The Tao of Nookomis Read online

  The Tao of Nookomis

  The Tao of Nookomis

  Thomas D. Peacock

  Cover image © iStock/Getty Images

  Copyright © 2016 Thomas D. Peacock

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-68201-034-1

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First edition: May 2016

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Published by

  North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc.

  P.O. Box 451

  St. Cloud, MN 56302

  www.northstarpress.com

  To Betsy

  Contents

  The Tao of Nookomis

  Sara’s Song

  Gekinoo’amaagejig (The Ones Who Teach)

  Soft Wind

  A Place of Visions

  Alice Crow Flies High

  In the Creator’s Eyes

  Maggie

  Desiree

  A Wolf Story Part One: The Arrival

  A Wolf Story Part Two: The Boy

  A Bear Story

  The Tao of Nookomis

  Ever since I sobered up and decided to go to school, my whole world has changed for the better because, before that, I think I was either giiwashkwebii (drunk) or had a buzz going, or was hungover, or planning to go on a drunk. It’s all kind of a big fog now, anyway. I have to say that I give my ninety-five-year-old great-grandma Nooko (Nookomis, grandmother) much of the credit for my being sober because she sat me down and had that talk when I was ready to listen. A lot of people had that kind of talk with me when I was messed up, but I wasn’t ready to listen, or whatever, but it seems like when my great-grandma sat me down it had weight to it, like a big chunk of greasy fry bread with peanut butter and jam on it. Hard to chew, harder to swallow, but really, really good. I remember clear as a bell it went something like this:

  “When I look at you,” she began, “I see myself. And now especially when I see you suffering the way you are, I suffer, too. See, I’ve been there, too. I was you. So when you look at me and the way I’ve lived my life—an old lady that some people come to for advice, for knowledge, maybe for those skills at beading or making outfits, or the language, or whatever, respected, that’s how I feel more than anything—this is what is possible in you, and so much more.

  “We are the same. And our hearts match.”

  And I remember when she said that I got a big lump in my throat, and I was trying to keep it all in, and I finally gave in to it all and rested my head in her lap like when I was a little girl and she would run her fingers through my hair and sing me those old songs in Ojibwe that no one knows anymore except her. And I just let big tears run down my face, and she wiped them away with her frail and knurled hands, and then I looked up and saw she was also in tears.

  “Baby girl …” she said.

  So, anyway, after that day almost two years ago this August, I sobered up. It was hard, I remember, and each day can still be a struggle sometimes. I was able to get checked into Mishomis (grandfather) House in Red Cliff and got spun dry, as we rezzers sometimes put it. And after my thirty-day in-patient treatment I was given a sponsor and have been attending AA regularly at the elder center.

  Each day since I stopped, I learn something new, not just about things around me but also about myself. And it took a while after I sobered up for my brain to clear up and allow me to even think straight, but eventually I started to think more of what I wanted to do with my life rather than where my next drink was coming from. And I knew I had to go to college if I was going to amount to anything, so that’s what I did. So, anyway, this semester I’ve been taking a class in oral indigenous history at Northland College in Ashland, and the instructor gave us a term project to interview an elder and get their life story, “before it’s too late,” as he put it.

  So, on the way back from class one day, I spun into the assisted living place in Washburn where Grandma Nooko lives now, ever since she fell and broke her hip and couldn’t take care of herself anymore because she has been confined to a wheelchair. And I had enough sense to bring me some of that asemaa (tobacco) to offer her for that knowledge, and I asked her if she would tell me her story.

  Anyway, at first it seemed like she was going to say no, and I got kind of nervous because she didn’t say anything for what felt like the longest time, then she finally answered me.

  “But I’m not Native, my girl. You know that,” she reminded me. “Maybe you need to interview someone else. Me, I’m 150 percent Irish, maybe more.”

  She laughed just slightly when she said that, then all expression left her face, and she just looked me right in the eyes and didn’t say a peep while I thought about how to respond.

  “But, Great-Grandma, you know more than anyone as far as I’m concerned. You may not be Ojibwe, but you’ve lived your whole life out on the rez. You could write a book about us and call it Diary of a 150% Irish Captive, ho wah,” and that got us both laughing.

  I suppose injecting that little bit of rez humor softened her up because she had that same survival humor a lot of us rezzers possess in order to live here and not go crazy because it seems our lives are constantly being bombarded with bad stuff happening, and many of us have had to live though some pretty rugged experiences.

  “So, namadabin (sit down), then,” she said and pointed with her lips to the chair next to her bed.

  “Bizindun, Andonis (listen, my daughter), while this mindamooyay chimookomon equay (old lady white woman) tells you her story.”

  She laughed quietly then, and I will always remember her eyes were filled with love. I could easily see that, but now that I know her story, there were other things as well there—trepidation, longing, sadness, fear—a whole lifetime of emotions all in that one look.

  And so the story began, and she told me all the things I had always wanted to know about her and so much more, a sacred story. Nowadays I always have a pinch of asemaa in my hand when I share it. Here goes.

  I’M GOING TO TELL YOU things, and some of it I’ve never shared with anyone before. This is hard for me, and maybe there will parts that might make you feel uncomfortable, but I hope not. I’m just human like everyone else, a mix of good and the other.

  Have you ever read the Tao?

  That one just caught me out of nowhere. The Tao? What in all hell was my ninety-five-year-old great-grandmother doing talking about the Tao? But I wasn’t going to let her think I was shocked or surprised, so I pretended I was all calm and shit.

  You know, Grandma, I’ve heard of it, but I don’t really know much about it. I think it is eastern, like Chinese or something.

  A long time ago when I was young and stupid, someone gave me the book Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu. Tzu was the keeper of the Imperial library in ancient China. Anyway, this person told me to read it, and then we would talk about it a few parts at a time. The Tao is about a lot of things, I suppose, and each of us could interpret its meaning in our own way, but I’ve always considered it to be lessons on a way of being. Before my eyesight started to fail I always kept a copy of it at my bedside, and I’d read my favorite parts again and again over the years because I think it sums up the way I think about a lot of things, and maybe about the way we humans need help to guide us along the paths we travel in our lives.

  Like I said, the Tao is about a lot of things, but one of the things the Tao speaks to is that each of us are both yin (shadow side) and yang (sun side), all parts that form the whole. None of us is just one side. It says,

  When people see things as beautiful, ugliness is created.
<
br />   When people see things as good, evil is created.

  Being and non-being produce each other.

  Difficult and easy complement each other.

  Long and short define each other.

  High and low oppose each other.

  Fore and aft follow each other.

  And I say this because it relates to the story I am going to tell you. My story is both—yin and yang. I am both. I suppose now that I’m old and don’t have much time left on this earth I have the need to talk about the past. Otherwise the story will disappear with me.

  My late husband, your great-granddad, who you never got to know because he died long before you were even a twinkle, sometimes reminded me I wasn’t Indi’n when he had a bit too much of the drink. So I think as much as you’ve known about me until now is that I came here as a little girl and was adopted and brought up Indi’n. Well, I suppose that’s true, I mean, that about sums it up in a single sentence; however, I’m going to fill you in some of the rest, ninety-five years worth. Most of what I have to say will be new to you. And I won’t tell you the whole story in one sitting. Maybe you can come back as long as it takes. Today, however, I’m just going to talk it through, straightaway, and then later we’ll fill in all the parts of the puzzle that is me.

  I could as well have been born on the moon and never met my great-grandmother when she started telling about being born in Ireland.

  I was born in County Clare, Shannon, Ireland, in 1920, named Genevieve Mae Bandle. I didn’t know myself where in Ireland I was from until I was twenty-one years old, and found out only after writing countless letters and visiting the Children’s Aid Society in New York time after time until they finally relented and gave me the information.

  I don’t know why, but I knew you were Irish. But I didn’t know you were born there. I want to ask you so much more about that, a lot more. You’ve been to New York?

  Of course, I lived in New York for two years after I graduated from high school. That’s later, though.

  And when she said that I was thinking, my God, I have never been to New York. My great-grandmother has lived in New York. I never even knew she had left Bayfield County, Wisconsin.

  Why have you never mentioned this before?

  You never asked me before today.

  I want to know everything about you and New York.

  Bizaan (quiet), my Genevieve, later.

  Sometimes she called me by my given name, Genevieve. I was named after her, after all.

  My great-grandmother had a faraway look in her eyes, and they shifted back and forth like she was nervous. I could tell she felt conflicted. There was a lot of pain there, too. I know this now. Maybe with anyone else I would have pressed the subject because I’ve learned that sometimes we Indians need to be pushy to survive in a white man’s world. However, this was my Grandma Nooko and she was old and frail and I loved her deeply, and so I changed the subject.

  I was thinking how many of us get so self-consumed we don’t even take the time to really know about others. I was so embarrassed I had never taken the time to know my great-grandmother. Now here she was, living in a nursing home somewhere out in the bush in northern Wisconsin, thousands of miles from the land of her birth. So I said to her, Grandma, I never knew you were born in Ireland. I just never knew. I’m so sorry I never took the time to ask you this before.

  Grandma Nooko, tell me what you remember about Ireland?

  Ireland?

  The word sprung from her lips like it was being sung.

  Well, Ireland. The thing that comes to mind is that I remember being hungry, and I know now that was reason number one we made the crossing and how I ended up here in northern Wisconsin. Maybe you know what hunger is, but what I’m trying to describe is different. You know nowadays when we say we are starving, but we really aren’t, we’re just hungry? Well, what I remember was this kind of hunger was different because there really wasn’t anything or very, very little to eat, and I remember having to share a couple of boiled potatoes for dinner among the lot of us, then the next day my mother would fry up the peelings for lunch. I suppose you could say we were starving, although when you really are, maybe it’s too difficult to face head-on, so we simply call it hungry.

  Now think about that, if we hadn’t been hungry. Then maybe I would still be there today in County Clare, Shannon, Ireland. Think about how fate plays its role in the paths of our journey in this life. We come to a place along the road and maybe circumstances, say hunger, led us down a different path. So we go down that path, and it forever changes the direction of our lives. So because of fate, or whatever it may be, my feet have never again touched Irish soil. So there is fate and circumstances, and being at a certain place at a certain time, and luck, and timing, and maybe divine intervention. And all of these things play a role in the paths we walk and the people we meet.

  Sometimes I’ve dreamed of what it would be like to see Ireland again. I’ve seen it in books, National Geographic, and watching that Discovery Channel, so I have some idea. When I see those pictures or videos, however, I always have a sense of loss, sadness, like that piece of me is missing. I can’t, no, I have never dwelt on it. It’s just there, you know, sometimes.

  And when she said that, her hand went to her heart.

  Great-grandma, you remember a couple of years ago when I came to see you and you had that talk to me about my drinking? I came to see you that day to borrow money from you so I could get more to drink, and I was ready to steal it from you if I had to when you looked the other way, or took your nap. But I didn’t. And if you wouldn’t have talked to me about my drinking, or I wasn’t ready to listen, or if I hadn’t showed up that day, or if I did get booze money from you one way or another. I see what you mean about fate and timing, and luck, circumstances, and divine intervention, or whatever.

  By all rights I should be dead, Great-grandma. The way I lived and all.

  Great-grandma. Ireland? I can’t even imagine being stripped of this place, removed from it, this land, the big lake, the islands. This place is so special to me, to us, so sacred. Madeline Island out there in the lake is the center of the Ojibwe universe, the place of our beginning.

  Tears came to my eyes just then. And I saw the same, albeit tiny ones, in the corners of hers, eyes that had never seen her homeland in nearly ninety years.

  Aye, Ireland, she said. She added the accent, as well.

  And that single word, Ireland, carried in it whole stories, dreams, songs.

  Great-grandma, tell me what you remember about your mom and dad.

  I don’t remember my mother’s face or voice. In my dreams, however, she is beautiful, and her voice was soft and sometimes now when I watch a television program and one of the female characters is Irish I have this far, distant memory of my mother’s voice.

  In my dreams she looks like you. Even though you’re Indi’n and she was Irish.

  You have her eyes and her heart.

  I know there was love there. My mother, you know. But it has been so long ago and I was just a little girl.

  I remember, vaguely, we were on a ship. And everywhere there were people and some were very ill. And I remember my mother became one of them, sick. I don’t know, or remember, maybe they had an infirmary onboard but I remember her lying in a bed, and my father and brother—I had an older brother—we all were there.

  A brother? I want to know about your brother, your father as well.

  Bizaan, she said. Later.

  I don’t remember much about my mother and what happened. Only much later, when I was an adult, did I find out she died during the crossing. A lot of people died during the crossings, I understand that now.

  Great-grandma, I’m so sorry. I couldn’t even imagine losing my mother at such an early age.

  Well, that was a long, long time ago, wasn’t it? She smiled and laughed slightly. But there was that certain way she used humor to distract herself away from the pain, something many Native people recognize within our circ
les, where sadness and happiness exist on the same plane. Where laughter and pain share the same breath, the same air.

  Sadness, laughter, yin and yang, each forming a whole.

  She continued.

  I forgive her. I think I could not forgive her for a long time. Maybe I needed to forgive myself first, to accept her death.

  What do you mean, forgive yourself?

  Later, my girl.

  Sometimes I think I may confuse my dreams, imaginings, and memory in order to fill in all the gaps of my life. There is a lot of missing, I suppose. I remember when New York came into view, we all stood out on deck and some people were cheering, others crying. My father put me on his shoulders when we first saw the outline of the city in the distance. Both my brother and father, if I hadn’t gotten their names from the Catholic Aid Society when I was older, I’d have never known because then I was too young to remember. As it turns out, my brother’s name was John and he was ten years old at the time. If he is still alive today he would be ninety-nine years of age. I don’t know if he is still around or not because I never was able to find out anything about him, no matter how hard I searched, no matter how many questions I asked.

  It is one of those things I have always wondered about, to have a brother out there, somewhere, and then he disappears out of my life.

  My girl, life is filled with unanswered questions, and I need to wait until I pass over, I guess, to meet up with him again. I will see him again. In my dreams I come to a river, and he is there on the other side, along with both my Irish and Ojibwe mothers and Irish father, and they are calling my name and telling me to make the final crossing. Sometimes in my dreams there is an actual river there, but at other times it is a river of stars, the Milky Way. Either way, I can see them, there in my dreams.

  So I know that someday I will again see my brother John. I’ve been waiting to do so the entirety of my life. And I don’t know what he will look or be like, or whether he will be a child or adult or elderly like me, I just know I will recognize him, and him, me. He will say, “Sister,” and when I hear the word I will run to him.