A Maze Me by Naomi Shihab Nye Page A

smooth wooden drumsticks in my hands. I clearly recall the snappy beats we played to warm up. I still feel my cheeks flaming when I was forced to sit down, runner-up in the spelling bee, because they gave me a military word. I remember the smooth shiny hair on the back of the head of the girl in front of me in Spanish class better than the subjunctive tense in Spanish. Some things stayed, during those rough years of transition, but not the things I might have dreamed.
    What do you want to be? people always ask. They don’t ask who or how do you want to be?
    I might have said, amazed forever. I wanted to be curious, interested, interesting, hopeful—and a little bit odd was okay too. I did not know if I wanted to run a bakery, be a postal worker, play a violin or the timpani drum in an orchestra. That part was unknown.
    Thankfully, after turning seventeen I started feeling as if my soul fit my age again, or my body had grown to fit my brain. But things felt a little rugged in between.
    In college I met Nelle Lucas, who wore billowingbright cotton skirts and lavish turquoise-and-silver Native American jewelry. She taught ceramics (favoring hand-building techniques—coiling, rolling, smoothing) and showed us how to prepare our own basic handmixed glazes. I think I took her class three times.
    Nelle and her husband had built some modest, rounded Navajo-style hogans out in the Texas hills, and on weekends, they shepherded little flocks of art students to the country. We dug a big hole in the ground to fire our pots and sang songs while the pots baked under the earth. Sometimes the pots disappointed us— blowing up, or cracking. One person’s pot might compromise someone else’s—after exploding, fragments stuck to your own precious glaze. Or someone’s glaze would drip strange configurations onto your perfect iron oxide surface. It was a tricky operation. Nelle sneaked wisdoms into every line of art instruction. She wasn’t terribly impressed with anyone’s pots, but she loved the process and she loved us all. Also, she made us laugh. She experimented . We slept in a circle, head to toe. We patted whole-wheat chapatis, cooking them over an open fire for our breakfast. Nelle loved freshly mixed granola, wild deer, and patience. She urged us to slow down and to pay better attention to everything. She was radiant, enthusiastic, unpredictable. And she was older than all our parents.
    Somehow, knowing Nelle when I was in college gave me all the faith about “growing up” I needed. At every age, a person could still be whimsical, eccentric. A person could do and think whatever she wanted. She could be as spontaneous at seventy as at seven. I felt incredibly relieved.
    Midway between Brady and Mason, Texas—two wonderful hill-country towns—there’s a mysterious general store called Camp Air. A small red stagecoach sits out front, and a little sign says the store is closed on Fridays and Saturdays, but I have never seen it open. Some cows with very short legs are penned up nearby, next to a “watermelon shed.” There’s a larger sign: HEY IF YOU NEVER STOP YOU’LL NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU MISSED . I always stop. And I still don’t know. But I like it. I like it a lot. “Camp Air” has a good ring to it. That’s where I want to live, every day, inside my timeless brain.
    If you have a voice, and aren’t afraid to spend it . . .
    If you have many voices and let them speak to one another in a friendly fashion . . .
    If you’re not too proud to talk to yourself out loud . . .
    If you will ask the questions pressing against your forehead from the inside . . .
    you’ll be okay.
    If you write three lines down in a notebook every day (they don’t have to be great or important, they don’t have to relate to one another, you don’t have to show them to anyone) . . .
    you will find out what you notice. Uncanny connections will be made