Reflections on Kachinas
Back in the days when I was young and full of wanderlust and adventure, I happened to find myself on a road trip across the United States. I wanted to travel through the whole of the vast country and see the cities, the wheat fields, the deserts and the prairies. I headed east from California with a friend, and we were picked up on the road by a young couple. As the miles went by we learned about our chauffeurs. He was a handsome full-blood Hopi Indian and she a vivacious blond from the suburbs of Los Angeles. She had been smitten by her man, and moved onto the reservation to be with him. The conversation went round while the deserts of Arizona sped by. I learned that he was an artist, a designer of wooden Kachina dolls. These dolls are believed to be spirits of deities, natural forces or relatives of the Hopi. They are passed on to daughters in the villages and hung on walls of the pueblos as a reminder of the deities. As we were all still open, friendly and spontaneous, we agreed to stop in at a museum where some of the artist’s dolls were on display. What a grand introduction to the art of Kachinas! We marveled at the many kinds of dolls, complete with costumes and symbols representing, warriors, forces of nature and, spirits of animals and fertility.
Back in the car, the chat continued. I learned that although this young lady loved her Native American man and the wild lands she now called home, she was having trouble dealing with the isolation and the new culture she had chosen. She had recently turned 21, and cried her heart out under starry skies on her birthday night. Why? She had felt so isolated, restless and all alone. She had left her family and her friends back in the city, and there was absolutely nowhere to go on her coming-of-age birthday night. There was not a single tavern with a band. There were no girlfriends ready to kick up their heels and dance all night. All that she could see was desert…mountains…stars. The loneliness was tough. There was no way out.
Fast forward some 20 years. A not-so-young mother is sitting in the living room of a flat in a small village in Switzerland. It is late. My husband and children are sleeping. I have been in this new country only eight months, and I am suffering from loneliness, from culture shock. The language is different; I can’t communicate. The landscape is too manicured, and there are few wide-open spaces; familiar products are missing. My social network is gone and my family far away. I go out on the balcony in the middle of the night and look up at the stars and think of my counterpart in Arizona in the ‘80s. Like her, I feel alone and frustrated. There is no way out. There is nowhere to go.
I suppose it is something every young mother must face at some point in her life. Things do change so with children and commitments. We move for love, for employment, for education. Some of us are far, far away from our childhood friends, our parents, our sisters and brothers. We feel very alone and ache for a bit of life, some excitement and easy laughter. We have parted with our past and taken on a new lifestyle.
Somehow I got to sleep that night, and on other nights thereafter. Slowly, over time, I got used to my new environment and my much less exciting life. I scratched out late nights with friends, dancing and laughing. I traded those in for early mornings with laughing babies, walks to kindergarten, washing, cooking. I began a part-time job and met a few kindred spirits. The caged feeling began to trickle away.
We all will adjust many times during our lives. Our family begins to partially make up for the friends we miss. We communicate with our extended family and look forward to summer holidays together. We adjust. Step by step we make friends and breathe a sigh of relief when we find ourselves at a party or event where we can hold our heads back and really laugh till we cry. We begin to feel at home. I have thought about the lady from Kachina country over the years. I wonder if she has ever found her balance, her niche. On some balmy summer nights I think of her alone in the desert, and I hope that she has found her home. Maybe she managed to connect with her new world. Perhaps a Kachina doll has brought her companionship and strength on the vast and lonely deserts of Arizona.
By Mary Bider Illustrations by Ivy Hieber-Kwok
Mary is a native of the United States and mother of three grown children. Although she has adjusted to European living, she still misses the wide-open spaces of her homeland.
