Trickster's antics both teach and heal

Page 5

Tansi, ahnee and hello. And there are times when the words we are given resurface much later and surprise us with their elegance. The trickster holds them in his hands for years and then tosses them out again in a burst of irony that rankles sometimes but teachers nonetheless.

When I was a boy I was given words that set me up for a lifetime of frustration.

In the last year or so they resurfaced and you could almost hear the trickster laughing. The delivery of lessons is his biggest joy.

I was nine. At that time I'd entered the world of adoption and had begun to try to feel my way around a strange landscape of city, rules and behavior that were foreign to me. Needless to say, I overstepped those rules far more than I navigated them.

In our home the rule of thumb was...spare the rod, spoil the child. In other words, any breach of the rules was cause for a beating. My adopted father was a large man and

in the magnifying eyes of a child he was a giant. When he strode toward me with a heavy police belt in his hand, a curse on his lips and scowl on his face, I was terrified.

The words came after a particularly heavy wailing with that police belt.

I recall that I couldn't understand why I was being treated this way. I recall that the breach of rules was something as trivial as forgetting to take the trash to the end of the driveway for weekly collection. I recall feeling that I didn't deserve this punishment.

Yet there I was again in the dark chilly basement, pants around my ankles, spread-eagle on a cot behind the furnace while my adopted father towered over me in the darkness delivering his sermon on responsibility. And then the strapping. When it was over I cried in my terror and pain. Cried like any child would cry who had been forced to surrender their dignity, innocence and trust. Cried like the wounded human being I was.

And the words came. He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me, stared straight into my eyes and said coldly and vehemently, "Why don't you learn how to be a man?"

I never forgot those words. Never forgot the implication and the indictment within them. Never forgot the shame contained there, sense of inadequacy, of being judged inferior, as being less than what the Creator created me to be. And I never forgot the anger than began to boil deep within me that day.

And so I began to learn how to be a man. I began to learn from watching the men in my life. I began to learn that men don't cry, show their feelings, talk about things that bother them or talk about love, trust, fair, fear or dignity. Men were strong, aloof and independent, aggressive, fearless and tough. I became a man.

I lived as a man for many years. Lived with the anger that boiled within me, the pain, fear and frustration I found in that basement and lived through twisted, broken relationships, drunkenness, drug addiction, prison and loneliness. I lived in a state of unspoken agony, watching the world with my hands firmly clenched around the bars of the cage I'd erected around myself. The bars on the cage of my masculinity. My erroneous manhood.

And the words came back. In a moment when the pain, frustration, loneliness, anger and denial became too much to bear any longer, the words came back. They came as all healing things do, with the smell of sweetgrass in the air and calmness within. I asked the university - What do I have to do to change it? And the answer came, thrown from the arms of the trickster, gently, ironically - Why don't you learn how to be a man?

My life has chanced since that day. I sought out those who knew and asked questions and followed advice. I began dismantling that cage. My world is full of things like play and laughter today, teddy bears and stories, adventures and wonder, talk of feelings, fears and concerns, love, trust and dignity. My world has become a place of equality and I'm learning on a day-by-day basis how to be a man within that.

I believe there is in all of us the voice of the children we were,calling us back through all the words we were given, to that place beyond the messages where innocence, trust and magic live forever. We need only listen, begin that journey back and hear the trickster laughing.

Until next time, Meegwetch.