Where Did I Go?
11.19.08
It’s been a while, huh? It seems a bit daunting to try to catch up with myself, but tonight I got to thinking about this journal and how neglected it has been and decided that I should at least giving writing a shot.
So where have I been? Well, it seems like a lot and nothing at all has happened in the past two or so months. One of the biggest things that has happened is that I have started seeing someone. It began as friendship and intensified until neither one of us could continue ignoring what neither one of us knew how to address. And then one evening through a kiss on the cheek and a few simple words so much of what we had been holding back spilled into the open. I feel like I’ve become that couple-y person who I never thought I would be and whom I scorned a bit throughout my years of singledom – that person so wrapped up in the excitement of a new romance that the rest of the world seems to recede. But it’s also more than the newness, it’s the fact that I have found someone who I can trust, who I can be myself without reservation around, someone who I care about and who I know cares about me. It’s feeling safe and feeling important, it’s feeling excited to make another person smile, it’s knowing there is someone who will listen when you need to talk, who will buy you soup when you are sick for the third time in two months, it’s the look you get when you’ve put on something nice and done your make up a bit. It’s enjoying a night in watching a DVD and eating soycream as much as you enjoy going out for a nice dinner. It’s all of those things that sound so flat when written out like a laundry list, the same old laundry list that makes up what we deem as loving relationships. But while they may seem flat on paper and while I may not yet (or ever) have the right words to explain why this is anything but flat, I am feeling lucky to know that I am cared for and to know that I have found someone for whom I can care as well.
The other big change in my life these past months is that I have started a new job. After what felt like an eternity of searching for a job, I got an interview and was hired. On paper it seemed like a decent job for me – administrative assistant and family services coordinator for a Head Start pre-school. Sure, it wasn’t teaching, but it meant working in a school. Sure I’ve always said that pre-school is not the age group for me to work with en masse, but the job was not to be a teacher. My first week was miserable. I hated it and wanted nothing more than to quit. However quitting was not an option because, well, I needed a job. Since that first week it has gotten much better. There are days when I like it and feel good about it and days when I feel bored. There are days when I feel frustrated by basically everything, but at the end of the day I do realize that I am paid well, I work with good people and it is a fairly flexible, not too demanding job.
One of the interesting pieces of the job is that I am working on a Native American reservation. About half of the kids in our program are from the tribe. The other half of the student body is from Mexican families who live in a trailer park on the reservation. When interviewing for the position, one of the questions that at the time struck me as odd was about culture shock and adjusting to new cultures. I was told that working on the reservation means working with a distinctive culture and one of the goals of our program is to embrace, celebrate and teach the children about their culture. At the same time I was also cautioned upon beginning work that I’m not really supposed to ask too many questions about it. I was given the impression that the tribe is rather protective and perhaps even a bit closed about their tribe and cultural heritage. The non-tribal students in our program are not allowed to participate in the language program provided by the tribe to teach the children the tribal language. I use this as one example of why it seems that they are protective of what is theirs.
So far my experience has left me, well, a little confused. I am trying really hard to bear in mind that there is a difference between the tribal culture and the tribal administration. Perhaps what I mean is that there is the culture (language, music, ritual, ceremony, beliefs, story, etc.) that the tribe is working to preserve and pass on and then there is the current culture of the administration, the government and the day-to-day running of the pueblo itself. They are two different cultures, in my opinion, which rest upon one another and at times are hard to see clearly or understand. As an employee of the tribe, and especially one who works in the administration of their pre-school, my experience lies mostly with the tribes government and administration, which from where I sit at my desk at times feels unorganized, frustrating and slightly chaotic (and coming from France where needless bureaucracy, red tape and disgruntled government employees are part of the joy of day to day life, I am at least used to, if not at this point fairly immune, to dealing with this type of irritation).
In terms of the cultural heritage, as I mentioned, it’s often hard to suss out what tribal culture actually means to the tribe. For me as an individual, that lack of understanding comes from my hesitancy to ask questions. I have tried unsuccessfully to research it a bit on my own, but there seems to be almost a complete lack of written records about the tribe. There are little hints here and there – the language classes, some instruments and music in the classrooms, costumes that we worked on making, etc., but I don’t quite have a grasp on what it means to be a member of this tribe to the members of the tribe. Today I had the opportunity to hang out with the three-year-olds and two of the language teachers because the Head Start teachers were sick. I was really impressed and enthralled listening to one of the teachers read the story “No, David!” Her animation, improvisation and interaction with the students kept them all engaged and involved.
It got me to wondering if she knew stories that had been passed down in the oral tradition from her ancestors. It also got me to wondering what stories she herself had about her own life – did she grow up on the pueblo? What was it like when she was young? What traditions did her family have? Were there tribal traditions, ceremonies, rituals that she participated in? Are they the same today? I wanted to ask her but found myself keeping quiet, I guess for fear of asking something that I wasn’t supposed to ask. I doubt that it would have been offensive, but I didn’t want to risk it I guess. It seems silly though because in my experience most people like to talk and to tell stories about themselves, and when given the time, the space and the attention I think that most of us can come up with a few anecdotes that we would be a little happy to share with someone else.
My grandmother is a good example. Growing up she and my great aunt and grandfather were our babysitters. My father is an only child and his parents and aunt lived in our town and we were lucky to have them around as we grew up to take care of us on the few occasions that my parents went out or had a meeting or whatever. Going to their house meant running around outside on their big lawn, climbing trees, playing ping pong in the basement, baking cookies, playing hide and seek, playing dress up, drawing, drinking “tea” which was really just hot milk with a ton of sugar and a tea bag dropped in the cup for .2 seconds. It also meant stories. There were pictures to prompt stories but most often we would just say, “Grandma, tell us about when you were a little.” I remember her chuckling a bit and telling us that we’d heard all of her stories. We would insist that we didn’t mind and she’d say, “let’s see” and pull out one of her stories about growing up in rural England during WWII. There were stories about her being forced to swim at school in cold weather, stories about the big tree on the main road, and watching boats pass by on the Thames. There were also stories of food rations and black out curtains. She carries with her still the fear and anxiety of living through a war, never knowing how close it would actually come to her country home and her family. I can hear her voice now talking about how awful it was, “absolutely awful!” Awful being the hardest, most bitter word she could summon to talk about the war. I think about the arsenal of words that I have, much more caustic, shocking, violent and angry than her simple “awful” and as I hear her voice and her modifiers “absolutely” or maybe just repeating the word twice “awful, awful,” I wonder if those words spoken with that tone and that experience are more powerful that whatever with which artillery I could arm my speech.
These days the same old stories are not quite as exciting to me as they were when I was young. In fact, there are times when it seems frustrating that she is so stuck in the past, so fixated on what is long gone, and I find it impossible to relate to someone who seems so out of touch with today. Then there are times when it seems sad to me that she has not been able to let go of those stories and that she has not found new stories from the intervening years to replace, or at least to accompany, those same stories that I grew up hearing. As an adult, some of the details seem suspect – a little romanticized, a little exaggerated, not the same as they were when I was younger. But part of story telling is knowing how to emphasize, de-emphasize, embellish, exaggerate and appeal to your audience. Stories that rely upon memory will inevitable mix up some of the facts and details and be subject to the interpretation of the person who is putting the pieces back together and their intention in doing so.
And so there is also a part of me that will always cherish those stories and hold them close. They are a piece of my own personal history and my childhood. However accurate or inaccurate the stories may be, they are the stories of my family and I will pass them along to my kids one day as well. I had the opportunity to visit my grandmother’s home village in England last year. I went with a dear friend of mine and as Sue and I walked up and down the main street, delighted in the quaint old houses, sat on the bench where the old giant tree used to grow, and scoured the cemetery for any name that might be a part of my family, my grandmother’s stories hummed gently in the background of my thoughts. I have already passed some of those stories along to my host family in France and to friends who are patient enough to listen as I talk through the ancient history that has lead up to who I am today, laying here on my futon bed in Santa Fe, NM typing this and thinking about the power of story.
Maybe the elders of the tribe do tell their stories to their children and maybe those children will pass the stories to their children and grandchildren. What we have to say is important. What we remember has significance and sharing memories, experiences, emotions, interpretations, ideas and stories brings people together and is exciting. Maybe I can work on trying to get some of the elders to come tell stories to the children as part of my job.
