Still Barefooted On The Moss Covered Hills of Tahlequah

     Over dinner with Linda, she wondered why the blogs had stopped.

     "I can't get out of Tahlequah to Bartlesville," I said. "I'm stuck in the first 10 years of my life, and I don't want to leave. How do I make the jump from one world to the next; the Indian to the White? I can't find the transition."

     "You don't have to," Linda said. "You still have stories to tell. And, when you are ready, you'll leave."

     The next day I called sister Karen, and we talked. As always, we talked about mother and daddy and our confusion of being their children. We talked about the power of family secrets and the safety of magical thinking.

     I shared with Karen that it would never have occurred to me to talk with Mother about my thoughts of our Saturday movies because I didn't feel I had permission. Mother wasn't interested in what I thought or had to say. In Mother's world, I was definitely a do-as-you-are told and talk-when-I talk-to-you, child. She made me quite anxious to be around her. I bit my fingernails. I was always afraid of doing something wrong and get into trouble, whatever trouble meant by her definition. Maybe she wouldn't notice me if I didn't make any noise. Be invisible. Breathe quietly and not very often. My Mother was the law; she was the power side of White, just like in the Saturday movies. And, I was afraid of her. Also, I believe, it was during these very early years, living under the non-understandable rules of Mother that I began to develop magical thinking as a way of protecting myself from her harsh judgments and subsequent punishments.

     I mentioned to Karen about underling three words found in Heinlein's, Stranger In A Strange Land: "Secrecy begets tyranny."
 
     "Mother was the law," I continued, "because Daddy was not there. If I were sitting in a therapy session and asked to draw a picture of that time in my life, there would be no Daddy."

     "Also," I told Karen, "I pulled out my 'daddy folder,' started to read his story about Blanding, Utah-- when he worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and we lived in Allen Canyon. You weren't born yet--and, shortly, stopped reading. I was embarrassed. I was ashamed." "Why?" asked Karen.

     "Listen. Here's what he wrote:"

     "We had two children when we went to Utah, Gayle and Jo Layne. I could not stand the isoltation....I missed Momma and the family...."

     "A grown man had to run back to his mother. I can't write about that. It's shameful." Karen replied," But, is it really?" That caused me to sit back in my chair.

     "Look," Karen said. "I grew up being so angry with both of them. I constantly 'look' through their lives--what little I know--for answers. You have to remember the circumstances of Daddy's life--the family living on a land Allotment of an older sister, her selling it, dispossessing the family; hard scrabbling for food during the Depression; Daddy being sent to Indian Boarding Schools; his father's death; early marriage; WWII; living in the Holler; finally, secruing a job, several counties away, with Phillips PEtroleum. The one stabilizing figure in his life, throughout all of these traumas, was his mother. It's understandable why he needed to get back to Cherokee County--to the safety of his mother. Don't forget, Daddy's life was colored by the religious dogma of our grandmother, which marked every person in the family in a harmful way. We were branded by its trickle-down effects."

     "Too many family secrets woven in there," I said. "I just can't do a show-and-tell on paper.

     "Why?" asked Karen. Then she laughed. "I hope you don't tell that one."

     Me? Too many secrets starting to surface. I pulled the curtain down; called the conversation quits and went for a run.