white

Mom was the spontaneous one. Where dad’s money went to buy the necessities and save “for later”, Mom was the one who took my sisters and I on “girl’s day out” and helped my brothers purchase their snowboards and video games, and was always the one we could count on for movie night.

It wasn’t until late elementary, early jr. high that I began to notice the racial and religious tension, the “no man’s land” my family fell into. The first time I heard the term “apple Indian” it was directed at me by a ninth grade Native boy I had a small crush on. I was an awkward seventh grader with braces and knock-knees trying to find my place in the microcosm of jr. high. My circle of friends was a rag tag group of social misfits: the smarter Native’s, the wannabe-rebel white girls, and the athletes from out of town. I had to ask one of my Native friends what an “apple’ Indian was. She told me it meant that I was “red on the outside, white on the inside”. Later I would laugh at the description. A “banana” would have been a better description, what with my yellowish skin tone and slightly Asian features. Nevertheless, the gibe stung and I began to wonder where it was that I fit in. In all honesty, my best friend was my younger sister, but now that I had entered jr. high, I was on my own for two years until she entered seventh grade.

Playing sports blurred the line between “white” and “Indian”. A little. I had white friends and I had Native friends, both of which could be lumped into the category of “school friends”, but for very different reasons. My white friends were part of the same religious group that I was, yet there was an unspoken rule that, because I was Native, they could only associate with me at school. I remember the first time I had a white friend come to play at my house. The miracle occurred in large part because my friend had an older sister who was also a friend of my older sister. Their mom dropped them off on a beautiful Saturday morning in spring. She drove to the nearest non-Native community (a small hamlet, ten minutes away) turned around and picked up her daughters. Our play date lasted a total of thirty minutes. In high school, one of my white friends who lived in that small community told me how one of her town friends had insisted on locking the doors and speeding through the reservation “in case one of the Indians tries to jump into the car”. Don’t even get me started on the logistics of something like that ever occurring.

An eclectic Composition

How do you answer the question: Who are you??? 

Every good story has a beginning, for me that would be January 30, 1984 on a cold winter’s day in Iowa. The setting is a typical mid-western, small-town mall, home and furniture section of your average department store. On this most-average of days a young, pregnant mother of six feels the familiar pangs heralding the immediate onset of labor. Scared out of his wits, the young furniture salesman encourages the young mother to sit down (on a water bed no less!) to “rest” for a few minutes. Thankfully the young mother trusted her carefully honed instincts and knew that sitting down for any length of time would increase her likelihood of delivery right there on a waterbed in the middle of an Iowa department store. “No thank you!” she replies politely, waddling quickly to the exit, clutching her bulging stomach. Shortly thereafter, in the nearby hospital, an eight pound, black haired, squalling baby girl entered the world. “Determined” (some would say “bull-headed”) is a word that would define much of my life.

My story isn’t all that unique. Like many, I grew up in a large family (eight children in total: 5 girls, 3 boys). My mother taught school, and the first four years of my life were spent in perpetual preschool (taught by my mother). Most preschools would have forced my mom to put my sister (younger by 2 years) and I into daycare, but thankfully the reservation school where my mother taught was so grateful to have her that they were willing to overlook the obvious age violations.

During my early years, my father focused most of his efforts on building his Chiropractic practice in the small non-Native community we were never quite a part of. The first Native doctor from his reservation, my father had a lot of racial red-tape to cut through. It helped that, at first glance, my father would easily be mistaken for a “white” man, but it took a lot of patience, persistence and just being good at what he did for his practice to, well, not quite “thrive” but to make enough to support eight growing children. One thing I regret about those early years, and in talking later to my dad, a regret we shared, was that he didn’t live more. I wish he would’ve bought more horses so we could’ve done more riding. The one horse we did own was an ornery old thing that threw at least two of my siblings and sufficiently scared the rest of us into steering clear of him.

... stay tuned for more!

Just getting started

Whew! I am completely wet behind the ears when it comes to blogging. Up until about a year ago I had no clue what a blog was- sure I’d heard the term being bounced around for the past couple of years, but I was at a complete loss for a definition.

In my mind, a blog is akin to an online journal geared towards a specific audience with a specific interest. My interest is writing, specifically to write novels worthy of publishing. Hopefully one of your interests is to read about writing. My goal is to create a fan base with which I can “test-write” my ideas, receive feedback and improve my writing, and yes, eventually get published. Lofty goals? I agree. That’s why I’m casting my net far and wide in hopes that the general public will keep me in tune with what they want from my writing. I hope you will enjoy reading my posts, tracking my progress, reading sample chapters, and giving feedback on my eclectic writing interests. So, before we begin this exciting, nerve-wracking (for me) journey, let me take a moment (read: several posts) to introduce myself.