A blessing in disguise you could say, the history of teen pregnancies in my family has come to reveal itself to me in many fruits as I’ve gotten older. One, being all of the years I’ve had of knowing and loving my great-granny, Sandra.
When the call came—when she passed a few weeks ago—I felt my mind lunge for her, an attempt to cling to any recollection that could hold her steady. I knew her only as a woman but I wished for memories of her youth; talking to friends, or running wild with her sisters. Instead, I remembered the summer she taught me how to swim. I was five maybe six, and she was a woman, my granny. Tall, with deep brown skin—so much darker than mine, which had diluted over the generations. By the time the lessons ended, she left me with a new trick…she had me press my hands above my head in a prayer, and glide through the water, pretending to be a shark, with one “fin” cutting through the surface, ready to attack while I swam across.
I was happy to remember her this way—agile, and with two strong legs—before the diabetes took them from her.
A year or two ago, I learned that “radical” comes from the Latin word radix, meaning “root.” I clung to that. I remembered my mom always pulling me back into the realities of our family’s roots that we promised her we would never forget.
The loss of my granny—our matriarch, and the last in my direct lineage of full O’odham blood—hangs in the air, heavy, palpable. But it is not just weight. It is also a story—one I couldn’t be more proud to tell—and to keep alive in a world that has consistently tried to rid us. My resistance will forever be rooted in her’s and our family’s story of great love.
