Page 107 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue #3 - December 2015

Dark Matter: Women Witnessing - December, 2015 Issue #3 - EXTINCTION / DEVOTION

Mei Mei Sanford

Serach bat Asher speaks:

When a story is true in one world, it is sometimes true in another. My people are travelers; we

have been traveling a long time. It is becoming more difficult; so many places are now narrow

places to us.

I am the clan mother. I am called daughter of a tree. Maybe because my legs are like trees.

Maybe because we depend on trees for so much. We eat their leaves; we scratch our backs

against their bark; we dig among their roots; we rest in their shade. Sometimes we dig trees up,

but it makes room for new growth. Water collects in our footprints. Turned earth settles around

the seedling. No wonder our people call us mothers “useful trees.”

We have places along our route where our people come to die, people of many clans, and

where their bones rest. When our journey brings us here again, we find our loved ones’ bones

among the bones of many. We know the ones we love even in their bones. We pick them up,

we touch them and we remember. Distant peoples who understand nothing else of us,

understand this: we never forget.

I am the clan mother, so I remember most of all. It was I who found my uncle’s bones, my

uncle, the dreamer. Then we all picked them up in love. Some stories say we carried them with

us. That is true, but it was in our memories we carried them.

Once long ago, my grandfather, the lame one, the seer, the one who saw people in the sky, was

sick with sadness. He thought he had lost his favorite son, my uncle. It was I who sang to him

and let him know that his son lived. It was not a song that you people could hear. It was like a

deep rumbling under the earth. Like a purr. Just joy, just joy.

Remember us, as we remember. We mothers who keep our daughters close; who have

nineteen words for our daughters for every three we have for our sons. We who have so many

exiles and so few return. But when we reunite we have such joy. We flap our ears and we

pound the ground. We are so big and we touch each others’ mouths so gently with our trunks,

we touch the songs in each others’ mouths.

Remember us. As we remember us. Remember us on the journey.

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