Where the Blood Mixes

I went to see this play on Saturday night. It was spectacular theatre, heart-wrenching, life-changing stuff. I don't think there was a dry eye in the theatre when it ended. The closing line was haunting. Last year, I bought a copy of the play but never read it. There was too much going on. I'll read it now.

When I returned home, I started reading another brutal account of contemporary Native realities. Louise Erdrich's Shadow Tag. I'd read a review of this recently and it sounded like my kind of novel, dense, searing, intimate. It was everything it was billed as too.

Life isn't as easy as any of us would like it. To explore its complexities and painful truths makde for a far richer and more substantial experience than avoiding them does. Unfortunately, most people, myself included, tend to avoid dealing with the difficult bits. In the midst of this minefield on my day off to reflect, I took a book out and read in the sunshine, honey lager in hand. I do not want to deal with this painful process or its consequences. I can't stand the thought of making another, as serious mistake as getting involved with my ex. I can't help but think that allowing him more time with our daughter would be wrong. I don't want to ruin her life. I know it can happen. Shadow Tag addressed that very thing. At one point a teacher says to a child's mother, "Since we have talked . . . there is no need for me to report, no need for this to go any further, not as long as I know that from now on you are going to protect your son" (Erdrich 128). Too often people turn away from awful truths. They don't want to see what would require them to act differently. I see this everyday. I know it in my own life.

All children should be protected. Those who haven't been are dangers to everyone ever after.