As the person who coordinated the tribal gift to Amara and Sara I want to share a bit of the journey with all of you...
First, I want to say that the gifts presented to Amara and Sara on New Years Weekend are truly from the whole tribe, Olympia and beyond! I received donations anywhere from $2 to $100 starting in November. On New Years Day, I received the $40 I spent over our collective funds! I was amazed.
As for the ideas....the idea for the tree symbol on the blanket originated in Bellingham. I emailed Jenny Macke about our plans and she immediately emailed back with an idea...the symbol of the tree with branches and roots reaching out into our lives, communities, and families as Amara and Sara have done. I took the idea to Visudha who immediately had a vision and drew it up...Shari Trnka was very excited about it all and is a magical seamstress so we gave her half our collection in exchange for her work to create the blanket...Shari decided the bare branches needed leaves and came up with the idea to have us all pitch in our wool/cashmere sweaters and cut leaves and pin them to the tree. She sewed the leaves on (lots of stitching! I gave her some chocolate damiana liqeuer as a tip but if anyone can offer massage please do!) and the blanket was given to Amara and Sara.
At the same time, Liz helped from the inside to guide the purchase of the more practical gifts…the ideas that surfaced were wool rugs, bookcases, possibly DJ Traktor, a good surge protector came up after the deck blew out during the storms…I have a friend who gets the best rugs from Mexico and I had her send pictures for us to look at. The warm gold colors and zapotec stars reminded me of the Pagano's. I also spent some time researching the Monster products and wasn’t sure which surge protector to get but decided to go with the one we had the exact amount of money for.
The idea behind the pedicures came from Margit but was paid for by our collective funds. I was pleased to hear that this will be Amara's first pedicure - yeah! The other beautiful piece of this gift were the cards created by Bill up in Vancouver. I had saved those cards for a couple years and decided this was the time to use them!
And a couple extras got thrown into the pot from Margit and I personally. I think we were both caught off guard a little. I definitly was. I was glad my WNBA basketball cards in cans were received with a bit of laughter. Margit's foot lotions and beautiful Raven artwork were received as well.
The idea for honoring Amara and Sara has been sitting with me for awhile. The possibility originated at my first workshop with Kathy Altman, called The Moving Center. After dancing a week with her we all honored her by standing in a circle around her and going one by one into the center with a flower and speaking a few words. It was a beautiful moment for me and I remember it vividly. I said, "I return to the silver desert, but I will be back." I returned to my magical life in the desert learning about botanical medicine and I did come back! Back to dance with Kathy, back to dance with Amara and Sara, and back to dance in tribe and honor our teachers with all of you.
Deep gratitude to all of you for making the possibility reality.
Julie
