Pollen

by M. A. Chavez

It has been over one and a half generations since you went missing. Removed from your people. Lost to time.

Where you came from – one-hundred sixty years ago according to their calendar – back there, you had a girl who loved you.

She knew you. Brought you into this world and gave you your name.

Her small hands weaving your hair into the patterns of intricate baskets, rugs – stories from the ancestors.

Together you would dream that she had birthed you. Even though you both knew that wasn’t possible, it never stopped her from being your mother.

You belonged. You had a name.

Until you didn’t.

Until those people came. They took a lot of things. Left pain and hurt and sick and took. Turned people into things, so they could take even more.

Every night you dreamt that your tears washed away your captors while the same rain soothed your people and cleansed them of their scars.

Eventually, you ended up with a girl who didn’t know how to be a mother, your name, or how to braid: with those pale, soft hands that had never dug prayer into the earth.

She grew, got older, outgrew you and you found yourself on one of those iron beasts led by invisible horse, to the place where the sun is birthed from endless water.

You didn’t recognize anybody on the day you were taken across that ocean to the end of the world.

You found yourself in a strange land where the men grew whiskers and the women covered their hands so they wouldn’t dig prayers into the ground.

There were more people here. Many more.

They forgot about you. Nobody here knew you, or your mother, or the little girl who thought she was your mother, or the iron beast.

With nothing else to do, you collected dust.

You couldn’t remember the last time you heard your own name, but you did remember your mother.

This time in your life became one long meditation. Wondering what happened to her.

You pulled at single threads of thought until they wove days into years.

By the time someone found you, hidden away, gatherer of dust; the world had changed. The lady seemed nice, even if she looked like the people who stole you.

Outside of the house things were different, like the change from summer to winter; landscape the same, but the adornments had changed.

There were even more people, and now they moved about in machines so loud and terrible there was no way that anyone could hear the spirits.

You wondered about this. If this din could only be stopped, then maybe these people would hear each other, this land, their ancestors, their creator. Maybe they would give you back, and you and your mother could continue where you left off.

But the sound didn’t stop, and you weren’t on your way back to your people. You had been around long enough to know that.

She spoke to people in their garbled tongue. Then grabbed you out of the bag and gave you to another person, like you, now an elder of your people, were a mere object.

There you were, being handed to another person. In that moment she continued their long standing custom of making things out of people. It made it easier for you to be given away – taken away in the first place. But you didn’t let it bother you because you had no affinity for these people anyways.

There was something different about the man you ended up with.

He wore glass in front of his eyes that made him look like a bug. He was overly excited, but he had this love in his eyes that you hadn’t seen in years.

He genuinely cared. He took care of you. Pampered you.

Cleaned the dust away like the thick film of death that it was, and let you breathe again. He ran a small brush, not unlike that of your mother’s, through your hair.

He brought you to another room, and the comfort you had just felt made it all the more jarring to see them.

Rows of others, like you. All beautiful, and unique, still wearing the traditional clothing of their people. Once loved. But now full of confusion and mistrust, placed on shelves like things.

You tried to talk to them, all spoke different languages, but you knew they were related because their words felt like warm medicine when they entered your ears. You were surrounded by brothers and sisters and cousins and aunties.

For the first time in as long as you could remember, that night you slept.

Every day the man and his apprentices would make sure you were safe. Pick you up with little metal tools and clean off any dust that had settled. Which felt good, but they still didn’t know your name.

That you weren’t an object.

That you, like everyone else, needed to be held with loving hands.

Over time apprentices became elders, elders became dust, and you and your relatives were kept in this room.

Recently, they took you and put you behind glass where it is hard to breathe. A place where nothing, not even time, can touch you.

From where you stand, on a small platform with your back against the wall, you can see the corner of a window. It is past other glass containers containing things these people know nothing about.

Time has changed things outside again, but can’t touch the seasons. Rain falls, snow melts, suns and moons and cycles continue even if these people try all they can to contain you and your people.

During the day people come to look at you. They admire you. Some point and don’t know it’s inappropriate to point with their fingers. They get so close that the glass fogs up. Dirty little fingers leave smudges.

Others look into your eyes and don’t know it’s inappropriate to make eye contact with their elders. They are children like your mother, but not, because they are the children of whiskers and gloves and not hearing or digging prayers.

You watch as these children and elders are both ignored alike, while the men and women absorb themselves with one another.

Indeed, this is such a different place than where you come from.

The crowds continue and you feel yourself slowly clawing inward, to a safe place these people can’t see.

Until you see her.

Her clothes are different than she used to wear, they could be on any of the kids here this morning. She holds one of those devices in her hand that lights up her face when she looks at it.

She walks through this world more like these people than you remember. She isn’t your mother, but could have been. Her cheeks an exaltation to the sky, long braids stretching to lay root in the earth.

She sees you out of the corner of her eye and walks over. Reads the sign next to you – most others brush it off, but she doesn’t.

She looks at every part of you. Your long dark hair, whispering from the past. Beautiful dress and turquoise jewelry.

She stares into your eyes because she wasn’t allowed to learn the traditional ways.

But she sees you.

She looks and laughs and waves and cries. She rereads the sign. And you start to cry with her and laugh and wave and dream the next one-hundred and sixty years together: she your daughter, you her mother.

Guiding her along the path to becoming a strong young woman of your people. You teach her that eyes are not to be looked at, that Mother Earth is meant to be massaged, that people are not things, that we all need to be held with loving hands.

You pass down the ways, so that she can share them with her children. You give her a name. Even though you both know that isn’t possible, it doesn’t stop you, because you are creating something new with her, for her.

After one and a half generations you belong.

You have been found by your people, and you have meaning once again.

Her mother finds her, looks up and smiles at you with one of the deep, soul nurturing smiles that only moms can muster. Then she says something to her daughter, who looks back at you, sad, then smiles and waves.

You wave back and smile, and watch as they walk away, remembering after all this time why your mother had made you in the first place.