little light

 “I’m a grandmother,” smiled Aaka.

This was the tenderest moment in Iñupiat life.

Her dimples sank deeply into her weathered, happy face.

She had just finished the last stitch in the blanket she was making for the baby.

With brilliant yellow thread the color of the sunrise over the Chukchi Sea, she had seen the three Arctic whales into the red blanket.

“As I sewed the beluga whale, I hoped for the baby curiosity and song.

The beluga has a quizzical look in the way it holds it’s head.

It sings such beautiful songs, the old whalers called it the canary of the sea.

As I sewed the narwhal whale, I hoped for the baby compassion and empathy.

The narwhal places the tip of it’s hornlike tooth into the painful, broken tooth of a hurting narwhal to ease it’s suffering and pain.

As I sewed the beluga whale, I hoped for the baby mystery and endurance.

The bowhead’s scientific name is Balaena mysticitus because it’s ways beneath the frozen ocean are unknown to humans. We only know they live longer than any other living thing on earth.

Aaka held the baby in her hands.

They were tough hands.

When she was but a small girl, she butchered, skinned, and cooked seals, caribou and whales that hunters had brought to the village to share with the people.

She picked berries and eggs from the rocky, frozen ground.

The handle of the knife her papa made for her grew worn and smooth over the years.

Her hands grew strong and calloused.

“Ah,” she thought, “It is the Iñupiat way. One action affects another.”

Her hands were also tender.

She planted and nurtured the gerum flower that grew on the Point Hope ground.

The oil from the flower made her hands supple and warm.

“Strong, calloused, supple and worn. You hold opposites to make wholes. That is also the Iñupiat way.”

“My whole, broken hands are best for holding a baby,” she thought.

So they were.

She wrapped the baby in the blanket of the Arctic whales.

She raised the swaddled baby toward the sky.

It was completely dark, for the Arctic circle was tilted away from the light of the sun and the time of 24 hour darkness had come.

“It is dark,” whispered Aaka. “But you, my beautiful granddaughter, are light. You are Taklaingiq, the name in the old language for the bowhead whale. 

You are little light.

- trevor scott barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020