"If a child lives with..., it learns..."

That poem (?) just popped into my head today during the second part when I was lying face down. I couldn't remember any of the words, specifically, I just remember the contexts, ranging from hate to love and their consequences, ranging from negative to positive traits. I am disappointed that I'm not one of those people, like Profe Sam or Carlos Monsiváis, who can still recite poems learned in childhood. But its image certainly came clearly to mind, the red and blue ink, the font, the cartoon children. I read it over and over while waiting in a doctor's office for check-ups. Also, it must have been everywhere in the 70's. Someone had given my parents a poster of it, and it hung in my room for a while. I also remember seeing it the house of Donna Snodgrass, nurse practioner and much more sage than most of the M.D.'s she worked with during her many years at IHS. I forgot to tense up against the massage the muscles that most needed it as I recalled that small bird-like woman and her daughters. I wondered what had become of them, if Donna is still here...

As the massage advanced, the names and faces of other wise women I knew as a child came to mind. I want to try to write their portraits in later blogs; it's important to remember them and the examples they set. I don't think I'll ever be one of those wise women... (among many reasons) I am, by nature, too urban, or at least have become that way and I think that the cities can sometimes distance and distract us from nature of all sorts. Certainly, I don't mean to imply that there are no city-dwelling wise women. There are. Their wisdom is just...different. But it seemed to me that the wisest seem to have some connection to the earth, to healing, or they work with children, like the women I knew on the rez and thought about today. I hope that I have learned and accepted from them some of the knowledge and other good qualities they transmitted, consciously or not.