Spring is finally here again. The long winter’s slumber once again is awakened by squawking pinyon jays. The red earth once again dominates as winter’s lace of ice recedes. Sheepcamps are alive with bleatings of newborn lambs and kids. The moon of “the stirring of the seedlings” is steeped in Mother Earth. Cornfields are ready to receive this year’s crop. It’s time for the sheep shears to be sharpened. It is the time of Mysteries and Miracles.
At this time one spring morning in ’04, six months after the passing of my father, my mother stepped out into the warmth to release the sheep for the day. There were lambs to be separated; ewes ready to drop were sequestered in the pen. She shuffled the quarter mile to the sheep corral under the already blazing sun that pierced the milky blue sky. The looming Black Mesa was muted that day. Wildfires were far to the west. A slight tremor echoed through my mother’s arthritic joints. Damned Peabody was blasting open another vein of coal. On a pinyon stump by the road, she took respite. Sheepdog Cody pricked up his ear. A dust cloud ever so subtle hovered over the road just ahead. Not a breeze nor bounding creature explained that disturbance. She walked over to inspect the road. There upon the ancient and tire-worn sandstone, webbings of cracks emanated from a baseball-sized hole. What the …?
My mother tried digging into the sandstone with her fingers. But the digging called for serious excavation tools, so she ambled off home. The corral was restless, but she made peace with the sheep being penned in a bit longer.
She returned with tools, a spatula, tablespoon and a hatchet. After a few expert movements, she held in her hand a still-warm piece of round object. At first, she told me she didn’t believe her eyes. She was holding something sent from the heavens. Smooth and round with a slight ridge belting its center, the deep brown and heavy object was no more than golf-ball in size.
She brought the object home after releasing the sheep for the day. By now, she realized she had received a profound message, but of what or whom she entertained no idea. She knew that a new breed of medicine men and women called scientists may be interested in her find, or what found her. So, preservation being of the most immediate concern, she coated the entire spaceball with clear fingernail polish. “That should do the job,” she thought. Later, the experts and scientists agreed that, in fact, nail polish does the research no harm.
At a diagnostic and healing ceremony some time later, and by no means connected to the space rock, the old medicine man from Tsegi Canyon asked my mother if someone of great importance in her clan had departed recently. She answered with the name of my father, Slim Singer. You stand out with a father like that; you suffer guilt with a father like that. The old medicine man closed his eyes. A slight smile played across his aged face. My mother told me that she thought on that question during the following four days of reverence.
I have been told that the chance of such a space-and-earth connection is infinitesimal—to witness space and earth connecting.
My mother entrusted the weighty object on me, and I have kept it mindfully. This piece of cadmium and nickel, in its unfathomable sense of memory, has traveled eternity.
The great mystery of time and universe has always been a key in explaining why things are the way they are, and how to respect and also to entertain. This is why we have always read signs, subtle and passing. There are signs we read in the thawing of snow. Signs in the caw caw phonic rhythm of the early ravens. Slight ringing in the ears and the sound our bellies make.
The hole in the sandstone is now subdued by weather, sheep and tire tracks. The piece of ground that received the message of the ages again is free of ice.
Spring is here again, edged in growth and in promises.
