This is yet another recollection from my years on the reservation.

When I first went there as a K-12 librarian, I was twenty-four years old with a college degree and no children. My aide in the library, Melissa, was the same age. She had a GED and six children. (By the way, her son Michael, was one of the most enthusiastic readers in the school.)

Although I didn’t fully understand it at the time, the two of us had something in common—we both had drunks for husbands. Hers was violent. Mine was not.

Once my husband was old enough, he had joined the Elks Club in his home town of Kingman in the upper lefthand corner of Arizona, more than three-hundred miles away from where we were living. At the end of October our first year at Sells, we received his Elks Club monthly newsletter which included a solicitation for funds to provide Thanksgiving dinners for needy families in the Kingman area.

When it came time to write the check, I balked. After all, there were far needier families right there in Sells than there were in Kingman. Instead of sending money to the Elks Club, I suggested we provide Thanksgiving dinner for someone on the reservation, and Melissa’s family was my first choice.

I confess to being guilty of telling a white lie because I told her that the Elks Club allowed each member to choose a family to receive a Thanksgiving basket. “So which do you want?” I asked Melissa the next morning, “a turkey or a ham?”

I had started teaching in September, so this was less than three months later, but I had already learned that answers to questions weren’t always immediately forthcoming. Hours later, when it was almost time for school to let out, she finally replied very softly, “I’ve always wanted to have a ham.”

I have to say that was the happiest grocery shopping trip of my life. The first thing I bought was a large plastic laundry basket. At that point many of the houses on the reservation still lacked electricity. Not knowing whether or not Melissa’s house had a refrigerator, I opted for the largest canned ham I could find and put that in the bottom of the basket, then I filled up the rest of it with all the accompaniments.

On the day I gave it to her, we made the transfer discreetly, from our trunk to hers with tears on both sides. Now that I have learned more about the Tohono O’odham and tears, I realize what a big deal that was both for her and for me.

She moved from being a library aide to being a classroom aide the following year, so we only worked together that one year, but we stayed in touch until her passing a number of years ago.

Remember that old song from Sound of Music, the one that goes, “Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could?” In this instance, those lyrics are dead wrong. We gave nothing to the Kingman Elks Club that year, and I doubt they ever missed our participation.

Instead, something important came from that nothing—a still precious memory.