Puwetkâ€℠¢m NÅ¡iyéls mm (To Drown and To Favor)

Waking under two dead elk, I wonder if I truly belong here. Were it not for our love, I would be anywhere but in this room this morning. Yet here I sit, in a place at last familiar to me, on a couch that is my weekend bed, looking up at the elk heads that this family proudly displays on their walls.

I hear talking and I am afraid to move, afraid to interrupt the family moment occurring in the next room, beyond these carnage-covered walls. Instead, I content myself to listen to their morning chatter. They, after all, are together as a family for the first and, due to conflicting schedules, likely, the only time today, and this is a part of their daily banter.

I love this place, if for nothing other than this family that always greets me with such kindness and affection, yet after a year and a half of weekend visits such as these, I still never quite feel like I belong. It is no fault of theirs. There is simply some connection that I am missing. They are not my family. They are his, and I cannot help but feel out of place.

Nearly every weekend now, I move in. I sit quietly and study, taking most careful note of each familial interaction, waiting–hoping­ that at some moment I will be lucky enough to be accepted into their group so that I might have the opportunity to move in for further study.

The youngest male (now 22 years of age) is of primary interest to me. With him I came to be here, and for him and his love I continue to come back. His mother, once protective of her child and, thus, wary of my presence, has now accepted my being in her house. She too has accepted the love and affection that I direct toward her son. In some ways, she has even taken me in as her own, to teach me and love me as she would her own daughter, and so I am permitted to stay.

The talking has quieted down now and I contemplate getting out of bed. I, however, pause first to listen again. This time, I listen with my heart. There are so many things I don’t know here–so many things I have no need of knowing. It is his history, his family, yet this need to belong drives me to delve further into an exploration of this house that his family inhabits. Begging–searching for my own place among the pieces of his life that lie around me. I listen.

This house speaks to me. The walls talk of a future that I am not sure I am ready for– not sure if I can be a part of. They rave of Swedish heritage and American pride, of years of wear from three young boys grown up, and of a new generation, a girl, the beautiful remnant of his past relationship.

These walls sing too. They sing to me the songs of motherhood as I hold my love’s precious little baby girl, while my own thoughts scream back in terror. I am afraid. I am not ready for any of this, yet still I am with him. Still, I am here.

Out of bed now I gaze out the window on a snow covered back yard and a river concealed by ice. It is the ice however, that captivates my attention most. The gnarled shores lead into a smoked-sapphire sea of glass. The river, 60feet deep, seems infinite as I gaze into its reflective surface.

The river winds and twists towards some unknown end and reflects back to me the stories of times before; stories not only of my love and his family, for it was not always them who inhabited this ground. No. This ancient river reflects back to me the stories of man– of pain and sorrow, joy and new birth, each tale, as interconnected as the molecules within the river itself. And in that brief moment I witness all that the river has seen. I watch my love’s family dropping their tractor through the ice as they try to clear the way for skating. I see the building of this house under a burning summer sun, as beads of sweat drop from the builders’ foreheads to the ground. I watch the last hunt of the native tribe, the Schitsu'umsh (the Coeur d’Alene), who once inhabited this ground followed by their relocation to a small reservation centered around the tiny town of Plummer. I see their heartache as they are forced to leave. I weep their same tears.

            Still intently watching, the river shows me its birth, and further back still, a mighty flood which covered the entirety of human kind, save a large boat which, in the midst of its long journey found itself miles above the land this river would eventually come to inhabit– carried on the surf of a roaring ocean. The river takes me back further. In tears I witness a man and a woman lose the most beautiful homeland they will ever have because of their rebellion against authority–kicked out by a tearful and abandoned God.  In this one reflection the river takes me back to a lonesome creator looking out over the vast empty space and calling the cosmos into being. I stand in stunned silence as I witness the things this river, this house, and this land have seen.

            The touch of his hand pulls me out of the river. Soaked with the knowledge of what this land has seen before, I look over at my love and cannot help but smile, as I think of the memories of us already being reflected in that river’s smooth surface. Just as civilizations past and present, we too live in the river. We too inhabit this land. We too exist in the boards and nails that hold this house together.

            He pulls me in, kisses me and tells me that he loves me. I can never be happier than this. I feel secure. He leads me into the kitchen where I join his family at the table. I have never felt like I belonged here, but at this moment I know I that do. The morning chatter begins again. This time however, I am involved in their familial bantering, and those two dead elk are miles and miles away from my mind. As he looks over at me, I smile. He smiles. The river smiles.