“I live about 30 minutes North of here. There really isn’t any work up there. My husband is a mechanic from Mexico. He has his own auto repair business and helps me look after the children. I drive down here to work. I like it, the hours are flexible so it makes the family side easier.”
“I have 5 children. My firstborn is 15, the youngest is 2. It’s good because my mom helps, particularly with my eldest. He likes her and she likes him. It’s a good relationship and they bonded at birth”.
She will miss him when he moves away.
“That won’t happen. He is 15 years old with the mind of a 2-year-old. When he was in my womb, the umbilical cord had wrapped around his neck three times and choked him.”
“Do you get help from the authorities, the local government, social services?”
She looked at me as if I was an alien.
“No. There is not much government help on the reservation, but we all help each other.”
“Your father?”
“I have no idea who my father is. My mother, she’s Navajo, told me once that he was Irish – but he has long gone.
“We survive in the nation. We always have.”
My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too.
Barack Obama
… strangers to the nations that had already been here for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
With the amount of money taken in on many reservation due to the Casino gambling, you would think that they would help their own, but they don’t. Those of the same culture abusing their own culture. This is a touching story John and I thank you.
Sorrow is what I feel first then loss, despair and a haunting as if I have seen something dark a voice from Apollyon the bottomless pit. In a few words you reached into my spirit. Powerful and haunting words my friend.
oh my – and WOW … thankyou so much Larry