GRAMPAS AND GRAMMAS

Growing up at Gwi-sh’tee, my mother’s village of Paguate on the Laguna Pueblo Rez, I have many fond memories of my Nun-nah and Ba-bah, my Grampa and Gramma.

My Nun-nah, wasn’t an old, wise Indian.  Sorry Grampa, it’s the truth.  He was really a wise, young Indian!  Always jovial and filled with tenacious love for life.  What astounds me most when I think of him is that I’m now in this life numbers of years longer than he experienced.  In our state’s largest city of Albuquerque, Grampa died when a bus hit him as he stepped off a curb.  Who would have ever thought, that man who teased and joked with me, comparing our looks, agility and sense of living accomplishment, could be gone so quickly?  How is it that his spirit fills me with such richness for me having had the opportunities to live with him and gramma?   

As an oral tribal man, Nun-nah must be looked at as one of the last of his kind on my mother’s side of my familial lineage.  This makes for another example of orality.  He wasn’t my mother’s father. He was the husband of my mother’s eldest sister and one of their daughter’s became my Godmother, when as an infant, I was baptized in our Catholic church.  That act made him “grampa” to me. Although my Godmother was really a cousin by blood, she was as a mother to me as I grew up, and I always considered her mother and therefore her parents were my grandparents. The influence is profound, even to this day.

My Grampa was one of the first of his kind.  He could read.  Yeah, a Rez generation that learned to read and he was one who liked reading.  He read almost anything in print that he came across.  At sheep camp, knowing how to read helped him in his sheep raising business.  He had a little pocket notebook where he’d enter important information related to his work.  It wasn’t until years later that I was again surprised when I remembered how masterful his ability to do math was in our spoken language. He was quick, computer-like and beautiful to listen to as he orally computed addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.  Oh, if I could have paid closer attention!  Maybe Eienstien and I would have had more in common than just our love for the Universe!

My favorite remembrance of his reading, was his penchant for comic books!  His favorite was Roy Rogers and especially Roy’s horse, Trigger.  I believe Nun-nah, fancied himself the Indian version of Roy.  After all, he also rode a horse, could rope with the best of them and although couldn’t play a guitar, he had a voice when he played my little pueblo drum and sang his own Indian songs for me.  He liked to say, “I even have my own Dale Evans!” As I grinned from ear to ear, as he’d motion toward my Ba-bah and she’d giggle and respond, “You’re old grampa, he’s no cowboy!  He’s just all Indian!” And we’d all laugh.

One time, after I hadn’t been with them for a while, I learned from their son, my cousin, that my Nun-nah’s dream had come true.  When I asked him which dream?  He told me, my grampa went to town to meet Roy and Trigger.  “What?” was all I could say!  “Yeah, he went to the Rodeo.  He walked right into the ring where Roy Rogers was riding around.  He walked right up to him just like they were old friends. You know?  Like they were pardners!  Patted Trigger and everything. Even got his autograph on one of his comic books!”  My cousin and I just grinned at each other.  That was just like my Nun-nah. He was in his own comic book story!  A month or two later, he bought a Palomino horse, that fit him.  When that little Indian rode that beautiful golden horse, he was a smaller version of Roy and Trigger. 

After the days of his passing and his funeral, I came upon his old weather-worn, leather bat-wing chaps, hanging from a rafter nail in the little stone and mud storage space at gramma’s village house.  I asked my Godmother, if I could have them.  She said, “Sure",  then added smiling, “What are you trying to do, look like Roy Rogers!”