Samuel eventually let her down and turned toward me, reaching back his hand, and with the Navajo language bouncing off his tongue introduced me to his beloved Shima Yazzie.
Grandma Yazzie was beautiful in the way old wood is beautiful. Warm and deep brown with a depth of wisdom that had me searching the lines in her face for the answers to life’s biggest questions. Her hair was white and thick and pulled back and looped in the traditional Navajo bun. Her shirt was a faded purple, the sleeves long, and her skirt was full and layered and dusty blue. She wore ancient lace-up cowboy boots on her feet and large turquoise and silver rings on the ring finger of each wrinkled hand. She wasn’t very tall, maybe five feet, but she was sturdy and compact – a stiff wind wouldn’t blow her over; in fact, I had the distinct impression that very little would blow her over.
She nodded to me almost regally, and then turned her attention back to her grandson. She gestured toward her hogan and bid us come inside. The hogan was more spacious than I expected. A huge loom took up almost one whole side; a pallet lay against an adjacent wall with a small chest of drawers and a small wood burning stove. A large table with two chairs made up what consisted of the kitchen area.
“Grandma is worried that you will be uncomfortable here.” Samuel spoke softly to me. “I’ve told her you’ve never had anyone fuss over you, so she shouldn’t fuss over you either. I told her you will only be uncomfortable if she is uncomfortable. I think that made her feel better.”
I marveled briefly how well Samuel understood me.
We ate a simple meal of fry bread and mutton stew. I felt my eyes getting heavy as I sat outside on one of the chairs from the kitchen and listened to the gentle cadence of Samuel and his grandmother conversing. Grandmother Yazzie’s hands were always busy. She had shown me, with Samuel interpreting, the rug she was working on at her loom. The rug had only the natural colors of the wool woven into the complex design. She said she mixed some of her own dye from different plants, but she would use no dyes on this rug. The red, brown, black and grey in the design were the colors of the wool taken from her sheep. I asked her if she planned the pattern before-hand. Samuel answered for her, before he even translated what I’d said.
“The pattern will emerge on its own. The wool lets you know what the pattern will be. There are traditional patterns – I forget what they all mean. But each pattern tells a story. Some stories are complicated and involve very intricate detailed patterns. Grandma says this is a ceremonial rug.”
This made sense to me, and I mused aloud, “Weaving is kind of like writing music. The song almost writes itself; you just have to start playing.” Samuel immediately launched into Navajo, telling his grandmother what I’d said and what he’d told me. She nodded her head as he spoke, agreeing with his explanation, smiling a little at me as he must have told her what I’d said about music.
That night, Samuel slept outside in his truck bed and I slept in a bedroll in the hogan, with Samuel’s grandmother lying silently beside me. That night I dreamed that I sat at the loom, weaving a rug patterned with ears of corn in red, yellow, blue, and white. A mockingbird sat at my shoulder and told me to choose my destiny. Every time I would reach for the yellow corn the mockingbird would peck my hand and chirp “not for you! Not for you!” in a squawky parrot voice.
We spent the following day on horseback, herding sheep down the canyon to grassier climes. Winter set in early in the higher elevations, and in another month the sheep would stay pastured near Grandma Yazzie’s hogan. We’d gotten up before the sun, and I did my best to look pretty, even without much to work with. I knew my days with Samuel were numbered, and I wanted to make them count. I hadn’t examined my feelings for him beyond the pleasure of having him back. I knew my avoidance of any deep contemplation on the subject was self deception, but I just couldn’t make myself consider what came next. It’d been a long time since I’d spent any real time in the saddle, and I knew I’d be feeling it the next day. I’d never herded sheep before, and I knew Grandma Yazzie didn’t necessarily need my help so I hung back, waiting for direction, and mostly just enjoying the quiet companionship of Samuel and his grandmother.
The chill of the morning eventually gave way to sunshine and blue skies, with an underlying reminder of fall in the smell of the wind. When we reached the valley where the sheep would spend several hours, we climbed off our horses, hobbled them by tying their back legs together, and enjoyed a little jerky and some fry bread left over from the night before. We then settled in for some quiet time while the sheep grazed.
I had started to doze a little, listening to Samuel talk to his grandmother, not understanding anything of course, not feeling the need to. I felt Samuel brush at my arm, and opened one eye blearily in question.
“You had a tick crawling on you. Grandma says they’ve been bad this year.”
The thought of a tick burrowing its way into my arm was as effective as a cold-bucket of water on my sleepiness. I sat up, brushing down my arms and legs and running my fingers through my hair.
“You know why a wood tick is flat don’t you?” Samuel sat where he’d been resting against a large rock. He didn’t seem all that concerned with the idea of a wood ticks crawling around.
“I’ve never looked at one long enough to know they were flat,” I admitted, still brushing off my jean clad legs.
“Another Navajo story…Grandma tells it better than I do….but the legend is that Coyote, the trickster, was out walking one day when he met an old woman. The old woman tells him there is a giant nearby and he should turn around and leave. Coyote says he’s not afraid of anything, especially not a giant, and he keeps walking. He picks up a sharp stick though, just in case, thinking he might need it if he comes across the giant. Eventually, he comes to the mouth of this huge cave, and curious as most coyotes are, he walks in to explore. After walking a little ways, he sees a woman lying on the floor of the cave. He asks her what’s wrong. She says she is so weak she cannot stand. Coyote asks her if she is sick. She says she is starving to death from being trapped inside the belly of the giant with nothing to eat. Coyote says “what giant?” The woman laughs and tells him he is inside the giant’s belly, too. The cave that he had walked into was the giant’s mouth. “It is easy to walk in,” the woman says, “but no one ever gets out.”