Growing up in Wisconsin I was young when I noticed that I was different than all the others. I would look at my hands and then look at other kid’s hands. I would just stare at my hands and see the design of what looked like spider webs. It would get more and more visible when summer came around. But, if I looked hard enough I could see the webs during the winter. I always wondered if all the other kids in school noticed how my skin was different than theirs in more ways than just color.I had a design. I thought it was because I was tangle clan and therefore the spider made my skin. The spider was the mother to my skin.
On a trip to New Mexico one summer, my parents were inside the hogan speaking with grandmas. My sisters were told to play outside. We turned around and wondered what we were to do? There were no rivers to play in, no forest to hide in. I stared at the sky and the open desert. The wind was blowing our hair all around. I kneeled down towards the ground. I glanced down at the earth and there was my skin. The dirt was dried out from a recent rain, cracked in a design that was on my hand. I sat there and we found out what to play with. We picked up the dirt that came apart like a pieces of cake. It was our fun for the time that my parents spent in the hogan. We would just see which one of us could pick up the pieces whole and then we would crumble them with one hand. My skin was a sister to the dirt outside the hogan.
My father took it upon himself to teach us about astronomy. One summer night we all stared up in the sky, with our dad showing us the book and pointing to the sky. I thought it was so boring and wish I could be inside, away from the mosquitoes reading my book in bed. I wanted to get through my Babysitters club book before bedtime. I finally just laid down in the grass. My youngest sister was already heading towards the swing set and my middle sister was listening to dad, trying to learn. A few moments later, my dad connected the stars and I realized that once you connected the stars, my skin was in the sky. My skin was the stars and the stars were my skin. The stars were father to my skin.
Recently, in line at the store, behind a Navajo grandma I noticed my skin was the same as hers. The design was the exact same without the wrinkles. My skin, had a mother, father, sister, and grandmother and I knew that I was blessed to have a design on my skin. The design on my skin was evidence of my family that consisted of creatures, earth, sky and my ancestors and I was proud to be different.
