all made of the same thing and each their own kind of beautiful.”
That night I see the powwow circle with new eyes. I notice that
the cedar arbor sheltering the drums is supported by poles set in
the four directions. The drum, the heartbeat, calls us out to dance.
There is one beat, but each dancer has a distinctive step: dipping
grass dancers, crouching buffalo dancers, the twirl of fancy shawl
dancers, high-stepping jingle-dress girls, the dignified pace of the
women’s traditional dancers. Each man, each woman, each child,
all dressed in their dreamed-of colors, ribbons flying, fringes
swaying, all beautiful, all dancing to the heartbeat. Around the circle
we go all night, together weaving a basket.
Today, my house is full of baskets and my favorites are Pigeons. In
them I can hear John’s voice, can hear the doonk, doonk, doonk,
and smell the swamp. They remind me of the years of a tree’s life
that I hold in my hands. What would it be like, I wondered, to live
with that heightened sensitivity to the lives given for ours? To
consider the tree in the Kleenex, the algae in the toothpaste, the
oaks in the floor, the grapes in the wine; to follow back the thread
of life in everything and pay it respect? Once you start, it’s hard to
stop, and you begin to feel yourself awash in gifts.
I open the cupboard, a likely place for gifts. I think, “I greet you,
jar of jam. You glass who once was sand upon the beach, washed
back and forth and bathed in foam and seagull cries, but who are
formed into a glass until you once again return to the sea. And you,
berries, plump in your June-ness, now in my February pantry. And
you, sugar, so far from your Caribbean home—thanks for making
the trip.”
In that awareness, looking over the objects on my desk—the