WHITH THOSE BITTER WEEDS is about important events that did not happen...the fate of the Bitter Weeds of Life...this was once sent as a letter. now it is just a memory....

WITH THOSE BITTER WEEDS


One Day, I did something different: I didn't respond right away to a message to someone - you. young man: who I had bothered for many years: trying to get you to pick up your mother's things. which you hadn't picked up since her death. ten-years-or-so ago. I had asked you over and over on email, in the first couple of beginning years, to please come to get them. because she had left them in her will for you: her tapes. her papers. her photos. all about the times she spent working with Navajo women. trying to help them to sell their wonderful wool rugs more directly. for much more money then they would get from the Indian agents. so that they could try to keep their lands and homes. so that they wouldn't be relocated from their ancestral lands. well...that was long ago....
anyways, I tried for a few years to have you come to get the basket that held all of her "intellectual materials". all the materials that had been used to write the 'book' that I had written for her. I had been paid a small good Dazzler rug, a Lacota quilt, about $1000 over four years, and one Hopi silver ring...all for truly hundreds of hours of meeting with her. writing her book and her publishers proposal...she had died just before we were going to be hooked-up to an agent - through an important Media Source...but your mom died in that car accident on the Hopi/Navajo Joint Use Lands, which were being handed over to the Hopi and then...ah well....
Over the years I had lost track of you. I had tried to send her 'book' over a half dozen years to folks in media of all sorts. people I thought could use the 'book' in some way. here and there I still have the records of the times I tried to interest others in her work. I thought maybe they could find you: that you'd be interested in getting your mom's stuff back. if you knew that some important person was interested in her 'book'....
then I found you again. and got into contact with you again. you and I tried to connect. or sometimes you sent someone to connect with me. you never came through. they never came through. I would leave time open. you and they never even called to say that you all weren't coming. some of the time. other times the times and days to connect changed and changed. then did not happen at all...the young are busy. Still again: I am older: but very busy as well... I had to wonder: why is this happening in my life? why am I unable to keep this promise I made with this young man's mother. so many years ago: that I would hand over the materials directly to you. that I would show you the 'book' and give you a copy? what is - what was- the reason you never came over in all of these years? never tried to find me to receive her last words. her last tapes. her perceptions of the worth of her short life? why was I holding on to this promise for her? what did...does...this say about you? about me? about what she hoped for? or expected of her son? of me....
there is a real sadness and a bitter taste to all of this: over and over and over: her work and hopes have been rejected. what did she do to achieve such a fate? such a 'karma'...as is said....
so, that day, I did not answer the "are you free tomorrow? " right away...I'm actually not. I have plans for the whole day. and then it will be a time, I suppose...a time before you'll try again. or I will try to accommodate again....silly really...I guess I'll just answer. but I think I'll send you this as well. this small story among all the short stories I have been writing for years now. a short and strange little story. one I do not understand. that has become more important than it needed to be...
this has become another story not-so-glorious about your mother. one I don't feel part of. in some odd way. she kept me away from the rest of her world so long ago: to protect her 'book'. she was so afraid that no one would want it. or read it. or believe her. so ironic: her fears came true. no one has wanted her perceptions of her work. no one has read it. no one has even come for her things. few even talk about her in connection with her beloved Big Mountain...her 'Survival Camp'...her 'SunDance' times...her times facing the Coal Barons...the Geneva Human Rights times...the 'Relocation' times...the 'Big Mountain Support Group' years. the almost two decades loving and praying and selling rugs and living as close to the Weaving Women and their families as she could: it's all as if it never happened....
I think I'll use my parts in the 'book' as material for other short stories. I am so enjoying writing again...the other words in this 'book' of hers are direct quotes, and will need to find their own lives. I cannot protect them any more. there is nothing to protect them for. not that I can see anyway....
I was never the villain here...not once....but I have failed my old friend in ways I cannot know. because no one has wanted our work...and silence has been the only response ever engendered... this 'book' lies among those bitter weeds that are the fate of most of the written word- so little reaches the readers desired. so few words are really read. fewer yet are read by many...even less are spoken-of well..and even less are remembered....
for some reason deep in me: I know I did my best and did well by this 'book' and by the promise I made to a woman long dead. so then: young man: try again. I will be here for awhile more. I will discharge this ancient promise when I must. when you can...do not forget tho: I kept a promise for over ten years. to your mother. she is reaching you through me. for whatever small reason. there must be something to this all. although: maybe: nothing at all. there is so little we can do to fulfill being human. kind. honest. trust-worthy. through your mother: I walk through the bitter weeds. pick up these simple and poor things. hand them over. over and over... and go on my way....

Post-script: The intellectual materials were finally given, in a box. to the 'son' in this piece...we had a 'good talk'...then nothing happened. nothing at all...really Nothing....bitter weeds: laugh with those eating bitter weeds....