day we had brought the children sidewalk chalk and they had drawn on the concrete all around the house they were staying in. It was then I discovered Morris drew very well. He drew an anime character he liked, and he also drew some pictures to some simple rhymes he had created. The drawing came after we had spent time making pinwheels with the kids. We made them from plastic straws and colored copier paper that they had decorated with crayons and colored pencils and ink stamps. We had stood in front of the house hoping a breeze would come and spin the pinwheels. We had called out to the wind, asking it to blow for us. Sometimes it did. The joy on the children's faces when the wind spun their pinwheels was a glorious thing to see and feel. Their simple delight was something we all felt, and treasured.

On another day, I discovered Morris had a talent for drumming. He later told me he drummed at a concert at the church. I noticed after worship on our last day there that he was busy helping the church musician, Kevin, put away the drum set. Kevin also grew up in the children's home. He is a tall, quiet young man of about 22 who has a kind handsome face, and who remembers the songs he was taught by the group when he was a small boy. He told us those songs were the first music he ever learned. He plays drums and keyboard during worship. After I saw how Morris helped out after worship, I asked Kevin to work with Morris and teach him to drum. He said he would if he had the time.

The van arrived at the church to take the girls back to their house. I went to say good-bye to Kerry Ann. She had already asked me several times during the week whether I would come back next year: "You come back next year, Miss?"

The first time she had asked me, I had hesitated in my response. She saw that. She asked me again. I hesitated again, and then I said, "Yes. Yes, I will come back next year." My decision had been made, even though I was not 100% certain how I felt about it! After that she began to insist, "You stay here, Miss. You stay here." She said it again to me after church. But we both knew I had to leave, just as she knew she had to go back to the house in the van waiting outside. I told her I loved her. I told her I would come see her next year. I told her I would be thinking of her, and that I would miss her and Morris both. I reached out and hugged her. She was like a bundle of branches on my arms. She looked at me with skeptical eyes. I wondered what she thought of those words of mine, I love you.

We walked back to the home. I told Morris we were leaving that day. We had made some more pinwheels and gave them to the boys. Morris likes blue. I had made him a special one, all blue. I found some candy and gave that to him and the boys too. Every time I walked into the residence, his eyes would follow me. He knew I was leaving, but when? I assured him every time I got up that I would be right back. And then, the bus came earlier than we had expected it. As soon as I saw it, tears stung my eyes-- even though my mind was thinking I would not come back next year, my heart apparently had other plans. I turned to Morris to say good-bye, to tell him I loved him and that I would miss him. He started to cry. My heart broke at the sight of his tears. I thought, have I done something wrong to make this sweet, innocent boy cry? If loving someone is wrong, then yes. If paying attention to a shining star previously hidden by clouds is wrong, then yes. I felt helpless in the face of his tears. Another member of our group came over and patted Morris on the back. Kevin also stood nearby, looking on with kind dark eyes. He knew the taste of these sad good-byes. I turned to Morris and said, "You sing and drum, Morris. You sing and drum while I am away, and I will see you next year. Okay?"

Then I looked up at Kevin and asked him again to teach Morris to drum. He said, "Yes." I replied, "Promise?" He nodded and said, "Promise."

I got on the bus. Through the front window I could see Morris standing with the others. It looked like he was looking my way, so I raised my hand in a farewell wave. He raised his hand back. We drove away. I cried for a long time. I cried, and I prayed.

While praying, I came to realize a new level of faith. That as God cares for me, so too will he care for Morris and Kerry Ann. I must have faith in that, that as he shelters me under his great wings, so too does he shelter them. And that as he guided me for the past 3 years, (despite myself sometimes!), to be with the children in Jamaica, and to do his work there by loving his orphan children, so too will he be caring for them, all the year round. And even though Morris may not even be there when I go back this coming July, I will keep faith, I will go back. Kerry Ann will still be there, and I told her, as I told her brother, that I will come back to see them next year. I will keep faith.

They are in my prayers every day.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

"You Come Back Next Year, Miss?" -- Pt. 3

The next year was very different. It felt different. I had approached the trip with an uneasy sense of foreboding that had started with the new year. Nothing I could explain. Some of it was the depression, for sure. I hadn't been taking the herbal/vitamin supplements I often use, and needed to get back on them. (But that was a matter of finances, as usual!) And yet, there was more to my uneasy feelings than that. When we had arrived in Jamaica and began the long bus ride, I looked out the window at the wandering goats and the congregating people and the ubiquitous dogs curled up asleep on the roadsides, and it felt like something was different--darker. Near the resort areas, I saw more people living under blue tarps. As we got further into the mountains, and the foliage became dense and dark, I would see solitary men looming from that darkness. I saw dark abandoned houses. I also saw fields with barefoot young men playing soccer in the twilight. This was World Cup soccer summer, and everyone everywhere on that island was playing.

Like 3 year old Trevon, the cook's grandson. He presented me with a tiny round plastic red ball and we kicked it back and forth, in the heat, for over an hour. This was while the other women were distributing outfits to the other children. This was a half day long project that sounds simple enough but is actually exhausting. The kids are brought in in groups arranged by age and size. They get their new clothes, they try them on, we oooh and ahhh and trot them outside to stand them beneath the poinciana and take their picture. The kids whose turn it is not yet wait very impatiently, and I was outside with them, as there were plenty enough women inside, doing the clothing thing. It all went very well until we got to the teen girls. We had already gotten a heads up about them from the home's guidance counselor. We had met with her one morning to see what particular areas she wanted us to work with the kids on. Reading? Math? No, how about you have a talk with the older girls about appropriate relationships and not having sex until marriage.

Okay. Suddenly I understood the strange men looming in the fields around the home. The home is in an isolated small town, kind of hanging off the edge of it. There is no secure fence, no compound, no protected area. We had already had a night of listening to the dogs bark in a frenzy for hours only to be told in the morning that someone had come and stolen all the water from the cistern, water that had just been delivered and purchased the day before. This is the kind of poverty we were in the midst of--the kind that steals water. And while that water had been delivered, we women were padlocked into our residence building and not let out until the men had left. The trouble with the teen girls, you see--it was like they were in heat, and all the neighboring males could smell it and were on the scene. Just like that. Yes. In fact. And so, the children's home director was taking no chances with our young white women being visible.

And so, the same girls who had been sweet and friendly the year before were all hooded eyes and surly mouths. They had eyes only for the teen boys traveling with us, but not for us older women--the boys were friends and we were authority figures. The boys were freedom and fun and we were surely not. They were bitchy and competitive with one another, and only more so with us. It was tricky and difficult-- and we were supposed to talk to them about sex? After they had sniffed and picked their noses at the outfits we had brought, had stood there with downcast eyes, loudly transmitting their dislike? These were girls who had cut open their shirts to reveal cleavage. They were running wild with the town boys up playing soccer on the upper field. They would grudgingly return to do bead projects with us with their eyes wild and triumphant and their shirts half unbuttoned, their young breasts clearly visible beneath.

So it was with great relief we retreated to the soft comforts of the younger children, and also of the ones called "simple". The ones who up here we would diagnose as developmentally delayed or disabled and would have treatment plans for. In Jamaica, they are called "simple", and what kind of life awaits them, I can only guess at and even then I cannot make a good guess. There was sweet sad Dido, and Kerry Ann and Morris. Kerry Ann and Morris are siblings, they have the same birthday and they are happy and proud that they share the same birthday but they also say they are not twins. Well, Kerry Ann says it--I don't think Morris knows what twins means. At any rate, who knows if they are twins or not? They were simply given the same birth date to make it all easier for the administrator. When we did bead projects with the older girls, after having spent the morning with them trying to have the relationship talk, we used seed beads and had real jewelry making findings and supplies. With the younger children, we used plastic string and big fat plastic beads. Kerry Ann was a teen but she did beads with the little kids, as did her brother Morris. They are only a year or 2 apart, if they aren't, in fact, actually twins. I sat beside Kerry Ann and helped her thread each bead onto the strand, one by one. It was quiet, calm, simple work, and I loved it, and she enjoyed my patient attention. She made a beautiful necklace, and later on, with the generosity typical of so many of the children at the home, she gave it to one of the girls in our group.

I hadn't yet gotten to know Morris as well as I know him now. At that time, I knew him as a sweet and shy boy with a big smile, and didn't really think he could talk much. He seemed to be a boy who was quite accustomed to being overlooked and ignored. All I had ever heard him say was, "Yes, Miss" and "No, Miss" and who replied "Fine, Miss" when asked how he was. On our last night there, when we were waiting for the Kentucky Fried Chicken we had purchased for the kids for supper to arrive, (it took hours and hours, as many things in Jamaica seem to), we had waited for so long that the cook had cut up watermelon for us and had a bag of small mangoes for the kids. Morris stood patiently by the girl who was handing them out and never said a word, just waited. Kerry Ann finally spoke up for him and told the girl to give him a mango, then turned to me with a mischievous light in her eye and laughingly said, "Morris does not talk."

And so I thought Morris does not talk. Later on when there was a second piece of watermelon offered to me, I took it and gave it to Morris on the sly. His joy lit up the night. See, I have come to know Morris better as time has passed, and I love him now with a love that pierces my heart. Because he is simple and sweet and I can do nothing for him but visit him and pay attention to him, enjoy him and pray for him. We had been told that summer that he would have to leave the home because of his age (all boys leave at 13) but that he couldn't go to the boys orphanage--they knew he would not do well there, and they did not want to separate him from his sister. They are 2 of the true orphans there. The director was hoping to find a home nearby where Morris could live. After learning this, we had put together a bag of clothing and snacks for him, with a note inside that we had all signed, not that he can read, but, you know. The whole situation worried me greatly. What would happen to that sweet boy?

On our last morning there, a Sunday, I left our building to go over to where the men were staying to tell them breakfast was ready. It was one of the only days when the clouds had parted and I could actually see the panorama of mountains on the horizon. It was blue and glorious! It was also the day we would all go to church together, and so we were dressed up in nicer church clothes. Besides the mountains, I also saw Morris sitting up in the dining hall window, looking over at our building. He had on a blue button up shirt, and looked very nice. As soon as he saw me, his face lit up in a great big smile and he waved to me. He had been sitting there waiting for one of us to come out! That smile lit my heart. The memory of it still does. I love that boy. And it is a love that breaks my heart. And that truly is another story.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

"You Come Back Next Year, Miss?" -- Pt. 2

Most of the kids aren't orphans, even though it is called a mission trip to an orphanage. That is how I always heard it described in our church. Roughly 5 of the 33 usually in residence are "true orphans". The rest are abandoned, one way or another. Some of them have mothers living nearby who cannot afford to raise them. They and their siblings by different dads ("baby daddies") all live in the home. Many of the children there are siblings or cousins. Some of them have parents in other countries, like England, working and sending them expensive gifts. This is apparently a very common situation for children in Jamaica, being left behind while parents emigrate for work. I learned this during the hurricane, when one of the boys, Winston, came out wearing a very expensive wool sweater he said his mother had sent him from England. The next year, the dad had sent him a nice bicycle. Even though he lived there with his brother, Nordido--Dido for short--, the gifts always came to Winston. The last year I visited, both boys were gone, off to England apparently, to be put in boarding schools there. I had spent a lot of time with Dido the summer previously. He was a melancholy boy who had a kind of delay to his speech. He would hang on me as much as he could, literally put his arms around my neck and hang. He is the one, in the picture above, hanging on me and looking so sad.

But back to that first year, the year of the hurricane. The kids had a television now, a fact that shocked some of the veterans of the trip. It was in the living room of the house, a dank, dim place that smelled of piss. I think it was the couches that smelled like that. The kids would congregate in there all day and watch TV, especially with the rain outside. The girls enjoyed fixing each other's hair. They would endlessly fix and play with anyone's hair, and they really liked our white people's hair. Combing and braiding and pony tailing, endlessly. The TV allowed us to watch updates on the storm. We hadn't taken it very seriously the first day or so, but by the time we found out it had been named Dennis, we knew that was a bad thing. What we did not know, but that our loved ones back home knew, was that it was a giant whopper of a storm and it was heading directly for where we were. What we did not know was that loved ones at home were worried and crying and asking everyone they could to pray for us. And what I do know is that prayer works, because that storm took a right turn north and skirted the island, and that what would have been a great big category 4 storm became a category 1 or 2. Still windy and rainy enough that the schools on the island were closed and all the little children had to say inside for fear they would blow away. Still big enough that the electricity was pretty much out all the time. Our biggest concern was not so much damage to the old stone building we were staying in, nor even flooding since we were up so high. Our concerns were trees down and blocking roads, or the main road that paralleled the northern coastline being washed out and our return home being delayed. Because Montego Bay is on the exact opposite end of the island from where we were. We travel a good 5 hours all the way across the island on that northern coast, until turning south, straight up into the mountains.

The TV actually did not tell us all that much about that storm itself. It told us, in an endlessly repeated message being run along the bottom of the screen, how to secure our dwelling places with plywood and plastic and duct tape. Bits of the Psalms ran interspersed with these messages, scripture proclaiming God's great protection during wind and rain. The messages also told us that when we had finished securing our own dwellings, we should then go out and help our neighbors secure theirs.

The carpenter traveling with us got up early and quietly put plywood over all the windows. We moved all our possessions out in the sheltered hallway in case the windows flooded. We filled buckets of water so we could flush the toilets. We sat in the dark and sang hymns and read the same psalms that had been broadcast on the TV. The wind roared. Roared. Water lashed and pelted the walls and windows. The room did begin to flood. People swept the water into the bathroom. We did not sleep much that night. In the morning, we noticed the quiet and the calm of the eye passing over. We could hear not roaring wind but cows mooing, and we knew that to be a good thing. We went out and saw branches down all over. The dogs that hung around the place were huddled together in a sheltered alcove on the porch. These aren't nice dogs that you want to go pet. They are suspicious and snappy and have skin conditions. They are the kinds of dogs you toss food to, but don't expect any kind of tail wagging happy companionship from. Suddenly the wind picked up again, but in the exact opposite direction. Trees that had been blowing horizontally to the left were now bending to the right. It truly was amazing. We hadn't seen hide nor hair of the Irish since before the storm had began. We could only wonder where they were hiding. They would surface again soon enough, however--most certainly at mealtime.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

"You Come Back Next Year, Miss?" -- Pt. 1

The last week or so, the daytime temperature has been just a bit above freezing. Consequently, the snow is heavy, and wet. It exhales chill damp. The damp hangs in the air, trapped by the low grey clouds. Chills me to the bone. All that helps is hot baths, activity, hot tea, wool sweaters, long underwear. At some point I surrender to it, and wrapped in a blanket, I read, or write. I let my mind transport me someplace else. Like Jamaica, where it is never cold, not for us northerners. It gets down to about the mid 70s there winters, enough to make the children want to put on sweaters. That's what we call a really nice day up here.

The first summer I visited the children's home up in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, the most mountainous and most Christian Caribbean island, according to our friend and bus driver Peat, there was a hurricane on the way. We had landed in Montego Bay, taken our usual 2 hours to get our bags full of clothing and crafts and toys and educational materials through customs. (Prior to this, we had stood for about 1 1/2 hours in a long zig-zagging snake of a line, cooled by fans that look like props from a Humphrey Bogart movie, to present our documents to enter the country.) At that time, the customs area was in the same spot where the bags were coming directly in from the planes outside. It was hot and humid and smelled strongly of jet exhaust in there. We always seem to get into the wrong line, and scurry back and forth across the wide area, until we finally settle into what we were certain is the 'right' line. That never changes. That, and the fact we then stand there, and stand there, and stand there, slumped and leaning onto our loaded baggage carts. The customs people don't like the looks of our bags. That never changes either. They go through them, all of them, very carefully. They threaten not to let us through, all the while eyeing an especially nice new pair of sneakers. We give them the sneakers; they stamp our paperwork, they let us through.

We get upstairs and rush off to the bathroom. It is always this way. The bathroom is narrow, with several stalls. It doesn't smell so great. The floor is always wet with spilled over yuck from the toilets. This improved only when the Cricket World Cup came to the Caribbean region in 2007. Major renovations were done to the airport then. Our group leader uses her cell phone to call her husband back home and tell him we have arrived safely. He tells her he has been watching the weather channel and a hurricane is heading for Jamaica. Did we know that?

She asks the bus driver, it is Melvin, Peat's assistant, about it. Has he heard anything? His answer: "No problem, mon. This is Jamaica." And he laughs. I will come to learn that this is what all the resort and tourist workers say to tourists, it is their stock in trade, reassuring worried white people, calming them with a simple stereotype of Jamaican life. It is part of the illusion the tourist industry has created to hide the fact of Jamaica being the murder capital of the world, hiding the fact of the tremendous poverty there, hiding the fact the huge resorts that depend on this illusion are all owned by foreign nationals and that the Jamaicans who work there are paid a pittance, when they are paid at all. "No problem, mon." Just stay within our resort walls, and ride our buses and do not leave your group.

It is not the same in the mountains where we go. We are the only white people up there. There are no tourists up there. Just us and the locals, going about their daily living. That first year, with the hurricane, named Dennis, by the way, there is also another group already staying for a week at the home. They are from northern Ireland. They are standoffish, as a whole, and they take all the food before we can get to it. They resent our presence. We try to make nice. I did. They avert their eyes, they cut us out of activities. I think to myself, "Is it Bush? Is it Iraq?" I can't understand why they are so unfriendly. We are there for the same reasons, to help out--we are a group of enthusiastic youth, teachers and carpenters--, and to be with the kids. Is it the kids (along with the food) that they do not want to share?

Because the kids are the reason I am there. I hadn't ever planned on taking the mission trip to Jamaica. I had always wondered why people from our church went at all. I had always wondered why they said so little about it when they got back. Some of them only went once, and never talked about it. It was supposed to be hot and buggy and smelly and nauseating and nasty somehow. No way did I want to go. (I had done an internet search of the children's home before leaving, and all I could find was reports of allegations of staff people and boys having sex with the dogs. Did I tell anyone this? No.)

But then our pastor asked me if I would go. There were 2 youth already planning to go and they needed an adult to accompany them. The church would pay for the entire thing. It would not cost me any more than what I needed to buy food while en route and to get a few things at the market our last day there, if I wanted, and also if I wanted, $15 to go climb a waterfall, another tourist attraction we would participate in our last day there, the day we tried to transition back to normalcy, whatever that is. Or was. Because the mission trip to Jamaica changes a person, inside and out. It may take months, it may take a moment, but you do not come back the same person you were when you left. Nuh uh, not at all.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Shine On, Solitary Star

We all know this holiday season tends to bring out the worst in people, despite (and perhaps because of) all the fa la la la las and be of good cheers, gift giving, merrymaking, mistletoe-kissing and the rest of it. I have happily managed to somehow skate above all of it, the melancholy I mean, the snarly nastiness, the stressed out insanity. I do keep the holiday low key, focusing on church rather than on shopping; focusing on the deep truth of light returning during the darkest season; focusing more on singing and being happy with friends, the warmth of their presence, the shared expressions of affection. But I am just as connected to other humans, though I sometimes wish I wasn't, and I am sensitive to the reigning spirit of a time, and yesterday the melancholy caught up with me. It had been dogging my steps for a few days now, getting perilously close the moment I admitted to myself, "This is not an easy time of year to be a solitary person."

Because solitude is the burden, the cross, that I bear. Sometimes joyfully. Sometimes, however, it feels like an icy cold weight, hissing words of despair.

With this chronic depression, I have often felt damped down by the holiday season and what I felt to be its incessant demand that we Be of Good Cheer, that we celebrate family and loved ones (even when they are a source of sadness and pain). That we were supposed to be happy, damn it, and if we weren't, then we were doing something wrong. Placing my attention on the deeper spiritual light of the season--be it pagan celebrations of the Solstice, or of the birth of Christ, or even on the gloriously huge full moon I witnessed setting in a lavender grey western sky this morning, have helped me stay on the brighter side of the line. Focusing on the light, whatever its source. Until yesterday, that is, as I said.

Maybe because it was such a dankly grey and dismal day! It was raining, a light icy rain falling on a half foot of snow. I was thankful my friend Krystal gave me a ride home from church. She and some other friends and I had shared in the lighting of the Advent candle of peace. We had told our assembled congregation that we believe true peace happens when we have peace within our own hearts, despite what is going on around us. Anyway, she let me off and I came into the house, plugged in the Christmas tree lights, and lit the white candle that sits beside my little Nativity scene. It is carved of white and softly orange soapstone, and came from Peru. I like how the candlelight shines into the tiny stable filled with animals, shepherds, wise men and the holy family--they are all praying, even the baby Jesus! I see the candle flame as the light of the glorious solitary star that lit the way to baby Jesus's stable bed. I like the tiny colored lights on my tree too. The strand of lights is longer than the tree can bear and so I loop it around to decorate the front window too. My tree is a potted Norfolk Island pine, about 4 feet tall. I had bought it at K-Mart in a tacky holiday pot when it was about 4 inches tall, 9 years ago, our first Christmas alone after leaving the farm. The tree is adorned simply-- with the lights, with snowflakes I had crocheted from thread many years ago when I lived with the X (crafts were one way I kept myself relatively sane during that harrowing time), tiny icicles, strands of iridescent purple beads, and small ornaments. I do not want to overwhelm the tree, and it looks so lovely and elegant, decorated so simply.

I put on a CD of Celtic Christmas music, mostly instrumental, and started cleaning the 3 aquariums. The music proved to intensify my melancholy, I soon realized. I began to have thoughts, like Scrooge, of Christmases past, of loved ones long gone, of times when I was younger and still hopeful and still happy enough with the presence of my Grandmother nearby, my Aunt, her boys when they were children. The closeness, the familiarity, the tradition and its suggestion of permanence and safety. All that is gone now. My daughter is growing older and farther away from me. I have been alone these many days, decorating the house and the tree, wrapping gifts, planning meals and buying the ingredients I need to make the Christmas Mousse Pie. She has not shared in any of this with me and I recollected times when she was small and her eyes were bright with reflected lights. That first Christmas alone, when we had walked home from Christmas Eve candlelight worship and discovered gifts left for us on our front porch. From whom? Santa? Or the Christmas she and Little Bear and I were at my Aunt's, just us because everyone was sick with a stomach flu. Times gone by, never to return. Thinking all this, I looked at Bumby, such a constant, loving companion, asleep there on my bed, and I thought of how someday she too will be gone. And I will still be here, present, feeling somehow eternal inside, and still solitary, yes, still solitary.

Blah! I went out and changed the music. I should know better than to listen to CDs with photos of snow covered ruined churches on them! I finished cleaning the aquariums, I made myself some food, I wrapped my daughter's gifts. I took care of myself, rested when I felt tired, settled on the couch with a book and a cup of tea. I lit more candles, I turned on more lights. I consigned the shadows to obscurity for a time. They always come back, but as it says in the Gospel of John, chapter 1, verse 5 : "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never put it out."

Hallelujah and Amen.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

(Image is a photo of Canis Major, the Christmas star.)

Love Came Down

christmas lights

if i saw that star,
huge blazing mass
of fiery light falling
down from the dark of God’s deepest heart,
i might throw myself down to clutch the earth,
its safe and heavy mass of solid form like the body
of my mother when i ran and hid from scary men and
in my hands would be
the crumbling scent of leaf rotting away from summer’s
laughing fatness.
if i saw that light in a dead winter sky
i would not shout and sing glad hallelujahs
because i would simply be too stupid,
too scared, too much a blind animal
holding fast to my tiny life.

so imagine the shepherds, dozing on such a night,
sheep finally gathered together and huddled
safe in a clump of sheep scented warmth.
i don't think they turned to one another and murmured
Oh good it is the Angel of God come to tell us good news.
i don't think they said that. they needed to hear it first
from the angel herself,
after she had quieted their terror.

and so, i don't expect miracles even tho i crave them.
and in this season of hopeful lights twinkling against a darkness that might
have teeth,
i cozy up in what quilts of comfort i can find.
once inside, i imagine that fiery light,
and i listen for the angels. they speak so softly, like a mouse’s sigh.
usually i am dozing in darkness when they come, and i have forgotten all about listening, and i don't even know what it is i am hearing.
that is when a softness brushes my cheek, brushes my forehead,
and i am able again to love this dumb animal self of mine,

who even despite twinkling beacons of hope and ancient sacred messages,
even despite rare and simple human kindnesses,
is still blinded by terror and made breathless by despair,
still falls flat and helpless into familiar darkness,
trembling before love’s message
dressed in light and reaching down
to soften this heart of stone.

Wedding Cake

My Gram had 2 couches in her living room. Except she didn't call them couches, she called them davenports. I remember sitting on one of them with her and using my index finger to carefully scrape the icing off the bottom of one of those porcelain bride and grooms that go on top of a wedding cake. It was a special treat she had brought especially for me. I was about 3 years old at the time.

I must be part elephant, because that memory stayed with me. I pondered it all through my childhood--just whose wedding ornament was that? I had seen my parent's wedding pictures, and had looked for their ornament atop their wedding cake, and it definitely looked very much the same. I had been presented with a puzzle piece that didn't quite fit in with the picture of my life as I knew it. I knew the story of how they met, how mutual married cousins (that is, my mother's cousin was married to my step-father's cousin) fixed them up, the young widow with a toddler and the recently tragically injured man. They had so much in common really, 2 small town kids who had suffered so much so soon. So, one weekend afternoon, when I was about 10, I gathered my courage and went out into the kitchen where my parents were wreathed in coils of cigarette smoke, sitting at the table doing whatever it was they did, and told them the memory, and asked them what it meant.

The man in the wheelchair tightened his brakes, picked up a pencil lying nearby, and began doodling on the edge of the newspaper. He was a lefty, and he drew quite well. My mother swallowed deeply several times. Her eyes flicked from side to side like she was looking for the exit, but then she rallied her inner forces, and began to speak. She told me it was a deep, deep secret that I was never, ever supposed to tell.

A secret, deep and dark! The best kind. I loved secrets. Secrets were a form of currency in our house. They always meant power for the one who held them. They were like dragon's treasure, worth hoarding. And worth revealing, when the time, when the person, when the situation, was right.

She told me she had been married before. My eyes widened. That man was actually my father, but he had been killed when I was a baby. So sad! She talked about it as if it were a very shameful thing, which, I suppose it was, for her, and yet her voice also betrayed a hint of a thrill. She went on to say the man in the wheelchair had adopted me, and that my original birth certificate was locked up in a safe place where no one would ever find it or see it again. I pictured some obscure vault in an anonymous building in a city far away where all the secret birth certificates were locked up.

This was a lot to digest. I went back into my room. Then I came back out. What was my last name? She told me. It was an Italian name. And as the years went by, and I became angrier at their twisted treatment of me, their assaults on my mind and heart, they would blame my temper on my "Italian blood." Not on the fact they were making me crazy. Stuff like this: another Saturday afternoon, and they must have been bored. I was in my room playing veterinarian with my stuffed animals, and hear them frantically calling me. I rush down the hall to the kitchen and there is my step-father with blood coming out of his nose. He says. "Look what your mother did to me! She hit me!"

Well, she also hit me. They both did, so none of this was out of the realm of possibility. But still, I was a bit shocked. Because usually it was just me they hit, not each other. In fact, I had never seen them hit each other, so this was a new twist. In the past, just nasty words flew between them. So, there I am, standing there, pondering all this carefully while hiding my reaction. Being careful and playing it very, very cool, because I knew where their fights led once I walked into the room. They led straight to me. Apparently my mother isn't having enough fun with this, my poker faced non-reaction. So, she reaches over and scoops up a glob of blood onto her finger, and puts her finger in her mouth and eats it.

It's ketchup. Their laughter chased me all the way back to the safety, the sanity of my room.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

How We Lived

When I first got together with the X, it was early August, and we lived on the land he had recently bought, 47 acres, former night pasture of a dairy farm, with hills and woods, and ponds and a stream, on a dirt road. He planned to start another organic vegetable farm. He had lost his last farm in his divorce. I had been farming that entire summer, and the autumn before, with Janelle, over across the river. I had the opportunity to continue on with her, as partners, or have my own farm with him, in a deeper partnership. Of course I went for that. It wasn't very nice of me. I did to her what girlfriends in high school did to me whenever they got boyfriends--ditched her. Even though I had such high hopes for my life with the X, that was no excuse for leaving her behind. But, she forgave me for it. I think in her heart she knew she would have done the same thing, given the chance. She loved the X, like most people in the organic farming community did, and still do. He is an impressive, charismatic man. He sure has them all fooled.

We lived in an old camper trailer in a grove of trees tucked up beside a pond. He called it the 'strange boat' after a Waterboys' song. We had no running water, we used an outhouse, and as long as the weather was warm enough, we bathed in the pond. It was great. I saw double rainbows. I saw the moon turn red during a lunar eclipse. Monarch butterflies landed on my hands and stayed there, fanning their wings. It was magical. I felt so blessed.

Of course, I couldn't have my dog close by, and he got strangely controlling and unpredictably upset at times, but I ignored that. I knew from the women in my family, my mother in particular, that part of living with men you loved was putting up with their crap. And I was so In Love.

I spent that winter of my pregnancy in the strange boat. It was the fourth coldest winter on record at that time. We heated it with a stinky old kerosene heater that burned dirty and left us with sooty faces when we woke up. I would blow my nose mornings and black oily soot filled the tissue. One frigid winter night I walked out to use the outhouse (being pregnant, I had to pee a lot). The skies were full of stars blazing in brilliance. I would think how blessed I was to be able to see such a night sky. The moon shone full and bright. My shadow fell on a little mouse. The mouse actually screamed and ran away.

I worried about not having enough to eat to support the pregnancy. I could cook on the burners of the stove, but not use the oven, and I liked to make dishes that had to be baked. So, I would pile the dogs in the car and go out for chocolate milkshakes or turkey subs. I took expensive vitamins with lots of herbs in them that I got from my friend who owned a natural foods store. They were the same kind his own wife took. She had taken one look at pregnant me and said, "Oh, a love child! I was a love child!" (She later left my friend and their 4 sons for a man 20 years younger than her. They went to California.)

It was so unbelievably cold that winter, but I got used to it. The baby kept me warm too. We heated up water to wash. A woman neighbor asked me if my skin was dry from the intense cold, and I laughingly, truthfully, told her, I didn't wash enough to get dry skin.

On my birthday in February, I waited around to do something with him. It was snowy and cold. He stayed in bed all day, ignoring me. I sat and read and drank raspberry leaf tea. I walked around with the dogs in the woods and fields. I wondered why he was like that, thought he would change with time. I hoped he would come around. I guess I thought maybe because it was my birthday and I was pregnant too that we might do something special.

He finally got the house structure to the point where we had a bathroom in there. The phone was in there too, and a washing machine. A shower stall and a double sink. I would carry the dish pan full of dishes up and down the hill to the house. One time the dog Yoko crashed into me and I fell down flat, dishes and all. She blind sided me. Scared the crap out of me. I folded like the proverbial pregnant house of cards.

We were able to move into the house a week before my due date, but it was an empty space with kitchen cabinets and a bathroom on a concrete slab. He never got the furniture out of storage except for a bed and a kitchen table and chairs. And this old straight backed chair. I guess I kept waiting for him to come to his senses and get the furniture, but he didn't. I ended up having an emergency c-section after 36 hours of labor, and I came home to that bed, that table, that straight backed chair. Because of the surgery, I couldn't climb the stairs to our bedroom where his flat old hard-as-a-rock futon was. Just as well. We all slept downstairs in the bed in what was to be our daughter's room. I really was too tired to complain about the state of things, too dumbfounded, in a way, that he didn't do something to remedy the situation, since I obviously couldn't. But I was also too engrossed in caring for my daughter to even want to complain--because there she was, this miracle! I think I thought, too, that if I didn't complain, he would admire me more.

He went down to the state capital one warm autumn day to some lobbying event for organic farming. While there, he talked a TV news crew into coming up to the farm. Imagine what that woman reporter, in her styled hair and little dress and high heels, must have thought when she entered that empty house, with a concrete floor and no trim, a clothesline strung across the room above a picnic table with dog beds underneath it serving as his desk and me there, sitting in that straight backed chair cradling my infant. (Not to mention there were absolutely no crops in that summer! None.) Here all that time I was thinking he was the crazy, deluded one for dragging a TV news crew up there to our domestic nothingness, while I should have been thinking that I was the crazy one for not getting in my car and driving as far and as fast as I could. But, I was In Love, I thought I would live there forever, and I had no reason not to believe it would not get better.

I need to point out here that this is a man with a bachelor's degree from a private college, who came from a family that sent its kids to boarding school so that they would become judges and lawyers. His grandparents lived in a house that had a name, for goodness sake. Only rich people name their houses. His grandfather, the Judge, was one of 5 men who actually bought their town. His mother spent her entire life living off the proceeds of her trust fund. All I can say is, What the hell?

My step-father had a crazy brother who lived on an isolated back road in an unfinished house and had various grandiose schemes, like turning his place into an elite pheasant preserve for hunters from the city. He had lots and lots of dogs running all over. The house seemed to always be surrounded by muck and mud. He'd make dressing for holidays, stuffing you might call it, that had whole hard kernels of corn in it, like unpopped popcorn kernels. My mother said one time we were all hanging out in the unfinished garage at his place and she idly glanced into a bucket beside her lawn chair and discovered it was full of dead puppies. As the years went by, I came to realize I had married someone very much like that crazy old uncle. The X never, ever finished that house in the 10 years I lived there, never even put on the siding, just left it with the tarpaper exposed, and with scaffolding up on the west end of the house (the cats used to climb that scaffolding to yowl at the bedroom window so I would let them in. That, or they'd climb it to do midnight Gestapo raids on nests full of innocent baby birds and I'd lay there frozen and appalled, listening to them kill the terrified birds.) But, by the time I knew I had indeed married Uncle Arthur, I was on my way out. The antique Adirondack chairs my grandfather had built and which had been given to me after my grandmother died had already fallen to pieces because he wouldn't let me bring them inside winters, and I had already had a nervous breakdown and become anemic from the stress, but my dear friend Frieda gave me a check for $1000 shortly after I told her I was leaving him. I was on my way out of there. It would be many years before I felt healed and whole again, but I was on my way.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Bear

testimony for the bear

he waits nearby
he’s always there
he’s not my lover
he’s more than my friend

he showed me the high mountain pass
we will take to the sky,
to the spirit road home.
it’s the same mountain
in the drawing of the horse
my friend greg gave me, years ago,
after i had told him about
power animals. i was working
at the large white university then
and i had dreamt of the horse, tied, harnessed, blinkered,
pulling away, upset and afraid, and had told
greg the dream as we sat
eating lunch under the pines, a rabbit nibbling clover
nearby. i had told him the horse
was my body
and that the job,
despite the good money,
was making me sick. greg gave me
the drawing after i had finally quit,
after he had finally given up
trying to convince me to stay. in it, the horse is free, strong and unafraid.
the mountain is behind. greg was not my lover,
but he is my friend.

and him, when he showed me the mountain,
he wore a grey t shirt and dark blue gym shorts.
he looked like the guy who teaches
the kids in the city, or on the rez,
how to play basketball. drumming the ball up and down
on crumbled asphalt, pounded earth, a lonely hoop
bolted to a board up high. no net.
it was the first time
i had truly seen him. he’s big and dark,
big as a bear. his hair is cut short. we wear
the same scar. it’s clear no one messes with him~~

~~while i worked yesterday
i knew he was just outside
playing bones with the others
near the creek, and that later they filtered
over into the shade to fish.

he likes this old river town. it is full of his kind,
spirits who dearly love a place.
he likes to smell the water, to feel the green light falling
into alcoves of earth breathing out sweetness. so do i.
we are at peace here, our enemies have fled. and so
we call this place home, for now.

he’s been with me all my life
and only now that i am healed
can i see him
can i know with my heart he is there
can i know his joy too
and his need for me to be
okay

only now do i know
it’s because of him that dogs leashed to humans
trotting merrily up the hill
back away from me in alarm,
legs stiff,
noses twitching very carefully,
very deliberately.
they are thinking
maybe they’ll give me a bite.
i stay very still,
speak to them in soft tones of love. i try not
to show my teeth.

there are only two dogs who don't do that:
the akita, a bear himself, smiling and asian.
he looks at me appraisingly,
with something like amused respect
in his eyes.
and little annie across the road,
black and white boston wearing
pretty sweaters and a purple collar,
she lives with women who love her like a baby.
she knows nothing of bears and she sees only a kind woman
in me--

because it’s the bear they smell
and maybe even see,
the bear in me and
the spirit that is him.
we are united on this walk--
sometimes standing tall on two legs,
sometimes down on all fours--
picking our way through a broken
ugly world.
we are opportunistic
eaters, wary
of humans, solitary travelers
wending our way back
somewhere. only now that i am solid and whole,
do i know this.
only now that i know this,
do i feel solid
and whole.

Lighting the Dark

The days are getting shorter, the nights longer. It is cold, not above freezing all week. Our world is covered in snow and ice and the colors have dimmed and become muted. It seems somber when the skies remain grey for days. It is cold and damp, and tiresome. Everything is more of an effort, and seems to take more time. I can't just run out the door in my shorts and t-shirt and flip flops and skip down the hill. I dress in layers. I plan the layers very carefully so that I will be warm all day. A camisole undershirt, a turtleneck, a warm and fuzzy long sleeved t-shirt over that, and then a heavy soft flannel shirt, and then a cardigan over that. Long underwear bottoms under my jeans, and sometimes 2 pairs of socks if one of them is thin. I pick the shoes that will best keep me from slipping on the ice (I hope!), and then, when it is time to go, I choose which jacket is best for the weather, which scarf, which hat, which gloves, or would mittens be warmer today? It takes time, and it takes thought. I don't want to get cold and I don't want to get sick, and I certainly don't want to fall.

It is the time of increasing darkness, the time when our northern hearts yearn for the light. Houses decorated in bright white and twinkly colored lights cheer my weary, frosted spirits as I walk home from work, laden with groceries. I had to walk home in the road all week, because the sidewalks were slick and treacherous. I prayed a car did not hit me in the half-dark--some of them come pretty close, as if to confirm my unworthiness as someone who must walk up the hill, bearing burdens. When I am already tired I can become easily discouraged and feel humiliated and sad. A loser in the contest of who has more material things. That is a contest I honestly have no interest in participating in, but I am sensitive too, and feel it when I am treated with disrespect, even anonymously, simply for being who I am.

I fell twice this week. I am usually pretty balanced on my feet. But for 2 consecutive mornings, on my walk with the dogs, I fell. Both times I had lost my concentration, distracted by something else. The first day I was thinking about our next move--crossing the road. It is a tricky spot where cars come up over the hill quite suddenly, if they are going too fast, and I was shifting my focus to looking for the glow of oncoming lights and listening for a car's approach. It was then that Little Bear, eager to get to the Field of the Big Tree, pulled to go across. And zip, that patch of snow beside Barbara's mailbox was actually ice and down I went. The next day, I was right near the cathedral of Norway spruces, and I was beginning to cross over off the cemetery path and onto the grass where the footing was better, but I was also beginning to say Psalm 23 aloud and was focusing more on that. Little Bear made another sudden lunge to go sniff and pee on a tree, and down I went again. That was a worse fall that left me banged up, scraped, and stiff. It left me thinking irrationally, thinking that those damn dogs will never weaken and age, while I will. Because I never fall. I focus my concentration on staying on my feet. The first one was bad enough and pulled a muscle in my leg, but the second one, happening the very next day, really rattled me. It made me feel old.

(This is Little Bear's season of glory. Just as the Indian in me needs to do certain things--like to be out at dawn, greeting the sunrise, every single day of the year, the sled dog in him hits the snow in a specific stance and gait and off he goes. Pulling. Pulling me. If it isn't icy, I can give him a run he will enjoy. But when it is icy, I am pulling on the brakes constantly. He wants to run and duck his head down and scoop up snow in his mouth and chew it as he goes. It is a beautiful thing to see, how he finds a track and goes for it, despite never being trained in it. It is simply part of who he is. I told the vet once that he was generally a very good dog, but sometimes is really unmanageable. And she replied, "That's the Husky in him, he can't help it.")

And so now as we enter the season of increasing darkness, we focus our eyes on the light. Holiday lights decorating houses, candlelight from menorahs brightening the table as the family shares a meal--Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, happening right now. In our faith tradition, we sing of the glory of God coming to earth as a tiny baby, in a lowly stable, in a place no one would expect God to be. The images of our Christmas stories are full of bright lights in the darkness, and I think especially of the blazing star that told of the baby Jesus's birth, the star that learned men followed for thousands of miles so to find that baby boy. I am dismayed when I hear these stories dismissed as fantasy and fairy tales. But even if a person chooses to read them that way, they are stories full of images of hope and joy, of peace and love, of glory found in humble, unexpected places.

We are all following some story, that is the way human minds work, in language and imagery. In our Native tradition, we say we ARE our stories, and that without our stories, we are lost. So, some people follow stories of wealth and accruing material things, and there their hearts are. Others follow lights in the darkness, a brilliantly shining star leading them to find hope in unexpected places. Perhaps I am blessed because I have been touched by spirit. I am enthralled by mystery and look for beacons in the dark. My life has been too full of dark. And so I reach eagerly for the light, a celestial light, a natural, supernatural light, the light of God's love made manifest, a gift to us. The human made world, the world that excludes God and the miracles of the Christmas stories--the world that turns the holiday into merely a shopping and eating fest--is a place of shadows and mirrors, of people endlessly admiring themselves and what they have made. How tiresome and empty I find it. Give me a solitary star shining in the darkest night. I will gladly stand out in the snow and brave the ice with my unruly dogs so that my heart be filled with such a light.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

(Thanks to NASA for the image of the Pleiades. The Cherokee believe the light of higher consciousness came to earth from these stars.)

Wet

Because I walk so much, I sometimes get caught out in storms. I don't always mean to, but sometimes it simply happens that way. Two summers ago, I had left work and walked over to the library to return some books. I could see a tremendous storm building up in the west, I could feel the excitement and tension in the air preceding it. The librarian, an elderly woman named Jean who knits colorful sweaters for teddy bears and sells them to raise funds for a children's camp up in the mountains, told me I should wait it out, as the rain had just begun to patter down as I was turning to go. I decided to head out anyway.

I don't know what I was thinking. Maybe I wasn't thinking. I feel compelled to be out in these great storms. They have something to give me and to communicate to me. It is like a relative has come visiting, and I need to go greet him. We Mohawk believe we are related to the storms that rise so dramatically out of the west, and so, when I hear thunder, if circumstances allow, I go outside and greet the storm. Nothing fancy, just a "Hello, Grandfather Thunder," and a "Welcome, we have missed you."

I felt the softly cool touch of the rain as I went down the library steps, and as I made my way to the corner, the rain pressed down harder on my skin and hair. And despite my desire to be out in the storm, I was also feeling slightly worried and fretful about being caught out in the rain like that, for the whole village to see, like a crazy person! Didn't I know better? (Obviously not.)

That day had been dreadfully hot and sticky, as it often is here in July, and the rain felt brightly cold and thrilling. As I turned the corner around a large well-trimmed hedge, I came upon two kids, a boy and a girl, around 8 and 10 years old. The boy was on his bike and he was shirtless. The girl was lagging further back, walking along in the wet. I called out to the boy, as he was nearer by, "It's raining!"

And he sang out, "Doesn't It feel great?"

His joy in the moment brought me straight back to my own truth: Yes! It did feel great, and I was excited to be out in it!

And yet I hurried on, thinking I might make it home before the storm got too strong, but as I turned into the alley I take as a short cut (this village is crisscrossed with alleys, back from the days when people had sheds and barns out back, and now instead of housing their animals out there, they park their cars there), the rain was pouring on down. The sky was a'rumble with thunder and a'glitter with lightning. The storm was full upon us, I could feel its life vibrating all around me. I decided to shelter under the leaves of a small maple beside a barn. I huddled up close to the trunk of the tree, and it afforded me shelter for a brief time, but as the leaves got wetter and wetter in the deluge, I got wetter and wetter too. It finally got to the point where I knew I was getting almost as wet under the tree, just standing there, as I would if I kept walking home, so I decided to head on out again. I took off my slippery flip flops and stuffed them into my backpack.

The rain was pelting me now, and I was chattering and laughing to myself about it, partly out of self-consciousness because I was still worried about what people would think if they saw me out there. It was such a powerful storm! It was crazy rain, lunatic rain, driving down and pouring down and pelting the earth and washing it all furiously clean. But its power also reminded me to talk to Grandfather Thunder, and so whenever I heard another great BOOM and rumble, I spoke words of greeting and gratitude for the rain to him, and I told him I had missed him and that the earth had missed him and was thirsty for the blessing of the rain. No one heard me, or probably even saw me, despite my worries, for I truly was the only person out there walking through it!

I kept heading along south, marvelling at the water cascading down the hill. When I turned right to continue up the hill, towards the west, the power of the rain was truly awe inspiring. It was flashing and flooding down the hill like a great river of wild water horses, a brilliant stream of wet. I was quite soaked by then--as soaked, in fact, as if I had been swimming. That gave me new reason to feel self-conscious because my bra was plain to see under my soaked t-shirt, and in my modesty I was holding the shirt out away from my skin so all the people who were not out there couldn't see it too.

When I got near to Ray's house, I saw his son out under the maple on their small bit of lawn. He is about my age, and he is a wreck of a man. I don't know what happended to him to make him that way, but he looks like a lightning struck survivior barely hanging on to vitality. His long hair is grey and his skin is grey and he sits on the step and smokes and talks quietly to the cat and looks like gloom personified. He is a creature of the shadows who often scurried away at my approach, as if my friendly greeting and smile was a bit too much, a bit too bright, to bear. It got so I felt bad whenever he did that, and toned down my greetings in the hope he would not run away. But he ran away anyway. So there he was, out on the lawn in the storm like King Lear on the blasted heath except he was not raging. Rather, he was shirtless, and his head was thrown back, and rain was cascading down his skinny body. 'Two crazies out in the storm,' is what I thought to myself in that lightning bright instant of recognition. He looked at me then. He met my eye and he saw me clearly. He smiled. I smiled back, and then I laughed aloud at the fact of the two of us there, and as I laughed he called out, "Wet!"

We were like two birds meeting, the walking crow laughing, the great standing crane answering with a loud crane squawk.

Ever since then, when I pass by and he is out on the step smoking, he doesn't hurry away. He looks at me, he meets my eye, and he responds to my quiet, "Hey," with a soft grunt.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Why I Don't Have A Car--Part 2

I need to say at the outset that here in the United States, in this part of the United States, not having a car creates great limitations. We are not a nation known for fantastic public transportation systems, unless you live in a city like New York or Boston. Local rail lines were torn out 75 years ago, at least, so that we could become a nation of gas hogs driving everywhere we want, whenever we want. In this rural village, the only public transportation available is a weekly bus that arrives around 11 AM every Wednesday and goes to the shopping mall 12 miles away. It returns 3 hours later. Other than that, it is a matter of asking a friend for a lift, borrowing a car, calling a cab--very expensive!--or using your own 2 legs. I walk. If I can't walk, and can't get a ride, I do without. It is as simple as that.

So, back to the ticket. I spoke to a friend who had had some seat belts replaced in her car and what she told me confirmed what I had already suspected: it is a very expensive thing to have done. As it was, I was not having a good time of it financially. The Vampyr had moved out the previous January and I was still learning the effects of that on my personal economy. He had been paying half the household expenses. I was learning the hard way that November is the month I begin to run out of money. In fact, after I paid my car insurance bill that November, I had no money left to speak of until my next pay check, and could not make my mortgage payment. That got me down on my knees. I crawled to our pastor and asked her, in tears, tears of shame, feeling like such a big fat stupid loser, if the Community Relief Fund would give me the money for my payment. (This fund is administered by the local churches and is available to help with personal emergencies just like mine.)

There was no way I could get Fred repaired to satisfy the requirements of the ticket. I knew the car would have to be taken off the road. I couldn't afford to keep it anyway, even without the repair. (That's what so many people don't understand about my car-less-ness--it isn't so much the getting of a car, it is the keeping of a car.) I decided to donate Fred to charity. I made arrangements with the National Kidney Foundation to do just that. Fred wasn't worth much, and would probably be sold for scrap. That fact made me sad but I had to stop anthropomorphizing about the car and just suck it up. (I still feel bad when I see trucks carrying crushed cars passing by on the main road, and avert my eyes in the same way as I do when I see dead animals on the roadside.)

So, I took the car off the road. I removed the plates and sent them back to the state. I cancelled the insurance. I called the National Kidney Foundation. And I asked my friend to go to court with me. I had never been to court before, except for my divorce, or when I accompanied clients there when I worked in crisis counseling. I was scared! I prayed a lot.

The night of court, I dressed nicely and conservatively. Judges like that. They like it if you are polite and respectful too. I used to counsel my clients that, and I saw it work, time after time. The legal system is a game like any other, and the best players often win. It was November by the time we went to court. It was 6PM and it was rainy and cold and dark. I sat in town court with the drunk drivers and the repeat offenders and the bad boys and girls up on their various charges. When it was my turn, I walked up the the judge, a man I vaguely knew and had actually voted for--this is a very small town! I looked him in the eye and told him I did not run a red light, the light was yellow. I told him I could not afford repairs to the car and had donated it to charity. He said that since "my" trooper was not in court that night, I would have to come back, and talk to the officer about it.

Same deal, 2 weeks later. "My" trooper is not there again, but another trooper was. He was so young! What was I doing there, pleading with children in uniforms? Anyway, I told him the same facts I had told the judge. I looked him square in the eye. And was finally rewarded with an ACOD, though he questioned me repeatedly and really made me wonder if I was going to get my way with this. The facts of an ACOD are this: be a good girl for 6 months, and the charges would be dropped at the end of that time.

Being a person who tends to keep a low profile, doing that would be easy, especially without a car. Or, as they say in Jamaica, "No problem, mon."

And I really do not mind not having a car. I tend to worry about cars. They sit there in my driveway and always seem to need something. Insurance, gas, oil change, inspection. They need to be driven to keep the battery charged. They need to have the snow and ice scraped and brushed off of them. People have lent me their extra cars (extra cars! yes! that is how crazy this world is!) for extended periods over these past 3 years, and I am never comfortable with that. (I have had to learn to ask people for help, I have had to learn to reach out. To trust. That has been hard. It is still hard, but is getting easier as time goes by and I see that there are some people who truly care, who aren't mean, and who won't use my need against me. Imagine that.) I worry about cars. I don't need one. I have come to truly enjoy the simplicity of my life without a car. I am in great shape from walking, and I have cut out so many extraneous trips and silly whatnot. I feel like Thoreau at Walden Pond, finding the universe right here in my own backyard.

Of course, it wasn't always like that. I whined for awhile, I played the pity card. Poor me, I am so poor I cannot even afford a car. I am quite over all that, thank goodness. How disgusting I was. Though I must confess, some nights after work, when I am very tired, I walk home up the hill with a backpack full of groceries on my back and another bag or two in my hands, and I feel like a stupid little loser. Losers walk everywhere, losers and nutcases and weirdoes. Even the very poor, most of them, call cabs. It's crazy.

The biggest thing about walking, at first, was that I had to greet people. I had to see things, like cats I knew dead in the road. I had to respond. I could not just zip by, all sealed up in my vehicle, music blaring, ignoring the world. I can't ignore the world when I walk. I have to see that Ray is ill again and not looking so great, but still going to his job cleaning toilets at the harness track because his wife and son are sicker. I have to see that Ron has his entire extended family living in his tiny apartment now, and the son's girlfriend is indeed pregnant. I have to see that the little grey stray cat had another litter of kittens and a couple of them look sick enough to die. Stray dogs run right up to me and ask me to take them home. I can't just zip by all that anymore, unseeing. It's not an easy thing. It forces me to respond. It forces me to care. It forces me to be a better person, even when I hate it.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Why I Don't Have A Car--Part 1

There's nothing politically correct, or radically environmentalist about it. It is not because I might be a solitary visionary crazy woman who spends too much time talking to the spirits. I don't have a car because I can't afford a car. I don't have a car because I would rather have my own house than have a car. It has been 3 years since I acknowledged that fact, with true relief. But events also precipitated that action of giving up the car. I probably would not have had the courage to have simply done it on my own.

I called the car Fred. Fred Escort, a humble hardworking 1993 Ford station wagon, silver grey. Fred was faithful. Fred ferried us everywhere we needed to go. Fred never broke down and left us stranded. Fred's starter had quit awhile back, and the Vampyr had rigged up this massive mess of wire and duct tape on the dashboard near the driver's side door. I had to put the 2 ends of the wires together to create a spark every time I started Fred. I covered the mess with a towel so no one, like a cop, would see it. The last time I got the car inspected, the local mechanic who did it for me, a bit of an outlaw himself, said, "If you get pulled over, those wires were not there when I inspected this car."

It was a deal.

Fred also had bad seat belts. When I had first left the farm, I was working for some silversmiths who had a studio in their house, and I would bring Little Bear to work with me, but he stayed out in the car all day. I'd open the back hatch so he could hop in and out. He was still a pup and he got bored. He chewed up most of the shoulder harnesses. The one on the driver's side had a big knot tied in it but was still usable. I myself was always a scofflaw in regard to seat belt use. By which I mean, I didn't use them as a rule. (I grew up in the free wheeling 70's--who uses belts? Who wears helmets? Sissies, that's who!) Anyway, I made my daughter use it, however, and had rigged it so the driver's side shoulder harness reached over to her side.

Okay, it is an afternoon in late October, 3 years ago, and I was having a bad day. I needed to get to the supermarket, and the car needed gas. I ran down back to the shed and got the gas can for the lawnmower and put what little gas was left in that into the car's tank. I had exactly $2.87 in my wallet, and now that there was something more than fumes in the gas tank, I could make it down the hill to the gas station where I would put that $2.87 worth into the tank.

That accomplished, I pulled back out into the road to go to the market. My daughter was with me. We got to the light where I would take a left to head on over the bridge, and the light turned yellow. I went for it. I turned the corner. I looked in my rear view mirror, and yes, there was a state trooper behind me, in his big blue car with his big red lights on telling me to pull over. I was not having a good day. I quickly put on the lap belt, pulled to the side near the old canal, then reached around and grabbed the towel from the floor behind me. I threw it over the mess of wires on the dash and then dug out my license and registration.

He really did swagger over to the car, and he really looked both Fred and me over with a disdainful sneery face, like maybe we were some kind of trash. He told me I ran the red light. I told him it was yellow. He asked me why I did not have on a shoulder harness. I told him it was broken and I could not afford to get it fixed, but pointed out to him that I was wearing the lap belt. He took my documents and strutted back to his car. I actually sat there thinking he might show me some mercy. Kind of like a kid believing in fairy tales. Kind of like a desperate woman having a very bad day and hoping it won't actually get worse even though it looks like it's gonna.

I got a ticket for running a red light and for not having proper seat belts. He told me that if I got the belts repaired and came to court with proof of that, that charge might be dropped. He wasn't nice. He did look at me like I was some sort of old hippie woman garbage, in my rusting old Ford. I took the ticket, thinking, "Oh yes, you will see me in court.'

I am many things but I try not to be a fool. I do not need to piss away what little money I have on traffic tickets. That light was yellow. That cop was an asshole. Yes, he would see me again in court.

And that, my friends, is another story.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Heaven Within

Spirit speaks to me mornings, sometimes, as the dogs and I walk. Sometimes it is because I have managed to clear a space inside me, managed to still the clamoring voices and echoes in my mind, so that I can hear. Sometimes it is because Spirit speaks undeniably loudly--as a voice inside my head, or in an elemental force, the wind, a storm, the waves--, and I have finally, as I near my 50th year, learned to listen.

A couple of mornings ago, as I walked beneath the black fringed Norway spruces that create a holy space, a vestige, a mere whisper of what the great groves must have once been, a space the cathedrals sought, perhaps, to mimic, it was as if the waters of clear understanding inside me rose and spilled over and suddenly I knew something important. I knew as I spoke Psalm 23 as a prayer, I knew as I spoke the Lord's Prayer, I knew that heaven lives within me, that the Kingdom of God is a place inside me, and I have felt it growing ever stronger and stronger inside me, as God has transformed me from within during these months and years that I have sought to know God's will and to follow it. It manifests itself as sweet, sweet calm, as peace within despite what is happening around me. I knew that God's heavenly kingdom is not something we necessarily find only after we die, but that we can know and embody right now, as we live this earthly life.

Going to the orphanage in Jamaica changes me like that, every trip, every time. The change takes months, like water trickling inside a wall, slowly eroding it away until it crumbles and falls. Case in point: I have loved to hate my boss. I have issues with authority figures (big surprise, considering what my parents were like). Last winter, I had gotten to such an unhappy place in my job, I had asked my dear friend and Pastor for help. She asked me if I ever pray for him. I told her I had no idea what to pray for about him--he apparently has everything! And she gently suggested I pray for clarity about the nature of our relationship, that I pray for peace in that place. So I did. And despite the delight I took in making fun of him and complaining about him, that peace began to rise like water inside me, and I began to be able to co-exist with this person who had offended me so greatly in the past. I was able to see him for the flawed human he is, instead of some puffed up egomaniac, and forgive him for that. And then, about a month ago, something even stronger happened.

He was going on and on, bragging about why something of his was so much better than something of mine. The usual scenario for me to think "Asshole", and shut him out of my mind. But then, in a pesky moment of insight, I saw him for the little boy he was and often still is, a little boy who dearly needs to know--for whatever reasons--that what he has IS, in fact, better than what other people have. And in that moment of compassionate vision, my heart expanded, a wall inside me crumbled and fell, and I was able to see him as a person just like me--flawed, of course!,--but not so bad, really not so bad. And I thought, "Damn! Now I won't be able to make fun of him, ever again!"

More than that, even, I find myself feeling affection and compassion for him as he struggles with the challenges his own life offers him. I can look at him and see the little boy in his eyes, a very sweet, endearing little boy! I can see his kind heart, and when he does act like the asshole he can be (as we all can be sometimes), I am able to chide him and tease him, and laugh with him--not at him, in some private sneering little place, a place where resentment festers and grows and real dislike can take root and flourish.

So the question is now, how do we do this, all of us, how do we find this heaven within, so that we can look out at the world with such compassion that our enemies become friends? How do we do that? Because I can't do it with every one who annoys me, and I certainly cannot even do it for people who have really hurt me, like my mother. Or, perhaps I can, but I just don't want to. Yet. Because I know I am a work in progress, and God isn't finished with me yet.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Another Poem

the deer at dawn

in the weak grey dawn
it was motion mostly
and phantom at that,
but the dog knew without pausing to think
and told me too
with a sharp yank.

the deer crossed the road and flashed its tail and
leapt the fence into the cemetery where
the catholics lay their dead.
it bounded over graves and scattered silk
flowers. it leapt again the silvery latticed fence,
and then the hedgerow brown and brambled,
alighting in the pasture, where the hay had been cut and newly put
away. the hunters would be prowling out there
in days to come. i wondered, did the deer
know that

or did the deer know only the scent of us
and the yip of the dog disappointed.

in the flight
of the moment,
did the deer know relief,
or perhaps even ecstasy,

or did it know just the drum of its heart,
the beads of morning misting its eyelashes,
and the sweetly sharp and pungent meadow
beneath its feet?

(thanks to RH for the drawing of this poem, notice the tiny deer running away in the upper right?)