d-up Kee, a ray
was a prayer the
RANDMA, WHEN IS MY MOTHER coming back from the
dented relative
She sensed his loneliness as she closed the crude gate to the sheep pen
to them as th face in the light of the setting sun.
Felt good to has A private resentment of her daughter's frequent joumeys away from their
felt good to sheep camp flared within her heart. It was a part of her lifelong theme of
nt behind the abandonment that really involved many others besides her daughter.
their lives,
pa:
When she was only 10, her mother had died in childbirth, and she,
being the eldest, was left to care for her younger siblings. They all had been
close during the years of their childhood; the struggle to survive had been
shared by all. Even the youngest brother had learned how to search for the
wild Navajo carrots and dig them out of the arid ground. Hunger had been
a chronic theme when their dad went away to look for work and was gone
for days at a time. But when they became adults, her siblings came around
only when they needed something from her. Seldom did they show up to
help her shear the sheep, repair her hogan, or work in the garden.
When a man began coming around and taking an interest in her, new
hope sprang out of her woundedness. Some of the joy from her early
childhood returned, and it remained beautiful until she conceived. Then
the world changed again. By the time Kee's oldest aunt was bom, the man
