My grandmother has no fingerprints. Her hands are lean, soft on the back, and wrinkled after ages of work. Meals for tuckered harvest crews, raising babes, and teaching generations of children, have each done their part.
With the wind in my hair, a hoe in my calloused hands, I squint against the glare of white sun. Dancing out into the spring wheat, tutu around my waist I chase errant cows back to their pasture. Friends ask what I will do with my summer. My vacation. I only know one answer. Work. I will work harvest. I will walk the fields, drive combine, truck. As I have since I was eleven. As I have since I was fifteen. As I have since I was born to this high desert, western land. Versions of the work my aunts, my grandmother, even some of my cousins go to, when men or brothers are scarce.
At university I am expected to come up with a notion of myself others can understand. Knowing who I am to be is a struggle. A part of the balancing act I have not yet mastered, so tied am I to dust-filled air, and quiet pride of driving by a field emptied of wheat and a bin filled to the brim with warm grain. Who am I, in this changing world? So far all I know is that I am the young woman taking rocks from the soil as I sing, harvesting crops, putting food on your tables, and in the bellies of children across the great Pacific. One day my hands will be wrinkled, and soft. Scars on my fingertips, will mar my inky print.
Buckaroos by William Kittredge
This country fosters a kind of woman who never seems to bother about who she is supposed to be, mainly because there is always work, and getting it done in a level-eyed way is what counts most. Getting the work done, on horseback or not, and dicing their troubles into jokes. These women wind up looking 50 when they are 37 and 53 when they are 70. It’s as though they wear down to what counts and just last there, fine and staring the devil in the eye every morning.
