WREN
As Wren makes her way down Highway 11, her memory slips back to a mostly happy childhood, with a sense of joy in how she and her sister were raised. An industrial accident had taken Wren’s father when the girls had just started elementary school. Their mother Edna used to tell them it was a sign that they were born on the date of a solar eclipse: March 7, 1970. The eclipse, a phenomenon representing darkness and light. “A day when elves play with ogres,” she’d tell the girls. “There is peace in the entire universe.”
Wren’s mother had a colourful explanation for just about everything. Like the story she told and retold about how the girls’ kohkum killed a bear using only a river rock. “Kohkum was out picking berries,” the story always began. “She wasn’t wearing her glasses and didn’t realize that a small black bear had wandered into the same patch she was in until they came face to face. The bear snarled at her, but Kohkum had an arm like Ronnie Lancaster.”
Wren can still hear the joyful sound of her mother’s laughter every time she got to this part of the story. Lancaster is a football player who led the Saskatchewan Roughriders to their first Grey Cup win in 1966. Edna remembers that Grey Cup clearly, as it was the same day as her first official date with her soon-to-be husband, the girls’ father. As the years passed, Edna learned to love the precision of the game of football. She said it taught lessons on perseverance and a belief that all things are possible. Edna would continue her bedtime story, in the exact same wording each and every telling.
“That’s when Kohkum picked up a rock.” Edna always smiled at this point while continuing to describe. “And threw it with precision at Muskwa’s third eye.” Muskwa is the Cree word for bear. Edna used her stories to teach the young girls the basics of the Cree language.
“That third eye,” she’d continue, “is like a baby’s soft spot. And that bear falls hard. Coyotes watch from the bush. They are always watching, and they spread the word quickly: ‘Don’t mess with Kohkum. She’s got a gift.’ After that day, Kohkum was never stalked again while out picking berries.” It was a story about believing in yourself—believing in magic and the spirit that surrounds.
Edna would tell the twins that she named them after birds because they were always meant to fly. Wren is the bird of vibrancy, alertness, efficiency; a pledge to make each day have meaning. Raven is steadfast and symbolic of change and transformation. Edna also started teaching the girls how to do beadwork before their sixth birthday. That’s when she began learning, too.
“Other than creating beautiful designs,” Edna would tell her girls, “it teaches patience and calls for attention to detail. Things that’ll help you along the way as you grow.”
This is how Wren embraced her love for expression through the arts. An early start. Now Wren creates designs with materials supplied by Mother Earth. Clay and pottery. Each time she throws some clay, it is a lesson in gratitude, because Edna passed only a couple of years later when the twins had just started grade three. The cause of death was cited as a heart attack, but Wren always figured her mother died from a broken heart. She remembers hearing her mom cry herself to sleep in the next room.
It’s the reason the twins were raised by their grandmother.
“Rest in peace, Nikawiy. I love you—kisakihitin,” she repeats in the Cree language, wiping away a tear lingering in the corner of her eye. Her musings have travelled with her all the way home. Wren unloads the groceries, loving the sound her heels make on the cobblestone pathway leading to the front door of the farmhouse. To Wren, it’s a magical pathway built by Mooshum, her grandfather.
She and Raven collected the pathway stones themselves when they were girls. Their grandfather sent them down by the creek, instructing them to gather as many stones shaped like pancakes as they could find. It took days for them to find enough. They walked along the creek bed all the way to the rail line, and then back in the other direction right up to the outskirts of town. Good exercise, for sure. Wren can’t remember a time in her life that she had more restful sleeps than when she, her sister and Mooshum worked on this project.
Once there was a substantial pile, Mooshum started digging ruts into the soil, little indentations big enough for each rock to poke its face up, just above the crust of the earth. He arranged the rocks strategically while the girls planted lollipops along the loose soil at the outer edges of the pathway. Mooshum joked that big lollipop trees would grow there in the future. Giant trees covered with lollies did not grow, but warm memories most surely did.
***
Now in her kitchen, it was time for Wren to start creating more memories. She went to the pantry to retrieve flour, lard and baking soda. Raven will love this pie I am making for her with the berries I picked last week, Wren thought. After she placed the top crust on the pie, she carved a smiley face into the dough the same way their mom always did when the girls were little.
“Someday soon you will be a kohkum too, Nikawiy,” Wren said and raised the palms of her flour-covered hands to the sky. She was speaking with her mother, now in the spirit world. “And I will tell stories about you. Lots of them, but I will change that bear story a bit, and tell this child that you killed a bear using only a river rock. Kisakihitin. I love you, Mama.”
SHADOWS PAST
Lord Magras is Wren’s new husband. Hell of a heavy burden to carry a name like that: Lord. It was often the source of scorn for Lord when he was a boy, and especially as he grew into adolescence. Lord always wondered why his parents would give him such a name. “You are above others,” his mother would tell him when he was young. “You won’t settle into the lower class. You are Lord, meaning superiority.”
When his class studied Lord of the Flies for a literature class in grade seven, Lord found his top-flip desk filled with dead flies one day. He left school and ran home crying to his mother. It upset him so much that she allowed him to stay home for two days. Lord was coddled to the point of suffocation. “I will always be here for you,” Lord’s mother would tell him. “No one can take care of you as I do.”
People he met would joke about the name for years later. The only person who didn’t was Wren. She didn’t care about his first name and instead commented on his last name, Magras. “Sounds like muskwa,” Wren said, glancing into his eyes for a moment before becoming shy and looking away.
“What does that mean? Muskwa?” Lord asked.
“Kohkum told me it means bear. A symbol of strength,” Wren replied, this time meeting his glance and offering a smile.
“I’m not familiar with that term. And what does kohkum mean?” Lord inquired.
“That’s the Cree word for grandmother. It’s nice to meet you. You a collector?” asked Wren, changing the topic. “I’m the artist for tonight’s exhibit. Thanks for coming.”
Wren’s new works were being exhibited at the Dunlop Art Gallery, located within the walls of Regina’s central public library. A committed library patron, Lord had stopped in to renew some materials he’d borrowed but hadn’t gotten around to finishing yet. As he strolled by the Dunlop Gallery, he was captivated by the beauty of the works in clay that he saw on display from the library’s main atrium.