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By Root 459 0

calling for Grandmother. My voice was as weak and desperate as a child’s. I was beginning to sniffle a lot and I think my nose was probably snotty. Grandmother! I called. Grandmother! There was a deafening silence. The trees all around me were enormous. It was an ancient forest, with old trails hacked through it and trod by human beings, perhaps for millions of years. But where was everybody now? Absent. And in this primeval landscape I was calling for Grandmother until I was hoarse and on the point of tears. Because it was coming to me with a horrible certainty that I was by myself in this frightening place and SHE WAS NOT THERE! My heart sank. I had never felt more alone in my life. And then, just when I was on the point of dying of loneliness and lack of direction, I wailed: Oh, Grandmother, you are not here! And she said: But you are.

Kate smiled at Yolo, and wiped a tear from her eye.

The buck stops here, she said.

You are Grandmother, said Yolo.

Yes, said Kate. I thought I could avoid it, I guess.

There were hours of instruction like this, she continued, with pictures to illustrate everything; this is the only one I recall so fully. But in a way, this is the only one I need to recall. What she showed me was, Yes, I am Grandmother as she is; there is no separation, really, between us. And that, on this planet, Grandmother Earth, there is no higher authority. That our inseparability is why the planet will be steered to safety by Grandmother/Grandmothers or it will not be steered to safety at all.

Raging Grannies, said Yolo, Gray Panthers.

No, said Kate. Grand Mothers. We must acknowledge and reclaim our true size. Dignity is important. Self-respect. We cannot lead by pretending to be powerless. We’re not. Age is power. Or it can be if it isn’t distracted by shopping and cooking and trying to look nineteen.

Or tripped up by Alzheimer’s, said Yolo.

Or buried in nursing homes, said Kate.

Don’t Go Anywhere

Don’t go anywhere, Grandmother had said. You are already out in space. If you go to another planet you will by your presence contribute to its loss of integrity. You will spend all of earth’s resources trying to change a place that worked very well without you. Because you are vain, you will think you are bringing something useful. You are not. Look to your history on this planet; you have never brought a greater good, no matter where you traveled. That is because what is good is integral to itself. That is also why it is not worthwhile to change yourself, your hair or skin or eyes. What is integral to you will always be surperior to what is tacked on, simply because it is yours.

There are space kin, beings from other planets, already on earth. They have been mistreated, or murdered, or hidden away. Earth has been visited by beings from other realms for a very long time. It isn’t simply a fantasy that a few earthlings have conjured.

In fact, the first beings who came to earth were fleeing catastrophe on their own planet. They were running for their lives. They came to earth to hide. They hid in everything. Rocks, rivers, humans—when they appeared—animals and plants of all kinds. They are that which we say is the same in all things. They were very small, of course, invisible to the naked eye, not that there was a naked eye to see them at the time of their arrival, and they looked like very small snakes.

It had taken Kate a week or more, when she was in the Amazon, to notice the visitor to her hut every few days, a serpent whose coloring blended perfectly with the damp umber of her dirt yard. It was small and, according to Cosmi, who pointed it out to her, harmless. It still scared her.

Don’t worry, he’d said. This kind of serpent will not come inside. Unless, he said, smiling, you are keeping small rodents or tasty large bugs.

It also followed a ritual: In the morning, after Kate had washed herself in the green water Armando gave her, and after she’d had a moment sitting quietly by the river, she could count on seeing the little serpent as she came back up the hill, just at the edge of the yard.