Keeper'n Me by Richard Wagamese

Author:Richard Wagamese [Wagamese, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Literary
ISBN: 9780385674775
Publisher: Anchor Canada
Published: 1994-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

BOOK THREE

SOO-WANEE-QUAY

The drum’s the heartbeat of Mother Earth. Mornin’s when the boy’n me sing those old songs, we use the drum to join us up to that heartbeat. It’s always there, but us humans we get too busy sometimes to listen. Wanna jump outta bed, dress like the firemen an’ run out into our life. The only heartbeat we hear when we do that’s the one that’s goin’ like crazy in our chest all day. So us, we start our days out joining up to the universal heartbeat. Makin’ ourselves parta it. The reason’s easy to understand. See, when we’re little babies rollin’ around inside our mothers all we can hear is her heartbeat. Boom-boom boom-boom all around us when we’re in there. Nothin’ like a noisy womb-mate, I always say. Heh, heh, heh. Sorry. Was there, had to use it, you know?

Anyways, when I was meanin’ to say was that we hear that heartbeat goin’ on all around us in the darkness. Boom-boom. Boom-boom. It’s all we can hear. We’re floatin’ around an’ we feel all warm an’ safe an’ that heartbeat drumming away in the background makes us feel even more safe an’ protected. Reason we cry when we get sent out into the world’s on accounta that sound gets cut off and we get scared. All we hear’s the world then, all noisy’n loud. Scary soundin’ when you’re used to the dark an’ that boom-boom all the time. The more we hang around in the world the more we forget the sound of that heartbeat an’ how we felt when we could hear it all around us. Get kinda used to the sound of things out here. Sometimes we hear the birds or water or somethin’ nice around us an’ it makes us feel good. Peaceful. Quiet inside, on accounta we all move through our lives with the echo of that heartbeat inside us an’ them nice things remind us of it. Come close sometimes but not really. Our ears forget what that heartbeat sounds like, but our insides never forget. Them nice things ring awful close to it on accounta it’s the heartbeat of Mother Earth we feel around us.

Then one day, us Indyuns, we hear that drum, hand drum or pow-wow drum, an’ right away we feel good. Kinda all safe an’ warm again. Boom-boom boom-boom. All the time we’re around it we feel good. Reason is, it reminds us of that first drum we ever heard. That heartbeat in the darkness. Boom-boom boom-boom. Always wanna be around it. That’s why there’s so many Indyuns at pow-wows. Some’ll try’n tell you it’s on accounta they wanna dance or sing or visit, but it’s really on accounta that drum makes ’em feel the way they felt when they were parta their mothers.

That’s why we use the drum in the morning. We hear it an’ get reminded of how we felt hearin’ it in the darkness when we were little. Reminds us too that we gotta stay joined up with Mother Earth an’ that we can feel all safe an’ protected that way too.

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