Signs of Grace

by Thomas Sandor

Two slender tree limbs had been lashed horizontally, to the short ladder, leading to the opening of her small, thatch roofed hootch, which was elevated above the dry earth on six stilt legs. Stripped of their bark, worn and smoothed by years of use, the upper member supported the coarse black raw silk threads that rose from its twin below. There she worked at this simple loom, aware, but without obvious recognition of me, the soldier at her back, watching carelessly as she performed this ritual that such a soul, so disconnected from its roots could not possibly understand.

There was no seat or mat before her work station. She squatted on the bare earth, not on the balls of her feet like a catcher behind home plate, but flat on each bare foot, which hugged the beaten clay soil. Clad in the same raw black raw silk cloth now coming to life upon her loom, her upward pointed knees, supported the brown, weathered arms, whose hands worked the shuttle back and forth across the threads. This Mountainard squat, from the central, rural highlands of Vietnam, where the first invaders were now embroiled in a civil war with each other, though uncomfortable to us westerners, was as natural to her as crossing a leg.

I was killing time, in ’69, after a routine outer perimeter patrol, searching for signs of these civil warriors. My M-16 and M-79 dangled casually from my shoulders, and a bandolier of launcher grenades, hung diagonally across my front. Despite the lack of a common language, or any reason for normal curiosity, my almost omnipresent, mental annoyance was somehow lulled to stillness, by this sliver of village life, which washed over me in the late afternoon breeze, like a meditation. It created space in a polluted mind, for the haunting, voiceless dialogue, which would echo, during the coming days of boredom, frenzy and infrequent sleep.

“I weave the shuttle in and out of the standing threads like the bird that makes a home for its young. Then I change threads, creating the colors of the forest spiders which taught the first of our people to weave the red and gold and green patterns, distinctive to our clan, and identical to all the cloth woven in this village. I compress the threads tightly as Grandmother and mother taught me, and as their grandmothers and mothers taught them. In these days of the fire winds which scatter the people like forest leaves, it is vital that I make the cloth tight and strong.

“Some have abandoned our cloth for cast-offs of the new invaders. The women who weave must convince them to carry the cloth of our clan always with them. How else will the ancestors recognize them from the spirit world? When they wander to the wrong mountain or the wrong valley, and their bodies are taken apart by the thunder that falls to earth, how will the clans know who their people are, and where their bones should be returned? Will not their souls wail forever, without bits of our strong, clan-distinct cloth amongst their parts, to give them a name? Like the wind that searches for its beginning, their spirits will never find the place of all the people who were, and all who will be.

“Our ancestors have protected us since all of time, even amongst invaders, but we dare not break the chain of their protection. We must keep the cloth which names us as one of the people. In these days of falling thunder and liquid fire, when orange death drifts softly from the great bird flocks, to cripple the unborn, and the dragon that flies, grinds its teeth over the sacred hills. We will remain.

“I worry for none of this; within the continuous circle of woven cloth, there is nothing to fear. When my need comes, in the fields or on the hills, my sisters unfold and open the circle of cloth, to the span of my outstretched arms, and I return to the earth, a portion of its gifts. The women who surround me, draw protection from the wind, the sun, the earth and water. I am safe then, as in the times before and after breath is taken. When I refold the circle of cloth, back onto itself, and cinch it about my waist, I repeat the cycle of protection within the small circle, as within the infinite.

“Grandmother told us that the cloth of our people, when properly woven, has the power to alter the spirit of others, and that even the heart of an invader, can be changed forever, when he sees a woman weaving the cloth of our people, uniting our ancestors with the living, opening the ears and the eyes of his trapped soul to the message, of they who are forever. I will see if I can open this one at my back.”

When we have a great many
The meaning of each is small,
But when we have only a few,
The meaning of each is great.

Copyright 2009, Thomas Sandor.