I have the best neighbors. They moved in the week my husband died. The first time I met Mrs. J., she came right up and hugged me, and said “I’m so sorry.” Then she ran into the house, and came out with a jar of homemade jam that she carried with her from Montana. It was the color of honey. She picked the berries herself. She made we forget my sorrow for a moment, and again every time I tasted that jam.
Mr. and Mrs. J. are Native Americans. When they tell me they’re heading out to gather blueberries, or going fishing, or going to a pow-wow, I want to go too, but I would never ask. Once they invited me over for an iced tea. The walls were hung with Native art, the rooms arranged with things collected over the years and things inherited. Everything had a story, just the way I like it. A breakfront in the dining room held a collection of keepsakes and family photos. One of those photos planted itself in my skull. It was an old black and white snapshot of a tipi. Mrs. J. said the tipi was her grandparents’ home on the reservation. It stood next to the frame house where Mrs. J. grew up. Her grandparents refused to live in a house, she told me. They stuck with the tipi to the end.
I saw a real tipi at the Plains Indian Museum in Cody, Wyoming. It was larger than I expected. The hide was translucent, so if there were a fire inside, the tipi would glow in the dark.
