“EULOGY”

“Black Elk,” watercolor painting by kayti sweetland rasmussen

“Eulogy” by Sherman Alexie

My mother was a dictionary,

She was one of the last fluent speakers of our tribal language.

She knew dozens of words that no one else knew.

When she died, we buried all those words with her.

My mother was a dictionary.

She knew words that have been spoken for thousands of years.

She knew words that will never be spoken again.

I wish I could build tombstones for each of those words.

Maybe this poem is a tombstone.

My mother was a dictionary.

She spoke the old language.

But she never taught me how to say those ancient words.

She always said to me “English will always be your best weapon.”

She was right, she was right, she was right.

Excerpt from commencement speech Gonzaga University
Sherman Alexie, writer, poet, film maker
Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Native

ONE LUMP OR TWO?

I see the sunlight dripping through the small kitchen window over the sink, leaving puddles of yellow light across the linoleum floor. We ate breakfast at the wood table in the large old kitchen of my Grandmother’s home in Long Beach. It had a drawer where the kitchen silver was kept which always seemed a good idea to me. The morning smell of coffee permeates my memory, but it troubles me that I can’t remember if my mother took cream in her coffee.

This has nuzzled my memory for a long time. Surely one should remember if their mother drank cream in her coffee. I could always remember who took cream and who did not. I always thought it was the mark of a good hostess. Why can’t I remember if my mother did or did not?

It’s a matter of staying in the moment. To pay attention to the everyday things which make up the pattern of our lives.

Searching for my eight year old brain as I sat reading the Wheaties box with Jack Armstrong’s picture on the front, I see my Grandmother with her cup of coffee, not a mug like today, but a Blue Willow cup. Her sister, my Great-Auntie, has a whole set of Blue Willow. My mother is heating the curling iron on the gas stove to coax my stick straight hair into ringlets. I stiffen in anticipation of the hot iron so close to my head. My Aunt’s indolent shuffle into the kitchen brings a frown to Grandma’s face. You can see who runs this house. My Aunt came in after midnight from a date last night, and will be late for her job which she is lucky to have in the Depression. Wrapped in a flowered silk kimono and mules with a fur puff ball on the toe, I think she is glamorous. These are the three women who raised me.

Grandma lives large, and without a doubt she has cream in her coffee and probably 2 spoons of sugar, the cream poured from the small bottle on the table, probably lots of it. The smell of coffee blends with the hot toast in the broiler with the butter making soft brown spots all over it. My aunt is sleepy, but between sniping at Grandma, who shakes her head and looks cross, I know she probably puts cream in her coffee.

But I can’t remember if my mother put cream in her coffee. She has been gone over thirty years and it still bothers me. I should remember.

MY MOTHER

Yesterday was the thirtieth anniversary of my mother’s dying. So long ago and in another life. Sometimes it hardly seems as if she was here at all.

She was such a tiny wisp of a lady at only 4’11”, and gone too early before her 73rd birthday. My father had given her a snow mobile the winter before, which she drove through the snowy Oregon woods at top speed. They lived at Diamond Lake, Oregon during the summer months, and in Mexico during the winter. She took classes and learned to speak a passable Spanish, while my father simply pointed to what he wanted.

In her last year or two they remained in Oregon, buying a home in Brookings on the coast, but still spending a lot of time at the Lake, where she worked in the resort grocery store and ran a gift shop at the Lodge. She had never worked, always using possible poor health as her reason, but in her role as a “lady of some importance”, she bloomed. Earning her first money, she was able to spend something on herself. She had had very dark hair as a young person, but it began turning grey when she was only in her 20’s. It became a lovely white, and since she had an innate sense of color and style, she was as pretty as she had been when my father married her.

They married at the age of 19, and the love affair lasted through all those years, surviving the many absences caused by his Naval career, including five long years during WW II when he was at sea.

Though she never seemed to be a strong person, being overshadowed by my Grandmother, in whose home we lived, I’m sure she had a certain inner strength. During peacetime when we were often stationed in another place, I never heard her complain about starting a new home, however short a time we might be there. More often than not, she was given only a week or so to pack and move. She was a good seamstress, and if we happened to be living in a one-room apartment, which we sometimes were, she made curtains, bedspreads, etc. to make it as pretty as she could. I often had a small cot on one side of the room, and if possible, she hung a dividing curtain between my side and theirs.

When we were stationed in Connecticut at the Submarine base, my father did not want to live on the Base, so they found a rather ramshackle place out in the country which we called home for the next 2 years. It had been a trailer, to which a room had been added. There was no running water, a wood stove and an outhouse a distance away. It sounds awful, and it may have been, but they were the happiest 2 years of my childhood. I have often wondered why that should be. My Grandmother’s rooming house was large and in a fine neighborhood, and the Auntie with whom I often lived during a great deal of my childhood had a lovely home. But we were all together, and my little mother was happy, which was not always the case.

She was given her grandmother’s name, and I was given hers. My Granddaughter is also a Kate, so she will not be forgotten. After she died, I came across a small slip of paper she had tucked away which said “I hope if they remember me they will say I was fun”.