Some People Travel Far

Looking back, I was so inspired to really start (again) to “remember” events occurring in O’odham jeved - then my aunt died. My Aunt Janice was the last surviving member of the preceding generation. She was my mom’s sister, and I was her legal guardian and caregiver. Interestingly, I don’t think I was as close to her as I was to my parents and even her sister, my other aunt, but I’m guessing the cumulative effect of the realization that all my immediate family’s “elders” were gone hit me hard. I have had thoughts and ideas cross my mind to put on Substack, but I have been unwilling (or unable) to put the words out there. This morning I told myself I simply need to write and represent.

Yesterday was the first day of summer for 2024. On the O’odham calendar, it essentially, and for many now, officially represents the beginning of the O’odham year. It is the longest day of the year, the sun reaches its farthest journey to the north, and the life-giving summer rains should begin directly. I have and have had numerous relatives with June birthdays - including my dad’s.

My dad was born in Danzig (aka Gdansk) in what was at the time, 1944, Nazi Germany. Just days after his birth, he and his mom abandoned their temporary home of Gdansk. (My dad’s grandfather, my great-grandfather, was a German admiral with a sister and other family in Stockholm, Sweden, so the strategic port city of Gdansk was a convenient and practical base of operations for him.) My grandfather, a doctor, was working with the Red Cross in France when my dad was born, and he was taken as a prisoner of war shortly after D-Day. My grandmother traveled with my infant father across Germany (after the ship they were supposed to be on that was to take them to Stockholm was torpedoed) down to my great-grandfather’s family home, where my great-grandmother was living, on Lake Konstanz on the border between Germany and Switzerland.

After the war, my grandfather bought property in Weiden very near Cologne (I believe it is actually within the current Cologne city limits, in fact), and my dad and his two brothers grew up there. Rather than “gymnasium” (equivalent to “high school” for Americans), my dad became an apprentice to become a pastry chef. However, as soon as he turned 21, my dad told his parents he was going to practice his trade in America.

My dad could not speak English very well. His French was just a little better, so he first moved to Montreal. Eventually, he made his way to Calgary then after meeting my mom via a penpal introduction, he visited Arizona then married and settled here.

My mom’s father had passed a few years before my dad met my mom. So when my dad wanted to get permission, as was the way, to marry my mom, my maternal grandmother arranged to have him speak to her adopted father, my maternal great-grandfather, in Sells, Arizona. Sells is a remote town/village today. In 1968, Sells was the edge of the world, and my great-grandfather, though he could speak Spanish and English as well, chose only to speak in O’odham. He approved of my father and mother getting married - allegedly. My parents got married, but my dad knew almost no O’odham, and my knowledge of this marriage proposal comes really only from him.

I really have no doubt that my great-grandfather gave his approval and support. I would occasionally travel with my grandmother from Sacaton to Sells (about 100 miles across virtually empty Sonoran desert) to check on her dad and to give her relatives living in Sells some respite from checking on him. As I said, my great-grandfather only spoke O’odham, but what I could pick up was always loving comments about my grandmother, my parents, and me. Those times living with my great-grandfather in 1970’s and 1980’s Sells, though maybe physically and economically difficult at times, were some of the most comforting and secure moments of my life.

(The remains of the great-grandfather’s house still stand, but they are rapidly settling back into the desert.)

After my mom died, I spent much of my time with my dad revisiting past moments in his life. I tried to make a point of taking him to places of importance to him when I could. Not long before my dad, himself, passed away, we were able to make it to Sells. As part of that trip, I took my dad to the Tohono O’odham museum in Topawa and caught the image of my dad basically where his marriage began in O’odham jeved with Elder Brother’s home, Baboquivari, rising behind him. For me, it a tremendous combination of meaning and emotion.

On the last day of June in 2013, my dad passed from this world. I had hoped to take my dad to Gdansk in 2014 for this 70th birthday, but it was not meant to be.

I heard once that most people die within a few miles of where they were born. If I were to die today, that would certainly be true for me. My dad was born in a distant place in a wholly different time. He died thousands of geographic miles from his birth after having heard many different languages and experiencing places and cultures far removed from one another.

Life is lived, regardless, but our choices guide us and sometimes absolutely propel us in unimagined directions. We may “endure” events; however, we choose to condemn or appreciate what confronts and happens to us. I saw very little besides appreciation for life from my family - most now gone from our shared time. I attempt, and even sometimes succeed, to be always grateful for the blessings of life.