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The wind is living as a multiple personality. Yesterday on the sacred hill over looking the Arkansas river sandbar this entity seemed disturbed. Once it was jerking in one direction and just as suddenly on to another course. We of the humble creations doomed to stand or fall on the graves of our ancestors almost had to give over to the pushing of the forcefulness of it. With the vanity of a woman I felt my trousers being blown to the literal
shape of my body and decided this must look raw and unbecoming. Nevertheless, stand we did, through the drumbeat of ancient songs begging for a higher power to recognize our suffering and grief at having lost our loved ones. If the wind, who seemed to be in a state of
indecision, how were we different?
After the ceremonies ultimately one of the ones known to be of such a curious nature was questioning us about our brother in California.
Let this forever be on the record listed in the archives of some country. When Mother warned us continually about the Gypsies who camped in the timber, we barely listened.
“Mother! That is prejudice to say something like, “Gypsies steal children!” We were so righteous in our rebellion to her warnings.
We went a lifetime not knowing of Mother’s wisdom and experience. Through the beauty of genealogy our brother was found some 70 years later. He, who was ripped away from my mother, leaving her forever scarred and with a personality of suspicion and indignation when mothers didn’t appreciate their children
My brother’s son saw the genealogy of our family on my page of Alastair’s Electric Scotland. He knew his father was searching for his true family after he found his birth certificate in the bottom on his Mexican mother’s trunk after her death. There wasn’t a possibility of finding Lee Otis Jones, too many Joneses for that. But when his son saw the name Pensoneau on my site, he remembered the name and spoke to his father about it. With only a few calls to Pensoneau”s of Oklahoma they found our family.
I was the one to answer the first call. Our family had the whole story for the first time. Of course, each one of us had our own emotions, too different to discuss. For my
part I was satisfied because for my entire lifetime there was an innate existence of something as mysteriously as the indecisive wind blowing about the cemetery. Suddenly in just one day a lifetime of doubt was erased. To embrace this brother who was a spitting image of my father was truly one of the happiest moments in my life. Our whole family embraced him, giving gifts and sharing years of experiences.
The Ponca people are not any different than anyone of this era. A whole group of people cannot be judged by one or two persons who are given to a need to gossip. These, who are like Satan and points to someone saying, “See this is your creation, look they are no better than I am? Why should they be allowed to live, and I’m am not. See their imperfections!" All the while these not being of a person of quality who would not discuss something while not knowing the entire truth of a matter. Those are ones with no empathy for the suffering of a Mother whose child was stollen "by gypsies," as she seemed to want to tell us but never could quite do so.
This was the reasoning I had to use to smooth over my brother’s anger that someone should want to gossip about a sorrow that came on our family through no choice of our own.
Like the wind we are taken through different places, once jerking and pulling, another time gently flowing over our sorrows, yet another time wishing to rest and refrain from the time we must be a part of another storm.
My respect for the Ponca way is never lost to me and for 99.9% percent of the people, we all were able for just a moment share in our mutual loss. We hold to the tradition of respect and loyalty to our own. We are the ones who are left behind and for a fact are never alone because we share a common thread of love to tie us together.
There will be a day of gentler breezes blowing over the cemetery and over the graves of our loved ones to lovingly wake them. We will be there for that day when our King, Jesus Christ, will rule over us in ways close to the Ponca way.
The sorrow my mother so bravely carried alone for her whole life will no longer be remembered or brought to mind. She fulfilled her duties as mother, grandmother, great grandmother, mother to her husband, Lee's first family, and let there be no one to point a finger at any part of her life. She endured faithfully to the end, and we can only pray we do the same through these upcoming days.