The New Pipe

               When I was back east visiting my mother this year, I noticed a Native American pipe displayed on a shelf in her living room.  I asked her how she came to have it.  She said back when we kids were little, the family visited Pipestone National Monument, where she saw pipes for sale.  She really wanted one, but she and Daddy couldn’t afford it.  Years later, after circumstances improved, she bought one at the Smithsonian gift shop.

               I examined it.  It had never been smoked.  “Well, do you want to smoke it?”

               “No!”  Mother is firmly opposed to smoking.  She then said she wanted to give it to me, that she wanted someone to have it who would appreciate it.  I had to sort this out.  Mother is a Methodist.  Her strong and enduring desire to have a pipe was unexpected, to say the least.  Maybe this pipe was important medicine for her.

               “I’ll have to sit with it and see what it wants.  Maybe it should stay with you.”

               “No.”  She was firm.  “I want you to take it.”

               I took the pipe back to my room.  It had a little gift shop sticker on it, saying “Plains Indian.”  I peeled it off.  The signature of the carver, Standing Eagle, was incised on the bottom.  Pipes usually like being washed, so I ran sacred water of life from the bathroom faucet over it.  I took it outside and put it on the edge of the porch in the moonlight.  The towering tulip poplars were dappled with light and shadows, and tree frogs sang exuberantly back by the creek.  The pipe probably hadn’t been outside in a long time.

               The pipe didn’t say much; it was quiet and had a solid feeling about something to do with future helpfulness.  I told Charlie I was bringing back a pipe, and he was very excited.  Charlie doesn’t get excited about much.  His disability had worsened last winter, and in spite of heroic efforts, he was losing ground.  He made a decision to face one of his biggest fears – misuse of power -- and the downward slide halted.  The pipe probably came into his life to help him have a future, and the depth of Charlie’s gratitude told me he probably wouldn’t without it.