I Saw My Life Flash Before My Eyes
“On a dark Blackfoot highway
Dad’s rants in my ear
Felt a strange sense of calmness
As towards a ditch he veered …”
Okay, okay cuzzin … this is storytime, not music time.
For serious though, lotsa people and cuzzins and aunties and exes and settlers and colonizers and babies keep asking me:
“O’mahk’siik’iimi, it’s been like 6 months, yo … you, like disappeared … where’s the $&%#@! stories, where’s all the $&%#@! insight into your chillin-on-the-ocean-beach-daily-but-still-a-lone-Blackfoot-in-unceded-M’ikmaq-territory artist life, tell us you $&%#@! … I didn’t subscribe to your emails for this”
“Geeeeez, take it easy, take it eeeaaasy
Don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy
Lighten up while you still can
Don’t even tryyy to understand (lol)”
I kid I kid, it’s a right wicked long story, but since we’re bestest cuzzins imma give you the juiciest gossip, I mean highlights:
Six months ago, driving at over 140km/hr, my father threatened to run us both off the highway!
In that mere millisecond moment, my entire relationship with him flashed before my eyes. From my choppy childhood to my tumultuous teens to my addict adulthood to my magnanimous middle-age, I rewitnessed it all.
The cross country journey to my patriarchal pummeling had begun beautifully, from 6,471km across the country, on a Mi’kma’ki beach … oh $&%#@!, gotta translate that for the settlers and colonizers:
“Mi’kma’ki aka Nova Scotia aka KKKanada’s ocean playground”.
An ocean playground it truly is, but I moved here to raise my young sons. On that beach (Crystal Crescent), as I puffed my fifth puff on a 28%-32% THC Wizard Fuel pre-roll, a thought came to me as clear as an azure sky of deepest summer - “it’s time to visit my $&%#@! dad”
It had been years, he lives on the West Coast in Washington State. We arranged to meet in September (2024) in Calgary. He decided to drive up, I decided to drive over. I’ve done the cross country drive tenteen times already, so to me the 48 hours of driving time ain’t no thing but a chicken wing on a string sling from Burger King. You know what though, cuzzin? This time it was different. I was on my way to see the ndn that gave this ndn life.
Even as a little seed I could see the plan for me: stranded on welfare, another broken family. This trauma though, it ain’t the same, it’s that intergenerational trauma, embedded deep in our NDN DNA, the struggles of our ancestors. You know exactly what I’m talkin’ ‘bout, cuzzin. The kinda trauma that can’t be avoided, it can only be harnessed.
I thought back to my choppy childhood:
I had a teenage father
he did as best a kid could do
he built cardboard forts with me
my mama left him ‘cause she got fed up
I thought back to my tumultuous teens:
I had a young father
we had a few blowups, just verbal though
once, he brought me and my li’l bro a huge garbage bag full of Star Wars action figures, me and my li’l bro cheered
once, he showed up last minute before my in-school Halloween Parade with a fancy rubber green mask that went perfectly with my ghoulish costume, the school cheered and I felt momentarily proud
I thought back to my addict adulthood:
I had a not-quite-middle-age father
our encounters always ended in blowups
he rarely visited me or his grandkids
once, we didn’t talk to each other for 6 years
I think about my magnanimous middle-age:
I have an aging father, my emotional intelligence has surpassed his
he lives on the other side of the country
I’m now cool, calm, collected and always look inward first
he is a stranger to his grandkids (my kids)
… in some ways I am a much better father than he ever was, but still, in some ways I am much worse.
Anyways, pops and I are in Calgary, smoking government-approved legal joints in the backyard of the weirdest retro airbnb this Blackfoot has ever airbnb’d. We’re reminiscing and chit chatting and shootin’ the shi* and trying to connect through drugs. In the past, the marijuana, that sticky icky icky, was like a buffer between us, a perfect podium. That purple haze all in our brains made it so we could focus on the only thing we have in common, besides our shared propensity for reclusivity: 70s Funk Soul and R&B.
But …
It was different this time, in this age of instant access to the world’s library of 70s music in the palm of our hand, the only retro I was interested in was learning how my father ticks. What in his past makes him him? What memories does he think about? How often does he look inward?
I asked a couple questions to gauge his ability to look inward, his response: to not look inward.
He got heated, but I stayed cooler than a polar bear’s toenail. He stomped away and said he was leaving, so I laid under an aging maple tree in the backyard and felt the dew of the morning autumn grass moisten my tan-faded slightly mocha skin. As a li’l ndn boy, the morning dew in our tipi made my nose bleed, some kinda colonial allergy (lol), but now the dew of the earth fuels me, empowers me. Blissfully aware, I thought of my own kids - their births, their first words, the endless diaper changes, all the milestones I witnessed, all the milestones I missed.
Nothing was going to steal my joy.
My father languidly appeared a while later, humble, and it felt sincere, which blew my mind, so we chatted a bit more. I wanted to show him more about Blackfoot people (he is Duwamish), so we drove to Blackfoot Crossing, where Treaty 7 was signed. Also, home of the World Chicken Dance Championships!
— actually — ya know cuzzin, even though you’re my cuzzin, I don’t think I can do this — it hurts so bad — every time I try to articulate what happened next, my words crumble into thousands of pieces, smashed and tattered — every time I try to find the humor in it, I start to cry, and not no war cry — a WHY CRY
$&%#@! the clever, $&%#@! the warrior, $&%#@! being witty, $&%#@! being funny. It was just two traumatized ndn men in a traumatized ndn car on a traumatized ndn highway, with a long traumatic history of enduring each other, and enduring colonialism. He said. I said. He said. I said. Jealousy. Envy. I pray. Creator doesn’t respond. Son keeps calm. Father escalates. Son grips the dash, and wonders what led to this. Father grips the steering wheel, and veers toward the ditch:
“Why don’t I just run us off the road?!?”
Those words haunt me to this day, to this very second.
Those words quieted my creativity, to the very core.
We haven’t spoken since, and who knows if we ever will again. As both a son and a father, big shout out to the parents and the kids. It ain’t easy. I don’t even know what to say anymore. Hug your parents. Hug your kids. Hug a cuzzin. Hug an auntie. Hug an ex. Hug a settler. Hug a colonizer. Hug a baby. Then go buy some of my books or something, I don’t know (lol).
