A few days later in February 2020 I gathered with my friends in the Native community, and Joy Harjo was our guest of honor. A beautiful day at our nearby University with the Native Students, a place I frequent. Laughter, relaxed conversation, prayer, ceremony, outside on the grass, with the trees and birds on a sunny afternoon. The Coronavirus was not on our mind. It was out there, we were well aware, but it wasn’t here, not yet. Later that evening Joy played her music for us and she read to us. The student lounge was filled with Native people, all of them my friends, Native students and the Elders, and I was comforted with our common Indigenous bond, our shared essence, with the jokes that didn’t need explaining. It was a good day to be alive.
The memoir writing workshop and the gathering with Joy and my friends was the last time I gathered with people.
And now it is February 2021 and we are still at home, always at home because the Coronavirus continues to spread rapidly where we live in California. It means that I have been hunkering down at home for some time now.
I’m OK, making peace with what is and I’m holding space for those who are feeling too isolated, sad, with too much time alone. Holding space for the pain they are feeling. Holding space for those who are now unhoused, for those who are hungry, ill or suffering and have lost their heart.
Yet for me, solitude has been my friend. I needed time to write, to read. Time to be alone and silent and process the whole of my life.
I listen to the wind at dawn. The wind comes up from the west, smelling cool, like wet clay washed smooth by rainwater. Wind tangles against the foothills and I’m like the wind blowing wild through a tangled forest.
“She is a wild, tangled forest with temples and treasures concealed within.” ―John Mark Green
