Home Before Ten

A Native American couple who barely know each other travel from state to state in the 1980s with their newborn child. "My mom has come to visit me to see the new baby. She brought an old, cracked Mason jar full of colorful corn kernels as a gift. When she was describing the significance of the gift she got the far away look in her eyes. She said, 'Please make sure to protect the seeds to ensure their safety during the seed wars.' Then she shook herself off and smiled at me shyly. My ma gets like this sometimes. She says that sometimes her words aren't her own but are coming through her from the ancestors. I don't always listen to her. But sometimes she is eerily right on about this stuff that comes up. So I put the jar on a high shelf (what's a baby gonna do with little hard kernel seeds, for crying out loud) to await their future purpose."