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| Dancing to the Beat of Your Own Drum |
By Sue Jamieson
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As a child, I was taught to respect the land and animals and I was taught to appreciate a person's right to express individuality. I was taught to “dance to the beat of my own drum.” I had the good fortune to have been born and raised in New Mexico, “The Land of Enchantment” and had the doubly good fortune of having doting Grandparents with whom I spent my summers. My grandparents were devoted to each other and their home was a haven. Grandmother was a warm, nurturing, sweet-natured woman with a bubbly laugh. She was part Cherokee and had thick, long black hair down to her waist. She taught me how to do things. By the time I was eight, I knew how to use a thimble to sew a straight stitch and could make my own doll's clothes. Thinking about her makes my heart warm.
But, Grandpa taught me about life. I lovingly think of Grandpa as the world's original hippie. Born in 1899, he was years ahead of the 1960's. Grandpa stood six-foot-one and weighed 190 lbs. He was part Lakota Sioux and part Irish. As a young man, his hair and beard were the color of fire. By the time I entered this world, his hair, which hung to the middle of his back, and his beard, which hung to the middle of his chest, had turned gray. He usually wore cowboy boots, Levi's, a denim shirt that smelled like Tide detergent and fresh air, and a handmade, beaded headband made for him by one of his Mescalero Apache friends. He also wore gold earrings and always smelled like garlic. He never smoked or drank and pretty much felt that anyone who did was a “danged fool.” He was a vegetarian and liked to drink fresh carrot juice and Mesquite bush tea. I adored him.
Nobody messed with Grandpa about his appearance or his beliefs. He respected people and expected to be respected by them. He used to say that “prince's and pauper's all enter the world in the same way.” He was known and respected throughout New Mexico. He could build or fix anything from furniture to a house. He could shoe horses, make silver and stone jewelry, fix a truck, or find his way around in the surrounding mountains as easily as he could walk around in his living room. He was curious about everything and liked to know how things worked. He taught me about skunks, snakes, trap-door spiders and ants.
Grandpa also knew his way around the desert and was often hired as a guide by geology professors from Harvard to take them and their students on field trips. Grandpa knew a lot about “rocks and dirt”, but there was always more to learn, so the trips were fun for him, as well.
Grandpa loved to tell a good story. He was a keen observer of his fellow man. Most of the Harvard professors were courteous and respectful of him and his knowledge. But, one time, as he would tell with a twinkle in his eyes, a “snooty, snob-nosed, Easterner” arrived and arrogantly treated him as if he were some “dimwitted servant”. Grandpa's patience was severely tested by this erudite scholar, who disdainfully informed him that he was interested in “specific geological specimens” and questioned my grandfather's ability to accurately identify them or to guide him to where they could be found.
As Grandpa told it, he knew a short, easy way right to where those “rocks” could be found, but he thought that a long hike through the desert might be uplifting for that man's soul. Grandpa was used to the heat and could walk fast. And walk he did, with the professor sweating and limping along behind him. Grandpa thought he should keep the professor “entertained”, so he told him all about the cacti, scorpions, tarantulas, Gila monsters, and various snakes that occupied the surrounding area. He said “the perfessor” must have been interested in hearing everything, because he stayed so close behind him.
In mid-stride of rounding a large rock, in the midst of Grampa's “critter edification to the perfessor”, they suddenly found themselves face-to-face with a huge Bull snake that was about four feet long. Bull snakes have a diamond pattern on their back, which is similar to the markings of a Diamond-backed rattler. Bull snakes look ominous, but are non-poisonous, unlike their venomous cousins.
Just as Grandpa opened his mouth to tell the professor that it was a harmless snake, the professor, with a choked, dry mouth, gasped ”a rattlesnake”. With beads of sweat dripping off his face, in a quaking voice, he informed Grandpa that he had read that when confronted by a rattlesnake, a person had to be very still and “stare it down” until it left. So Grandpa, “eing dimwitted and all” and remembering that he apparently didn't know the difference between a rock and a specific geological specimen, thought it was prudent not to correct the professor, him being so smart and all.
He didn't point out that the most obvious characteristic of Rattlesnakes was the fact that they had “rattles” that they shook that could create quite a hair-raising rush of adrenaline when you heard one. He didn't point out that this particular “Rattlesnake” didn't have any “rattles”. Grandpa was a patient man. He stood perfectly still in the blazing hot sun, staring at that Bull snake, comfortably resting in the shade of a large rock. They stared and waited. Eventually, all that staring seemed to work. The snake slithered off in pursuit of a more private spot of shade. At that point the professor remembered that he had urgent business in Boston and had to leave immediately. Grandpa said it was a “darned shame.” Never did get to those rocks. Never did come back either.
Grandpa knew a lot about snakes. The only time I ever saw fear in his eyes was the day I picked up a big, fat snake, wrapped it around my arm and chased my brother with it. I was eleven. I was little and shy and very feminine… all frills and lace… most of the time. He was twelve. I had spent most of that summer chasing him around with snakes. I figured he deserved it for all the times he had derisively called me a “dumb, sissified girl.” I didn't know that this particular snake was a Water Moccasin, also known as a Cotton Mouth. I didn't know that it was poisonous; that it's venom was so deadly that it could kill an adult in a matter of seconds.
Grandpa had to take that snake, which was pretty “riled-up” at that point, and kill it before it killed one of us. Grandpa didn't kill anything unless it was necessary. It was one of those painful, growing-up experiences that we all have. I learned respect for the animal world. I suffered for that snake. I was responsible for it's death and could have killed myself and part of my family. Grandpa never scolded me about that. He just hugged me so hard it about broke my ribs. After that, Grandpa took it upon himself to teach me which snakes were poisonous and which were harmless, but I never played with snakes again. My brother never called me “sissified” again either, although, the frequency of “dumb” did increase considerably for a while.
Grandpa took me everywhere. I loved to tag-along with him, since everything was an adventure wherever he went. When I was nine, he took me to a ceremonial dance deep in the mountainous heart of the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation that was adjacent to his property in Ruidoso, New Mexico. I was excited because it was summertime and it had to be dark for the ceremony, so it meant that I got to stay up late.
It was a warm, beautiful New Mexican night with a million stars twinkling in an inky-blue sky. A huge fire was crackling in a fire pit. Grandpa and I stood with the others, forming a circle around the fire and drummers. Grandpa held my hand in his big, strong, leathery grasp. We had a game about hand-holding that always made me giggle. He always told people in a very serious voice that he held my hand so that he wouldn't get lost or get scared.
The dancers wove into the circle and danced and sang around the fire pit. The sound of the dancers' feet on the hard-packed earth reverberated and amplified the sound of the drums. The ground pulsed with the beat. I could feel it in my feet. My young, innocent heart knew that I was feeling the heartbeat of Mother Earth. I was pretty sure that the stars lowered in the sky that night and came close to earth and sang with the dancers and the drummers. I was certain that the surrounding pine trees swayed and danced in ceremony. It was a night of magic. It was a night of celebration. It was a night of love and vibrant life.
My grandfather was an unusual character to say the least. He impacted me more than any other person I knew as I was growing up. He was a teacher. He taught about life and the living of it by doing just that… by living… with humor, with respect, with love. He danced to the beat of his own drum, his own heart, and encouraged me to do the same.
I grew up, moved away, got caught up in going to college, raising a family, working. For years, I didn't listen to the beat of my own heart-drum. I tried to dance to everyone else's beat. I was out of balance and out of harmony with myself and with everybody and everything around me. The day came that I once again heard the beat of my own “drum”. Softly, weakly, I felt the pulse. With hesitation and apprehension, I began to dance… my dance. The pulse gets stronger every day. |
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