A Girl Who Knows (A Short Story: Part 3 of 3)
LONGEVITY
At home, Shetto was spinning clay. The mold he had didn’t look very good because he was still ashamed about what had happened that morning at the dump. He lost a fight in front of the woman he loved and so the fighting spirit left him and he had no energy or enthusiasm to do anything well.
But as he worked the clay his mother’s face appeared in it as it spun. Shetto was afraid but didn’t move and his mother spoke to him through the clay.
And she said to him, “Life is not a story, it’s a poem that tells a story. So follow the rhythm of your days. Your life will come back to you again and this is not the end of your joy. You must learn from this and accept it and move on. For if you stay ashamed of yourself for too long you will become selfish, because you are thinking of yourself too much and not of the woman you love. Do you not think she’s affected? Do you not think she cares for you? Do not allow your ego to get the best of you too much. Besides, your woman does not think upon your ego as much as you do. This has happened while you are still young. Grow from it. A young man doesn’t require much praises but much teaching. It is teaching that will make you the kind of man you want to be, not an inflated ego.
And when a woman speaks to you about your feelings listen to her, for she will help you connect your brain with your heart. Accept your feelings for they are necessary in shaping you. And they are part of who you are because they represent the child within you. To accept yourself you must accept the child within you, the emotional body. You cannot build yourself up without it. Now return to the woman you love because you are still a man and you are still her man. In the future days you will laugh with her about this for laughter is a healer. And we are all clay, being molded and renewed each day. You cannot prevent what is not your fault, but if you stay away from foolishness you will always have respect in the eyes of the creator. And he will always be able to mold you.
“Go now, and return to the woman who you have loved since the early days of your youth.”
After speaking her mother’s face disappeared into the clay and Shetto sat down with a light heart. Because the burden he had was chased away by the words of the spinning clay.
And Shetto visited Maisha and gave her and her mother their phones that he had fixed. And they were both glad their phones were working again. Maisha went for a long walk with Shetto and she told him she understood what he was feeling. And Shetto told him he understood what she felt too and told him he was never mad at her for anything.
Maisha also taught him everything she had learned from her grandpa and Shetto nodded when she spoke and he was amazed by her. She sounded mature and like a woman who understood many things. So he respected her more than he did before and knew that he could share any feeling he had with her because she was a woman of understanding.
And Maisha was careful with the foods she ate and followed her natural instincts. She stopped eating pork and cut down on the other meats, especially if they were more than 2 days old and ate wild foods and the green things of her farm that were not acidic because she felt that acid can never be a good thing. So she did not eat lemons but ate limes. And although spinach was green she avoided them because they tasted acidic in her mouth and knew those things were not pleasant for her body. She ate only of those things that gave her life, because not everything that her mom prepared was life giving. And not everything that grew in the earth was life giving.
So Maisha became a woman who was very in tune with her body and with the earth and she had a relationship with the earth that was good and with herself that was sweet and she sounded wise among other women who did whatever they chose and ate whatever they chose.
Maisha used the herbs of the land to heal her people of diseases and cancers and heal wounds that were stubborn to heal and to purify the body. And Maisha understood that the Most High gave the people a natural way to live in harmony with the earth and she also understood the way that her people should be with one another. She taught her husband Shetto many things and she listened to him and he taught her more things that she didn’t know and Maisha visited the elders of the land who were wise and learned as much from them as she could before they went to sleep and the words she spoke were ancient truths.
And everyone respected her for the words of her mouth and the work of her hands because everything she said and did was rooted in the truth because they were rooted in the earth and in the blood of the ancestors who had returned to the earth.
And Maisha knew that she was alone in her wisdom and understood that this was a bad thing. So she taught wisdom and understanding to other women and they increased in knowledge. And after many women increased in knowledge there was a decrease in evil in the land and the people were respectful and kind to one another. And men respected women because many of them were in tune with the earth and with the truth so the men learned from them. And their children were good because the children of another family were also good so there was nowhere for children to learn evil, because all parents were wise because of the women that Maisha had made wise. So the lives of the children were good and they were happy and they started to live longer than their fathers, and their offsprings lived even longer than them.
And the increase in years began with Maisha and continued until their sons and daughters and the children of their children lived beyond two hundred years and some began to live past four hundred. And the former blessings of the old days returned to them and many hidden truths became known and they continued to live longer and it was in those days that a person of forty years was still a child, and a man of seventy years was a young husband and their bodies were strong and the women were also strong.
And everyone of them remembered and respected their ancestor Maisha and her husband Shetto for they had renewed the wisdom that was lost and restored health to their bones. And they all loved Maisha and made songs of her name, for the name Maisha in Swahili means life and she was truly a woman of life who gave life to her people. And the women taught each other that truth and wisdom are life because those things sustain life and the women understood that because they produced life from their wombs, they also had to produce life from their hands and the words that came from their mouths. So they were blessed and their husbands loved and respected them for their women were living their lives with understanding who they were.
And the spirit of life was happy with what the women had done and blessed them so that none of the people died because the life that women continued to bring chased death out of their land and then came the days that the prophets of old dreamed of, when a youth of a thousand years was considered a child and they were surrounded by ancestors, some of who had known Maisha when they were children but were too young to understand what she was saying because they had not yet learned words.
And this became the generation that had no understanding of death.
