My Diné Mother

The universe as we know it is over 13.5 billion years old, but the piece I came from? Well she stands at fifty-seven years old.

When I get ready for bed at night and I’m lying there attempting to focus my vision on the ceiling, it feels as if I finally found the center of the universe. Disappearing for a moment to a place I don’t fully understand. As I’m standing there, with absolutely nothing around me, except the cold feeling of having no shelter from whatever could be out there, no gravel beneath my feet, no buildings standing beside me. Completely apprehensive.

I see it. It plays back like my entire life had been filmed from my eyes.

We would be sitting in the living room and I'd braid her hair because most often, she can't reach back to brush it. She hates her grey hairs because they remind her that she's half a century old, but just like wine, she ages beautifully.

My favorite moment with her is when we would go for drives. She'll tell me all about her past boyfriends and how each one impacted her love for all things rock and roll, or how she used to play the piano until the boarding school teacher told her she was no good. Subconsciously we would drive without having an actual destination, but it was all the same to me.

Inevitably we would end up at the movie theatre where I worked, with popcorn in one hand and a diet coke in the other. For a brief moment, we forget that the world exists outside the auditorium, we’re just one exit door away from the rain.

“I love this actor… what’s his name? Jason… somethin’.” She said with a mouthful of heavily buttered popcorn, with the same pink jacket she loves.

I’d laugh and tug at her jacket, “His name is Jason Statham, mom.”

As I stare at her, I realize that one day I'll have to live in a world without her eyes the color of earth’s soil and hair the color of mountain rock. If the Creator could heal her, well she would be more breathtaking.

But this is just a memory, I can’t tell her how much I loved her in that moment. How stunning she is and how this overwhelming feeling of love warms my eyes and brings me to tears.

The movie would end as always, while we wait and watch the credits roll. Then it hits us that we have to go back home.

“I wish they would just leave me alone…”

It felt like the lights turned on and the credits stopped rolling, but they didn’t. I just sat there and thought about it. I thought about everything they said to her when they were angry or even when they were happy, the backhanded compliments as if they could have done a better job raising eight kids on their own. She truly had believed she deserved it.

“Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if I did things differently or if I wasn’t so old. I know you kids hate me but you are all I have in this world. My parents are long gone, but I want you to know that you’ll always be my baby even if you choose to leave me behind.”

If I could tell you right now, even from 1,585 miles away, I would have to be the most ludicrous and ungrateful wooden-head in the entire universe, if I had decided to leave her behind.

I want to tell her I don’t hate her at all, I could never hate her.

You see, my mother and I were not always on good terms. She worked three jobs at the time and only ever came home to change clothes, shower, kiss our foreheads and leave. We’d blame her for not teaching us our language or traditions, without knowing that they were literally beaten out of her memory.

For that I spent most of my teenage years mad at her just because I thought she never saw me as a diné woman. But she did, she saw me as who I was. She was there when I was bullied for being bald or even just being a brown girl who didn't know what color shirt “worked well” with my skin complexion. She was the one who would always remind me that they don’t have to like me, for her to love me.

“They don’t know you like I do, baby. If they did, they’d love you.”

As a twenty three year old, I now see that she wasn’t the problem, she was the one trying to solve it.

Finally my least favorite part happens, the movie stops and the screen is empty. I want another chance... at everything. Because the knowledge I have now, I needed when I was a child. I turn to her, but she’s already walking up the aisle to the doors. I chase after her, while screaming her name but nothing comes out, I just feel vibrations. I reach the doors but they close and she’s on the other side.

“Oh Chey, I love these moments with you.”

At this point I’m throwing my entire body weight against the door and my incandescent screams are so silent that I could hear the lights humming.

“When you do move, I hope you take me with you.”

Suddenly I’m back in my room, I’m fully awake with tears in my eyes and then I remember... how the rest of that night went.

On our way home, we would take the long way and sometimes would “accidentally” make a wrong turn just so we could listen to Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia”.

“Ain’t no angel gonna greet me, it’s just you and I, my friend…”

Although she couldn’t sing on cue, she still did it and I would listen. Because I knew that she knew that I’d always be around for the chorus.