Nothing is ever perfect on the other side. Freedom of choice, and the beauty of imperfection are burdens for sure. No wonder the churches of the world are united in separating the world into dualities. As a poor teenage farm girl in a family of 12, family was a precious commodity for my mother. The germanic dialect they spoke in her community was nearly extinct in all the world, having come to the Americas almost 90 years before her. Imagine sharing 1 whole chicken for dinner between 12. 3 teenagers sleeping in each double bed. The girls all using their brothers faded works shirt for sanity napkins over and over. Add to that a couple of hours of hard farm work before school in the coldest of winter days, and no shower at all before going on their way way to learn to read and write. Maybe they could keep it together like this long enough to get through eight grade, which is all anybody really expected anyway. There were cousins abound already, and nobody remembers how two native sisters ended up being adopted in her mother's sister's family. Their long dark straight hair and dark eyes stood out in contrast to the light curls and blue eyes on Sunday morning mass. Their new older brothers suited and solemn, having lost their father several years before them. Maybe their mother and uncle-father wanted to build upon a family of their own? Maybe observing my mothers harmounious family in the farm house across the street appeared to be a well oiled machine; it's half a dozen sisters keeping up with the meals, the ironing, the milking... Today, white families taking in native girls is illegal. Because like my mother's dialect, the native people are nearly extinct in all the world. Because in the past, they were treated like property. Not just farm hands and housekeepers like my mothers sisters, but objects of long term sexual child abuse too. After my mother witnessed this with her own eyes, having discovered this 'in the act', you would be certain it would change her, yes. But when she reported it and tried to get help, the adults all invited her into the secret to hold and to keep and protect and perpetuate. Because family was important. What would the community think? So, when the native sisters ran away, the people said they had become 'go-go dancers', and pretended to be outraged that any real human woman would would use their sex to survive. They pretended to reserve the moral high ground, on side of the line that separated the right for the wrong in an alliance that protected them from the sinful and savage and the disconnected lonely souls of the world. And as the story comes to an end, the boys die as old men that glow in the rightousness of the Lord. Like a fucking saint. I know, because I read it in his obit. And me, all I had to survive was some self-imposed seclusion with a stack of journals in my room.