Chapter 93
Concord, Massachusetts. June 2013.
Arriving around 10am, dressed in a skirt and a shirt that covered my shoulders (as had been asked of all women present), I learned what to do by following along through the very deliberate tasks with which the other twenty-seven people were already engaged.
I quickly witnessed that amidst the friendly atmosphere, every moment had a ritual to it, an associated meaning. Helping to dismantle the previous sweat lodge, I moved with others ceremoniously in a counter-clockwise direction. On every circle round each of us removed one new branch from the dome, and through this dance, the old lodge became a pile of sticks.
We all gathered round. “Each one of us will share what we are praying for today before we move on to building the new lodge.”
Pray? I wasn’t sure what to pray for or how to pray. I sat in silence at Quaker meeting, but I wasn’t praying. Or was I? I remembered being tested on my memorization of the Our Father when I was in third grade. I remembered staring at the intricacies of the Ukrainian Orthodox rendition of the Virgin Mary hung on my grandma’s wall as we knelt down quietly at the edge of her bed before sleep. I remembered women swaying as they prayed in Hebrew when I went to Jewish services with my friend in college. I remembered getting nervous in Mississippi when I was doing that show and someone asking me if they could pray for me while we were eating lunch. I remembered a line that I wrote in my solo show when the young girl has to bury her best friend, “I never knew what praying was until that moment…”
My montage caught up to the present as I began to hear people throwing their prayers up to the sky, held by the generosity and support of the circle. In this moment, playing felt free. It felt both momentous and purposeful, but at the same time was just another part of the day. Before I knew it, it was my turn.
“Letting go!” I offered from my heart as my feet sank deeper into the ground and my face felt the warmth of the breeze.
In the holes in the dirt that were left, we soon began a long process of constructing our new lodge. While a drum beat in the background, people took turns two at a time standing across from another, slowly bending the wood along their back until they met in the middle to create an arch. I watched in awe as multiple arches began to form a beautiful dome-like structure of about ten feet in diameter.
As I sat down to take it all in.
“Let go,” said my heart.
“Be free,” said my gut.
The man playing the drum caught my attention. He was raising his eyebrows. He was motioning for me to take a turn continuing the beat. Me? I wasn’t sure I was up for such a task, but before I knew it, without skipping a beat, the drum was in my lap and I was the one playing. Beat, beat, beat.
“Whatever you do, keep it consistent. Got it?” I nodded my head concentrating on my current rhythm. “You’re doing great,” he added as he walked away.
Sitting cross-legged on the warm ground, one hand steadied the instrument from underneath, while my other hand loosely held the drumstick.
Beat, beat, beat. I gently bounced the drumstick head along the stretched leather of the drum face.
Beat, beat, beat. My back started to ache under the responsibility set forth.
Keep it consistent? Oh, God.
Up and down went my arm, searching for the most efficient way to continue. Remembering to breathe, the rhythm began to match the rhythm of my heart, my thoughts.
Beat, beat, beat. Over an hour passed. As people bent the wood of the lodge, I bent my ideas and recognized my fears.
How many beats had I hit so far? How long could this go on? The original drummer was nowhere in sight.
I had never done anything this consistently in all of my life. Really. Truly. The grass had always been greener. The ideas newer. I had always been onto the next thing. But what remained? At the end of the day what could I count on as being the same? What did I need in order to remain steady? Consistent?
Beat, beat, beat.
I remembered how my dad would say that as a kid I always needed some sort of schedule or rhythm. Without it, I would immediately get sick.
Beat, beat, beat.
So what kind of energy was I squandering every week figuring every detail out anew when there were probably some things that had wanted to stick? What were the things I did or needed to do everyday in order to feel healthy, balanced, consistent? What should I repeat? What was my ritual? What did I pray for? What did I want to let go of? I knew but I didn’t know at the same time.
Beat, beat, beat.
Just as the lodge was built, although the drum moved onto someone else, the beat kept going in me. I felt my heart working, wanting to be heard more often.
I joined a group that was making prayer ties by tying bits of tobacco into little sacks along a string.
“These are your prayers,” said a girl nearby me. “They will hang above your head in the lodge.”
I took another swig of water. It was already four in the afternoon, I was overwhelmed by my revelations, and we hadn’t even entered the lodge yet.
“I need three women!” shouted a man’s voice from the lodge. He had just finished covering the dome in blankets.
“Come on,” said the girl next to me, “This is a special part that only we can do.”
I crawled into the lodge after her.
“We need to line the ground with these,” said the girl, coming in with a handful of blankets in her arms. “Make it as smooth as possible, but be sure to leave room around the hole dug in the center. That’s where the hot rocks will go.”
It felt so small inside. How were twenty-seven people going to fit in here all at once? I focused on my task and made the ground as smooth as possible.
“Next, we need to make sure no light is seeping in,” she said as she drew the blanket over the door, revealing a few points of light.
As we patched the holes it got dark. Really dark. The I-couldn’t-see-my-hand-in-front-of-my-face kind of dark.
“I think we are all set to begin,” she said as she opened the door and people began to line up with their prayer bundles in hand.
As I waited, my fears kicked into high gear, and questioned everything. Maybe I should have gone to the wedding. Maybe I should have stayed in Vermont. Maybe I should have stayed in that relationship. Maybe I should have, have, have…
My heart sped up. Beat, beat, beat…
I wanted to grab hold of something, anything. Hungry for answers, I started asking questions:
“How long will we be in there?”
“Well, it’s hard to say. There are four rounds and each one is its own thing.”
“Will it be quiet?”
“Sometimes. But there will also be singing and praying. We never quite know how it will unfold.”
“Will we eat right after?”
“No. We’ll need to close the ceremony first. You’ll see…”
Nothing was sticking. I knew nothing. My “I will be okay if…” mind leapt in to help out:
“I will be okay if I can sit next to the friend I came with.”
“Women always enter first. Men and women will sit on separate sides,” explained one of the participants.
“Okay… Then I will be okay if I can sit near the other woman that I know and trust. She will help me get through this.”
“Oh, I won’t be going into the lodge this time,” that woman said, “I’m going to stay outside and keep watch.”
“Okay… Then I will be okay if, if, if…”
Before I knew it, I nestled into the lodge. I sat three spots away from the open door. My back ran along one of the walls. I squished in to make room for the woman sitting to my right and the woman on my left and brought my knees to my chest as more women started a row in front of me. I backed up as much as I could while encouraging a spider to crawl out under the wall. I looked across the circle to a man who had his hand up in the air. A spider was unraveling its way down to him. “Welcome, little one,” I thought I heard him whisper before the door shut and the silence and darkness and heat and the singing and the praying began.
I went through three rounds of sweating it all out. I cried. I gleaned. I held the girl’s hand next to me as she kept saying, “I can’t do this. I can’t do this.”
“Yes you can,” I whispered to her as I tried to believe it for myself.
I hardly remember the rest of the night, but I do remember this and I’ll never forget it: Soaked in my own sweat and tears I made my way to the house between rounds to use the bathroom. Hurrying back, I caught a glimpse of someone in a hallway mirror. Who was that? I stepped back and looked into her eyes. That was a woman. A strong, beautiful woman. I touched my face as she touched hers.
That woman was me.
