Spring 2021

Hold on tight grandma. My great granddaughter was ahead of me going slow one step at a time. She was using both hands, white knuckled making her way to the bottom. I was also holding on tight. The flight of stairs looked long and steep to me. Their home in Connecticut has stairs going from one level to the next. So different from my life in Arizona. At home in Arizona my life has no stairs…. none. On the Rez and at home these days I have no stairs, just straight in from outside. My four-year-old great-granddaughter continued to take one step at a time. Me too! That’s when I realized my leg muscles were not used to the climbing up or coming down the many steps. Add all that to wearing trifocals… well I was holding on like the child ahead of me. There’s a reason I’m telling you this.
My mind flashed back to about 1970 while I was living on the Navajo Indian Reservation. I parked my fifteen-foot travel trailer near a Hogan where an elderly Navajo couple lived. Their mud and log dwelling was small and snug in winter and cool in the summer. The dirt floor was swept clean to keep the chickens from coming in to pick up crumbs. I sat with the old couple often drinking coffee. Their names were Sam and Lula. Sam had TB really bad. As a young boy he was among many little ones rounded up and bussed to California for a five-year crash course in education. Many years later he and I chat over coffee. He tries to remember the English words and I try some of my Navajo words and little by little we have a conversation. Sam tells me about working in a coal mine, bringing chunks home for fuel during the winter. He rode his horse thirteen miles every morning to the mine and returning at night. Lula had no formal education. But she was educated in Navajo life and how to live and survive on the reservation. She birthed six children by herself in the old way. As the many native ladies before her she squatted in the Hogan with a sash belt around her middle and pulled down hard with each pain. The aroma of wild sage filled the atmosphere to chase away evil spirits. She diapered the little ones with the soft papery inner bark from the cedar trees. She could weave rugs on her loom dying the colors from the local herbs. She boiled the leaves to the rich colors of that day. She had a flock of sheep that she cared for like her own children. The small lambs were kept in the Hogan at night so coyotes couldn’t get them. Lula always hugged me and in Navajo called me her baby. Their basic foods were Navajo fry bread and mutton stew. They dug for wild onions and potatoes that helped flavor the pot. The veggies were the size of your small fingernail. Their Hogan had no windows. The only light that came in was from the smoke hole at the top.
One day as we sipped; for a change, Navajo Tea, Sam said he and Lula wanted to enter my Hogan. Of course, I knew he meant my small trailer. I walked with them slowly to the spot I had chosen to park. I opened the door. Nothing happened. Sam looked at the metal fold-down steps. Lula held back. I was puzzled. What could be the problem? After some time Sam took a slow step toward
the door. Then to my amazement Sam on all fours with knees on the steps he crawled inside. Once he was inside Lula folded up her traditional skirt of five yards and followed him. This was the first time in their life they ever went up steps, they didn’t know how. Once inside they pulled themselves in a sitting position at the small table. They giggled like two children. Their eyes took in all the sights and exclaimed in Navajo how beautiful my “Hogan” was. Then Sam spotted a clock on the wall. It was the first clock he ever saw. I explained to him it tells you when to sleep and when to eat. The metal clock had a row of yellow chickens that decorated the edge. Sam could not take his eyes off it. Again we had tea and they drank slowly feasting their eyes on my humble home, but I am sure to them it was very lovely. Later as they prepared to leave Sam was still lovingly looking at the chicken clock. I decided to give it to him. He hugged it as we walked back to their home. From then on it hung on the wall above his cot where he slept. When Sam’s time came to cross over into the next life his request was remembered, the chicken clock was buried with him.
Blessings,
Sylvia Webb