Page 130 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue2

How do we justify, understand what we do? That wise fool of a man once said the holy life, the

sanctified life, is not one without trespass, it is knowing the debt we owe. And how do I carry that debt

and all the debts owing to one small act of fleshing a hide on a snow squall morning in New

Hampshire?

It could make a woman crazy trying to keep count of all the ways she is indebted to that one morning

and all the elements that came together to weave it. So many threads on that loom. The sun thought it

a good idea to meet the earth as she again graciously, even at such cost now, turned her face to him

who some call Grandfather. Wind joined in, swirling snow around us as we remembered with

onging the old iron stove in the barn that someone thought to light with trees taken to keep us warm.

Everyone is somebody’s child, the tree the child of the seed, the iron extracted from earth’s core,

forged with fire and that fire fed too. So many debts.

And the dead, I know, walked among us. And within us. Awakened by the aroma, this feast of the old

ways, seeing through the plastic, the fleece and thermal space age gear, taking their place in the circle

of women, holding a large hide between them, stretching and working it, bouncing a child in the

center. The dead entering the hands of the women kneading the fibers apart like they did then. This

is how, this is the motion, this is the way.

Yes, I’m sure the dead were there. Perhaps it was their idea, let’s give them a taste of how it used to be

before thinsulate, before plastic and prefab houses. Before the lie was told that the gods are dead. Let’s

make them hungry for us.

And so I fleshed, up and down, listening to the conversations among the young around me yearning to

find a way to live that makes sense. But I cannot remember a single word. Just the motion, the debt,

the hides, and the sturdy blond woman walking the November field, playing the wailing bagpipes and

the men singing the high pitched keening at the Mother Drum.

Perhaps this is how remembering works.