Conjuring
Inviting my mother, my dog, and my grandmother to drop in for a visit.
“When I conjure these memories, they are of the present to me …”
~ Romare Bearden
Vespers
A couple of weeks ago, during our monthly Vesper’s service, I felt my mother standing to my left, and my dog, Zeke, sitting to my right. They both died a little over a year ago, about a month apart.
With my eyes closed, I could almost feel the softness of the fur on top of Zeke’s head, and the silkiness of his floppy ears between my fingers. My mother’s hand was dry and cool. I could feel the bones beneath her tissue paper skin. I felt her head lean into mine as I reached out to touch her silver hair.
Mind you, all of this happened while I was sitting in front of the assembled congregants, leading them in quiet singing in between periods of silence and guided meditation by our minister. They were blissfully unaware. I did not move, but I experienced the physical sensation of my mom and my dog on either side of me, a tingling in my fingers as I imagined touching them. I marveled that my mom was able to stand for so long (she had been wheelchair bound when she died), and I noticed Zeke lie down and put his chin on his paws midway through the service. It was a comfort to have them with me.
When I got home, I told my husband about my experience. He asked, “Did it feel like a visitation? Or did you conjure them?” I felt a little spark and replied, “I think I conjured them,” loving the way that word felt in my mouth, feeling the truth of it in my bones.
According to Merriam-Webster:
Conjure: (1) to charge or entreat earnestly or solemnly (2) to summon by or as if by invocation or incantation
I summoned my mom and Zeke, calling up the details of their bodies - how they looked, smelled, felt to the touch. Memorizing how their presence felt, how they made me feel, the accompanying love I felt for them. Still feel for them.
Were they really there? I don’t know. I believe their lifeforce is out their somewhere, a part of the interconnectedness of all existence. But can I literally conjure them? I choose to let that mystery be. I can conjure vivid memories of them though. They do live on in me. When my husband asked, “did you conjure them?” a light went on for me. I can bring them close anytime I want to! Conjuring them gives me so much more agency than simply remembering, which feels more passive. And conjuring almost has a physicality to it, that memory can’t always muster.
I conjured Zeke’s silky ears and my mother’s silver hair during a Vesper’s service. And I will again, whenever I need them near.
Hopi
I met renowned Hopi potter, Dee Setalla, back in March on a trip to Hopi with 16 other Unitarian Universalists. Every couple of years, our congregation partners with Sumi Nungwa, a non-profit with a beautiful mission, and travels to Hopi and Navajo for a week to:
Provide food, clothing, medical supplies, and firewood to Navajo & Hopi elders seeking to maintain their traditional lifestyle on their reservations
Build bridges between cultures
Encourage Hopi & Navajo artists to continue to produce their unique, traditional arts & crafts
Dee is a critical member of Sumi Nungwa (which means “to come together to help and benefit one another with no expectation of reward”). His family ranch is the staging ground for food deliveries to elders on the Hopi reservation. When we visit, we and the rest of the Sumi Nungwa folks, camp on his land, cook and eat with him in his kitchen, and learn about his traditional pottery artistry.
Dee is a devoted follower of the Hopi way and Hopi beliefs, but he has learned a thing or two about Unitarian Universalism over the years. The symbol of Unitarian Universalism is a flaming chalice, and Dee has made at least two of them - one commissioned for our minister by her husband, and one that now holds a place of honor in my living room.
This was my first trip to Hopi. On our first afternoon, a few of us were chatting with Dee about the pottery demonstration he would do for us later in the week. He had made six beautiful bowls and pots he would fire while we were there, all in the traditional Hopi way, using an open fire. Dee is a professional artist, so all of these pieces would be for sale.
He told us that one of the pieces he made this year was a chalice. In it, he had painted a hand, which represented his grandmother. She taught him the traditional Hopi way of making pottery, using only materials from the Earth, doing everything by hand (no potter’s wheel or kiln). She held a special place in Dee’s heart, and he shared stories of learning from her, watching her hands form clay into beautiful bowls and pots.
As he was telling stories about his grandmother, I remembered holding my own grandmother’s hand near the end of her 103 years of life.
Throughout her life, my grandmothers hands were always busy, either in her kitchen, in her garden, or tending children. As I sat with her that day, near the end of her life, I remembered her hands rolling out pasta dough to make ravioli for Christmas, planting Impatiens in her garden, and rubbing Vicks Vaporub on my chest when I had a cold.
I pulled the picture up on my phone to show Dee.
A few minutes later I walked over to Dee’s porch to join the line for mutton stew and other food for lunch. This was Dee’s annual Easter party. While he was not a Christian, his mother was, and he held this party in her honor every year, inviting elders, family, children, and others in his close-knit community. It was a festive day, full of stories from the elders, and a desert Easter egg hunt for all ages.
While I was waiting in line for lunch, I received a text from my dad, reminding me that my grandmother’s birthday was the next day - she would have been112. Less than five minutes after conjuring the memory of her hands, my dad reminded me to celebrate her.
Of course you can write this off as a coincidence, but I choose not to. I like to imagine Dee and I conjuring our grandmothers, his grandmother reaching out to him and mine reaching out to me, their energies crossing paths somewhere along the way to our hearts, adding their part to the bridge we are building between us.
