Stolen words

These lovely thoughts are by my oldest sister, Christa and my dad, Michael, respectively.  Its amazing how different the members of a family can be, and yet how much we can have in common.  Reading Christa's made me laugh and made me a little melancholy and homesick, so I thought I'd share them both.

I am from bedtime stories

and nightly family dinners,

from wood-paneled walls and green shag carpet

from crippling shyness, four dozen cousins, and sharing a bedroom with four siblings.

I am from the base of the Garden Wall, mountain lakes and fields of daisies

from Farina and Reservation politics

from cheap beer around Friday night campfires

and after-church, roast beef dinners

on Sunday afternoons.

I am from the thrill of unexpected snow days

and canoe rides under full moons.

I am from bare feet in fresh-cut grass,

and Dad's gardens all around.

I am from long afternoons

floating irrigation canals

on stolen inner tubes.

I am from spontaneous 

and unexpected family gatherings,

Thanksgiving-weekend

Christmas tree cutting trips:

and Mom's homemade cinnamon rolls afterward.

I'm from stubborn independence

and laughing too loud.

I am from Snye'lmn,

this valley surrounded by mountains.

I am from dirt roads and potholes and 

too many wakes.

I'm from summers in teepees and old trucks

that run just well enough

to drive teen independence.

I am from frozen pipes in February

and dreams of air conditioning in August.

I'm from making due, and dreaming of more

from grandfathers

who made their livings with trees and horses,

from women who were always mothers first, 

but never solely.

I am from grandmothers' quilts, 

my grandfather's logging truck,

My other grandfather's NP brand

I'm from overstuffed bookshelves,

doing too much,

and the calm productivity 

of midnight hours.

Remembering, Holding

For Valerie

Promise? you asked when I said I loved you

one summer in Coronado.  And I did, on my knees

if that's what you wanted, on the boulders

at Imperial Beach.  You looked away, across an ocean

before saying "yes", no one else seeing 

how we could be.

Friend, we found ways to dream

each other into whatever the world did, returning to

each other again and again, our holding 

making of us more than the world:

our mothers and brothers and sisters came

to the Holy Family Hospital the crisp October

morning when Christa cam, our new little family making

family of them all.  I wondered how she knew

waking from a sound sleep to cry whenever

you traveled a shout away, unconsolable 

til you came back.  "You'll never see me weak,"

she later learned to think, and you quietly arranged 

what she needed, watching her grow strong.

And then Gwen, unable to walk, unwilling to crawl

running on all fours, a gentle steam roller, sure 

of herself and demanding that the world be right.

And the world around her rightened itself, sweet 

as the rules you taught her, intelligent and good

as laughter or music or food.

Eldon, the agile middle child, lazing in possibility

or climbing impossible ladders toward the sun

graceful as a young god, wanting to shower himself

into a moment as perfect as the moment creation 

began, all glory and thunder and light.  And you

waited with him, trusting the slow gathering of powers.

Michael and Becky, "attack babies"

prowling for hugs and laughter, his flaming

enthusiasm and her quiet insight an unlikely rightness, 

their twinned laughter a gentle background,

their difference a way of fitting.

The moment you said yes held this

quarter-century, itself a moment 

beginning.

Ah, the gift for words!  They have both captured  so much so wonderfully here, that I won't ruin it by trying to add unnecessary lines myself.