In the Company of Scholars

Some wake up to an alarm blaring from thousand-dollar phones while their coffeepot has hot water at the ready for their selection of different flavored brews.

Then there’s us. The ones who wake up because grandpa or grandma have already started the fire before dawn. Our parents are nowhere in sight, because they chose other things they loved more. Here we have no fancy coffeepots where coffee is found in plastic pods, instead we rub our eyes and shuffle past enamel coffeepots that are older than we are, brewing coffee grounds without filters on old stovetops or set atop a fire stove.

In college, before selecting courses, it’s required to do the prerequisites of classes we want to take so that we don’t fall behind or plummet in our academic standing that they judge by our grade point average. We take 101 classes to be ready for 102, a gradual scale we climb over the course of every semester. Not here, not at our grandparents’ house, where there’s just this simple unspoken syllabus we received when we were born, “I’m only going to tell you once and if you know everything, you have nothing to learn.”

Some of us splash cold water from pans to wash our faces and if we’re not lazy, we pour hot water from the pot kept on the fire stove. But if we’re lucky, some of us simply turn on the hot water from the tap, a luxury we don’t take for granted because we know all too well what it’s like when we can’t pay the propane bill.

As the sun rises, we hear the quiet muttering of sacred words not meant for us. They mumble scripture or whisper hope to our creator with cross in hand or pollen carried away by a gentle breeze to wherever it is that our grandparents’ prayers go. I have yet to understand or know who it is that they say their quiet prayers or chant their songs to. A song for the sun, the water, the trees, and even those wild running horses unbound by fallen fences with rusty barbed wire that no one has the time to fix. An Apache song sung to connect all life and for a moment I am with all that lived before just by hearing my grandma’s song.

As rez kids raised by grandparents, we start our mornings like this. Lessons taught are not written on any whiteboard, and there are no notes to take. Just listen and learn from these professors we don’t call by name. Instead, we call them grandpa and grandma in our native language and to address them as anything else would be a sign of disrespect. In their home, you will find no diploma displayed or certificates framed showing all they have mastered. Instead, you will see the wrinkles of wisdom when grandma smiles or grandpa’s withered hard-working hands that now ache reflect all the knowledge he carries.

In school, my GPA tells others that I am not good enough. Those numbers show the work I did not do well, or not at all. Those numbers reveal my academic standing is not good, and my financial aid options are limited. For those like me, those less than acceptable numbers prove only that the struggle of surviving on the rez and trying to rise above the disparities that plague our reservation impacts our academics too. It is not just the time to study or submit our work that we are stressed about.

We sit in classrooms or at our computers worried about how to keep our grandma warm because those wet blocks of wood are starting to run low. While trying to remember mathematical formulas is difficult, I find figuring out the equation of life on the rez is easy enough: Don’t be like the father who hates you or the mother who left you. Listen to grandpa and take care of grandma and don’t forget to be kind even if you have nothing. If given the choice, choose love and the only thing you should fight is doubt.

Some of us smell of sawdust as we frantically solve math problems because we got home late from cutting wood to sell just to make ends meet. Then there are those of us who wipe silent tears in the cover of darkness because we can’t let grandma or grandpa know we are worried about the days ahead.

For me, I stand at the window to look at my ‘98 Chevy that no longer runs and I cannot bring myself to tell grandma that I have no money for the bus, let alone nowhere near enough to get the transmission fixed. That old truck sits there as a reminder of what I lack and how out of reach some things feel, yet I still go out there and keep it clean because you never know this wild dream of getting this truck back on the road might happen. If that ‘98 Chevy ever runs on these reservation roads again, then maybe these academic dreams are not so impossible either.

I have a ridiculous dream of one day getting good enough in school to be able to write like Momaday or Silko, but the struggle of trying to find my place in this world makes me realize I am more like Tayo trying to find my way back home even as the war in my mind rages on.

If the dreams of rez kids ever come true and their parents are not there to cheer them on, just know they achieved some goals with less than perfect scores because they were loved and taught by scholars who sat and watched silly little birds from living room windows, by professors referred to as grandma and grandpa who had PhDs in our culture, language, and life.

Some of us may not have perfect GPAs but we have had the privilege to be in the company of scholars.