The Wind Beneath My Wings

When I was a kid, the months of October-March meant shoveling snow.  This is the curse of living in Northern Utah surrounded by the Wasatch Range of the Rocky Mountains.  Shoveling snow was in our DNA.  It was usually done in the darkness of the early morning before my parents and siblings and I would gather around the dining table to read the scriptures together.  This was also a job that only the boys were employed to do, and one I would say that Clay and I grew to resent.  It meant waking up a half hour before everyone else and dressing ourselves in garb fit for the Arctic Circle.  That, perhaps, is an exaggeration, but the point I want to stress is that it was a cumbersome process just to get to the cumbersome project of removing an endless supply of falling snow from our sidewalks and driveway.

I have vague memories of my father’s silhouette against a lit hallway as he opened the door to my bedroom to beckon me to the work, then his silhouette disappeared in an explosion of blinding light from the ceiling fixture.  He’d say something soft but stern, letting me know that helping was not optional, and that our expeditious cold-weather assistance was expected, not requested.  I also remember one morning after he woke me up, I fell back asleep.  My bedroom light was still on, by my eyes had gone black.  I don’t know how long I was out.  Probably a few minutes, maybe longer.  But soon my absence was noticed and I heard the sound of my dad’s footsteps in my subconscious.  Before I had time to kick my own butt out of bed, I awoke to the angriest version of Herm charging at me from my bedroom door.  He did the butt-kicking for me.  I don’t remember to perfection, but it’s perfectly possible I had to change my underwear before I finally joined him and my brother outside in the winter wonderland.

Okay, let’s get back to mom.

Mom was always very aware of what we were going through on such mornings.  She was aware of the toiling that Clay and I, and of course my dad, would go through on almost a daily basis.  She was aware that the temperatures could drop below zero on certain mornings, and that each shovel’s load could be wet and heavy for my young back.  She was aware that the snow, when piled, was usually taller than I was.

I can’t remember if she did this every morning, or just most (I certainly remember it happening more than I remember it not happening), but when we finished our work, my mother would stand at the garage door as I put my shovel up and shed my winter gear, and she would sing.  She would sing, which she did with the voice of an angel.  And she wouldn’t just sing anything, and to my knowledge, she didn’t sing to just anyone.  The way it written in my memory, she would sing to me, and she would always sing the same song: Wind Beneath My Wings, by Bette Midler.  And she would always start it at the same place:

            Did you ever know that you’re my hero,

            And everything I would like to be?

            I can fly higher than an eagle,

            Cause you are the wind beneath my wings.

I would try to mask my embarrassment when she would do that, but it always made me feel loved.  Unquestionably.  Unconditionally.  My mother loved me.  If it was not made plain by the singing, it was certainly made plain by the warm breakfast that she usually had waiting for my brother and I (dad had already eaten several bowls of mixed dry cereals by the time he woke us up).  One day is was French toast, another day it was scrambled eggs, another day hot bowls of Cream of Wheat, which we kids became adept at perfecting with several pounds of brown sugar.

Pancakes were her specialty, and when pancakes coincided with a holiday, you could expect them to evolve into some creative culinary creation.  Green shamrock pancakes on St. Patrick’s Day.  Pink heart pancakes on Valentine’s Day.  Orange pumpkin pancakes on Halloween.  That is the kind of mother I grew up with.  Special pancakes and special songs.

Other times in my life she would sing that song to me.  Sometimes she would just whisper it in my ear if it was appropriate for the occasion.  I think it made its way into many milestone moments of my younger life: graduations, piano recitals, high-stakes tennis matches, saying goodbye at the MTC, my wedding day.  It kind of became our song, and it is inexorably linked to the memory of the mother of my childhood.  My sweet mother.  The wind beneath my wings.

Return to the Reservation

It was mid-March 1976.  My father had just graduated from law school at the University of Utah, and my mother was eight months pregnant with their second child.  They had set out early that morning from Salt Lake City with the humble belongings of a young, poor couple: dinnerware (a wedding gift), clothes (of the thrift store variety), and enough books to strain the rear shocks of their '71 Chevy Vega, which they named "Kermit" on account of it being green.  Their most prized possession, an incorrigible little 2-year old named Robert Wade, was tucked tightly into his carseat, and given toys to distract him from the long hours and desolation of Southeastern Utah.

They drove all day and into the night, making frequent stops for little Wade and to check on the health of the car.  When they finally arrived in Gallup, New Mexico that evening, the sun had already fallen, and the small town (known by the natives as the "Indian Capital of the World" because so many tribes share its space) was aglow with street lights and illuminated bar signs.


My mother had lump in her throat as my father pulled onto historic Route 66 and drove through the heart of town.  To her left and to her right she saw the ugliness of Gallup.  Drunks stumbled in and out of bars and down the sidewalks.  Homeless men lay in the street gutters and paid no mind to passing cars.  It was an alien and unfamiliar sight for her.  She had grown up in the cozy bubble of Cache Valley, within the larger bubble of the state of Utah.  By steady increments peppered over a lifetime, she had grown accustomed to a world of vigilant church-goers and affable neighbors that would bring you a cheese and potato casserole if you fell ill.  She was the kind of woman who had only seen alcohol consumed in movies, and who, by her own admission, had never uttered a single swear word.

My father's skin was a bit thicker, his mind more resolute on living and working among the Indians.  While some of that could be attributed to his more PG-13 upbringing with siblings who enjoyed tormenting one another and a mother who frequently referred to her kids as "little shits," much of my father's obstinate confidence that night came from the fact that he had lived there before.  Two years as a Mormon Missionary on the Navajo Reservation put ice in his veins and assurance in his heart.  It helped him to see past the drunkards in the street, the raggedness of the town, and, with the exception of their puttering automobile, the profound absence of the color green.

My mother made it about half a mile into town before she burst into tears.

I spent the last week in Gallup for a conference hosted by Teach For America for school leaders in rural regions, and the trip gave me an excuse to do a little family history.  I had always known that my family had lived on the Navajo Reservation before I was born, and I had always known that my oldest sister, Mandy, was born there.  But that's about the extent of it.  I didn't know...

• That my family lived in Fort Defiance, Arizona, and that each day my dad drove 15 minutes south to Window Rock where the Navajo Tribal Headquarters were located.
• That my sister Mandy could not be born in Fort Defiance or Window Rock for lack of western medicine, and was instead born just outside of Gallup in a Christian-run hospital in Rehoboth, NM.
• That my sister Mandy was pale and bald.  The only other baby in the hospital that day was a premature Native with long, black hair.
• That my family only lived on the Reservation for 9 months.
• That they lived in a small government-built house with aluminum siding.
• That it was a phone call and a job offer from the late Congressman Gunn McKay to my dad that pulled my family from the Reservation and to Washington, DC.
• How hard it was on my mother, or how happy she was when that phone call came.

Throughout my week on the Reservation, I asked myself, "Could I live here?  Could I do what my dad did?  Could I bring my wife and family to this place and live and work?"  There is certainly work to be had.  Teach For America is placing as many teachers and alumni as they can on Navajo land, and the demand is still not met.  The Indian school systems are desperate for committed educators to fill the vacancies that seem to have a revolving door attached to them.  But so are school systems in L.A.  And D.C.  And Oakland.  And New York.  And North Carolina.

Could we live and work on the Res?  Probably.  Will we?  Probably not.  Celeste and I fielded a lot of questions while we were in Utah earlier this month about where we'll go after I finish my doctorate at UNC.  We really don't know.  We talk about returning to the West and probably will, but right now our future is as wide open as the endless horizon of the New Mexican desert.

TFA put us up in El Rancho Hotel & Motel, aka"Home of the Movie Stars", where many of the big names in Hollywood would stay when filming westerns.  The interior is a mixture of a rustic Southwest lodge, Indian Art, and Hollywood headshots signed by the big names that stayed there, including John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Humphrey Bogart.

Old school.

A Navajo silversmith.

The County Courthouse

Zuni Indian Dance.  The city of Gallup hosts nightly Indian dances in the summer.

Pyramid Peak.  We hiked to its summit on the last day of the conference.  For some of the participants, it was there first experience with a mountain.