News From Native California - Spring 2016 Volume 29 Issue 3 | Page 16

I Carry Her
With Me

A photo of Linda’s
grandmother lives in
the very first traditional
basket that Linda
made. Photo courtesy
of Linda Yamane.

Writtten by Linda Yamane

last night i dreamed of my grandma.
She was even more tiny and frail than in life,
and I instinctively reached out, lifting her up and
wrapping my arms around her, holding her gently and
protectively against my body as I would a child. Though she
had been standing on her own, I knew she no longer had the
strength to walk, that I was her means of movement, and
would carry her with me, wherever we needed to go. One of
her sisters was also in the room, and I asked if she’d like to
go with us to visit another sister.
While the events of the dream seemed real, as dreams
do, I also felt a sense of wonder that here was my grandma,
alive, and her sisters too, though I knew they had all died
years earlier. They were gone from this world, and yet here
I was carrying my grandma in my arms, so fragile and
light, so real, and so very, very old.
My paternal grandmother, Beatrice Christine Barcelona,
was born in Tres Pinos in 1894, one of the elder of ten children
born to José Zabalón Barcelona and Alta Gracia Soto.
She loved to talk and she loved to tell stories of her family
and her life. California was a very different place in those
times, and I grew up hearing of the family’s travels by horse
and buggy, the collecting of herbs for food and medicines,
her jobs as cook and house cleaner, and her many adventures
on horseback in the hills between Tres Pinos and Los Baños.
Occasionally she talked of being treated poorly because
of her dark skin. I learned so much about her and her
family—my family—during those early years of her life.

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▼ N E WS F ROM N AT IVE C AL IFO RNIA

Though I would never meet my
great-grandparents—one died before
I was born and the other when I was an
infant—it was as though I had known them.
And my grandma also talked about her parents, my
great-great grandparents, so I had a sense of being part
of something big and very real that went back in time and
encompassed the country in and about Los Baños, Tres
Pinos, Hollister, San Juan Bautista, San José, Santa Clara,
and Monterey.
My grandma and I were close, and though I’m now
sixty-six and she left this world in 1981, she still influences
my life daily. I think of her often, remembering bits of stories
or funny things she used to say, and sometimes even find
myself telling one of her stories to a friend. Next to having been
blessed with loving parents and a stable home life, I count
my grandma as one of the most important elements in my
life, permeating my love of family, history, the ancestors,
and traditional Ohlone culture. I seem to express this love by
creating beauty, as best I can, through my baskets, through
my art, through graceful tule boats, regalia, or old-time
songs, stories, and language found through the efforts of
many years.
Last night I dreamed of my grandma, and when I
woke from this dream, I closed my eyes, trying to commit
it to memory, hanging on to the miracle of having held this
person so dear to me after such a long time. And it struck
me—I carry her with me. I do carry her with me—always—
and I truly hope that one day my granddaughter will be able
to say the same of me.