Joy Harjo has a book titled How We Became Human. She opens it with an epigraph by Nizzar Kabbani:
What kind of nation is this
Deleting Love from its curriculum
The mystery of a women’s eyes
What kind of nation is this
Battling each rain cloud…
You do not have to have an MFA in creative writing to appreciate that sentiment, especially right now. It is why every day I feel loose in the knees and tight in the shoulders and why I felt so bad about having a near constant stomachache for the last two months that left me grumpy and teary and exhausted, and why I finally took the Giardia meds after weeks of playing medical detective while my friend also suffered from similiar symptoms. And why, after she was diagnosed, I called the clinic, cried Uncle and set aside the pumpkin seeds, castor oil, beets and garlic, oregano oil and kombucha and swallowed the anti-parasitic pills. When the poop test came back positive I already was on the mend, but I was so happy to finally know what it was that I startled the nurse with my enthusiasm. Apparently not everyone is thrilled at having Giardia. (Where did I get it? I don’t know. The Mud Bay Spring? Browsing on wild berries? Some other water source? The beach? It is a mystery.)
Joy writes about everything being connected. When she says “people” she means the very ground I walk on– the “earth-person”– but also the plant, bird and insect “people.” I am thinking about my own physical world more- the inside-outside connection, the not -so holy- beings in my belly– but mainly I’m more than a little tired of my own struggle and more aware of others’. I have let that spider camp on the lip of the bathroom sink all week. I am paying attention to the waves and wind and how they are altering the shoreline. The last few storms have been unusual. So much wind and rain. The fog seems denser too. That said, I still killed the parasites in my intestines. At least they died doing what they loved.
Enough about me.
As to Joy, I was set to fly to Anchorage for Indigenous People’s Day to meet and introduce her at a big event and was very excited. Giardia be damned. I boarded the ferry after my first dose of the meds. Halfway to Juneau a text pinged ( 1 bar, barely, the ferry is quiet that way). The famous poet’s flights to Alaska were canceled. A few hours later, I arrived in the rain and drove a friend’s car to the Best Western. Of course it was the only time none of my daughters were home. My oldest was in Kona, she completed the IronMan! Really.
I had the car because our friend had dropped it off in Haines on the way to Juneau from Anchorage where it was shipped from Unalaska. He left it with us to put on the boat and flew to their new home. The Suburu was full of amazingly healthy house plants. I took that as a good sign.
Anyway, to make a long story short ( not my strong suit, clearly. A friend closed a brief comment to me about how she ruined a soup with too much seasoning with ,”You would have said the same thing in a half-hour”–.) I went to bed (it was after 10) and took the rare back-to-back Haines ferry home first thing in the morning and arrived in time to see Lynn Canal Community Players production of “Mama Mia” at the Chilkat Center.
I “met” Joy at the Anchorage Museum the next night over crowdcast. She was brilliant and so cool. (It’s recorded).
The musical was perfect. Over the top, silly, fun, and sweet– about love and family and full of people we know putting on a show for no other reason than to entertain. On the one hand, it might as well have been a sand painting– once it was done– all that work and memorizing– painting and sewing– it was over. But, there is something about joy that lasts forever, isn’t there? Something human– as the playwrights and poets know.
Sure it was corny, but I at this point we know the hard facts: all the mean, I would say even evil, bad stuff that we humans are doing each other and our earth-person home. Watch the news. BUT there is so much all around me to be thankful for, to celebrate– and what the heck, fling my arms wide and belt out “The Dancing Queen”–
My way back into that happy feeling began with my poor health– and the re-realization that people are suffering. (I know, I kind of forgot about everyone else when I didn’t feel good.) You just can’t see what is happening beneath the skin.
I’m going to work on being the type of grandma in children’s stories. The one that speaks kindly. Is wise but not bossy. Always says thank you and please. Holds the door open for even older grandmas or little ones. Can I help you carry that to the car? Wasn’t that a great show? The storm was something! But oh, look at how clean the beach is today, feel the wind and the sun. Where has it been?
And that long detour on the Alaska Marine Highway? I read an entire novel. What a luxury.
