I’m Thankful For….

Taos Pueblo Two-Sided Hand Drum with Buffalo Hide by Lee Lujan, Chimayo Trading

They are now young adults. When they were actually children, their attention was often diverted elsewhere. But now, in their mid to late twenties, they are interested in me. And so the questions.

As our first snow fell here in the southern Rockies, my granddaughter asked me why I moved to Santa Fe 35 years ago.

The first answer that came to my lips was, shall we say, somewhat superficial. “It was the sky, the sun, the air” after decades in the dank winter gloom of the southeast.

Many of the painters and writers who came here in the 1920’s and 30’s said or wrote the same thing, but still…

And “To get away from Louisville” was only a partial truth.

I remember how appalled I was by my first sight of this high desert here after the relentless green I’d left behind. The beauty of sand, dirt, rocks and spiny cactus grew on me, but not right away.

Adding to my original response, I told her, “It was the history of the place as a welcoming space for many writers, women who’d often had difficulty finding acceptance in the place they were leaving.” I thought of Mabel Dodge Luhan and Willa Cather, but there were many others. Mary Austin’s house is down the block; in her day there was a threshing floor behind it. Now it’s a gallery, as are so many other houses. The adobes of the painters who were then called “Five Nuts in Five Mud Huts” line my street, small houses they built themselves and are now often renovated and enlarged.

I forgot to mention drumming. The full moon drumming sessions I usually attend, where a bunch of strangers sit in a living room and beat on drums and shake noisemakers for an hour, connect me to this place in a way deeper than mere affection.

And then came a more difficult question from my stepson. We have rediscovered each other after three decades and he is truly a blessing. Having experienced much family alienation, he asked, “Did you ever reconcile with your brother?”

I was glad to tell him that during the decade when my brother was not speaking to me, I wrote him an annual letter, asking if he was ready to let go of the injuries of the past and move on. When I had an answer, it was an angry repudiation of my even asking but I continued to send him my annual letter, remembering him as the teenager who one excruciatingly hot summer in Kentucky dug a small pond for my ducks.

Then a phone message came, the voice so weak I didn’t recognize it, telling of a serious illness, asking to see me, and ending with a phrase I’d never heard: “I love you.”

The next time I visited Louisville, I told my stepson, I went to see my brother. He was holding my latest letter.

“Never give up,” I told my stepson.

My five visitors left Sunday and as I kissed each one goodbye, I felt both exhausted and uplifted. Surely this is what Thanksgiving is all about: the questions, often difficult and complicated, that require us to think again.

[Publishers are encouraged by early orders and I’m thrilled to announce that Taken by the Shawnee is now available for pre-order at Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, or even better, your local bookshop.]

In My Family