​Dream catchers did not originate in New Mexico, but if you know where to look, you’ll find them everywhere. Powerful symbols, they have spawned numerous metaphors to help us understand life. 
 
One version of the original dream catcher legend says that the Spider Woman (Asibaikaashi), was the custodian of all Ojibwe. However, as the tribe started spreading out across Northern America, she could no longer care for every member. So to help Asibaikaashi keep unity and peace within the growing tribe, the Ojibwe women started weaving magical webs for their infants. These orbs hung above the children's beds to protect them from harm or bad dreams. 
 
The orb shape is powerful. As Black Elk, the early 20th century Oglala Sioux Holy Man said,
 
Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round . . . The sky is round and I have heard the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind in its greatest power whirls, birds make their nest in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were.

Native American tribes now share the dream catcher. They understand suffering and injustice on a painfully fundamental level, having paid the consequence for others’ entitlement, selfishness and irresponsibility time and time again. 
 
As entitlement, selfishness and irresponsibility show no sign of waning, it is not surprising that other cultures have turned to the dream catcher as both inspiration and warning: a reminder of our interconnectedness. Rather than be angry that other cultures turn to the dream catcher, Native Americans, the Ojibwe tribe in particular, have reason to stand tall.
 
For another way to see the dream catcher is that our world is one ginormous web, into which we each weave the tiny thread of our lives, with no boundaries of race, religion, nationality or gender. We end up belonging in many different smaller webs: those of our families, our jobs, our schools, our neighborhoods, etc. 
 
We each carry a thread and trust that the person with whom we interact will meet us and hold up their thread, to create a solid stitch in the web. 
 
Sometimes this filament is impersonal but nonetheless essential: we trust the pilot will safely land this plane, we trust this chef will adequately cook this chicken. If each one of us holds up our end of the thread with integrity, we carry on in harmony. 
 
Often, the filaments are more personal: a parent, spouse, sibling, friend, co-worker. 
And when people with whom we are interwoven die, they take their thread with them, creating a hole in the webs of those connected to them. Just as the myth says, sorrow, loneliness and all sorts of pain enter into this hole that is created.
 
When those we care about die prematurely or violently, their string is yanked out of our webs, and the hole is larger, deeper.
 
It is almost impossible to build a healthy web with those who are selfish, entitled or irresponsible. In the legend of White Buffalo Call Woman, she passed this wisdom down in her Lakota Instructions for Living:
 
Friend, whatever you do in life, do the very best you can with both your heart and minds… When one sits in the Hoop Of The People, one must be responsible because All of Creation is related. And the Hurt of one is the hurt of all...
 
So it was this past summer that the hurt of Vice-Principal Susan Montoya became the hurt of all who knew her when she soared into our Big New Mexican skies on her fatal balloon ride. Shortly before the balloon fiesta, authorities released the toxicology report of her pilot: the amounts of cocaine and pot found in both his blood and urine were at near fatal doses. 
 
Because of his irresponsibility, entitlement and selfishness, the string of trust Susan placed in him was torn asunder. With her string violently severed, a gaping hole was created in the webs of her family, co-workers and friends.
 
So it was also this month, on the set of a low budget Western called “Rust”, shot under our Big New Mexican skies at Bonanza Creek Ranch. 
 
The web of a successful film set must be tightly woven: the hours, proximity and locations dictate it. When they are not, unspeakable tragedy can ensue, like the death of Director of Photography Halyna Hutchins.
 
Those who lack integrity, who live under delusions of entitlement, irresponsibility, or selfishness cannot hold up the threads others entrust them with, and the web suffers. 
 
The 24-year-old armorer from Arizona is the one responsible for the guns and any ammo on set – (and they found 500 rounds, some live). She is the one who alleged in an interview that although her father is a well-known armorer, she is largely “self-taught”, and almost didn’t take her first job, because, she shared, “I wasn’t sure I was ready”. She dropped many threads on this, her second job.  
 
The AD from California, the one charged with running the set, the one who handed the gun with a lead bullet to the actor, telling him it was a “cold gun” admitted after the fact that he didn’t actually take the time to properly check the gun. There were even two prior misfires of the prop gun on set the week before. This AD also dropped so many threads.
 
The star who fired the gun was also a producer on the film, in town from New York.  Who is responsible for a set if not the producer? Where he could have knit a tight web, he didn’t. In fact, hours before Halyna was killed, six seasoned camera operators and assistants quit, frustrated by subpar working conditions – safety being one of their concerns. It was reported that Halyna had been advocating for safer conditions for her crew; to no avail. Money, it seems, trumped people. 
 
When these qualified crew members threatened to walk, they were replaced with non-union workers. In fact, the qualified crew was informed that if they didn’t leave that fateful morning, producers would call security to remove them. This is the set the producers created.
 
These very same producers hired the AD who had been fired off a 2019 set for ….wait for it…the negligent discharge of a firearm.  
 
However, remember: a dream catcher is an interwoven circle. As Long Man (Isna-la-wica), a Teton Sioux observed:
 
I have seen that in any great undertaking, it is not enough for a man to depend simply upon himself.
 
So because this web is a circle, one must turn 180 degrees and consider its other side: the power of those threads that were woven with integrity and trust. The talented and beautiful Halyna clearly knew how to weave threads with others.  
 
Her gaffer Serge Svetnoy had worked with her on at least five other productions.  “We took care of each other,” he wrote after her death. “I can say with 100% confidence that she was my friend.” This confidence is the result of webs that make life worth living.
 
Because Halyna knew how to build wisely, Serge also acknowledged and thanked camera operator Reid Russell for being part of their web.  When Serge signals out Reid as part of the team, I know what he means. Reid is one who holds tightly the threads others give to him.
 
My favorite memory of Reid is from my brother Jake’s wedding. Jake and his bride danced to Bobby Darrin’s “Under the Sea”.  I remember thinking, “Wow, I didn’t know Jake could dance!”. That thought lasted until the bride’s cousin Reid later started to dance with her. And I mean DANCE.  As they began to twirl and groove, the dance floor emptied. In fact, the entire wedding party actually stopped, mouths agape. Reid moved with unabandoned vitality and grace, and the bride morphed in to Ginger Rogers to keep up. At the end of the song, the whole place burst into enthusiastic applause. “Oh my,” I whispered to our sister. “Cousin: 1, Groom: 0. Let’s hope Jake has some moves we don’t know about.”
 
Serge wrote, “Reid was with us and helped save Halyna”. 

But wait, you say, Halyna was not saved.  
Yet because she knew how to build a web of trust and love, Halyna was saved from dying alone. In the worst hour of her life, it was this web she had carefully built with those around her that held her tight.  She bled out in the arms of her friends: “We all loved Halyna,” Svetnoy declared.  “All loved” because that is how tight threads work, even in a professional environment: Love. And love never fails.
 
And Serge is right: with these strong threads, people live on. 
 
Chief Seattle Suquamish believed:
 
There is no death. Only a change of worlds. 
 
Halyna, a master web builder, will live on in every tightly woven web she built, despite the hole her departure tore.  Her threads to Serge and Reid reflect the artistry of shared interests, shared values, shared talents, the beauty of life: love of art, of family, of horses, of music & dance, and of the Big New Mexican sky. 
 
Yes, this self-described “restless dreamer,” Halyna will live on, especially in her husband Matthew and son Andros' webs.  But while she lives on in 9-year old Andros, the hole in his web is deep and irreparable, the kind that occurs when a parent dies when you are still a child. Ironically, this mirrors Reid’s childhood web. 
 
I hope to one day see Reid dance again at a family celebration. I am no fool. I know a deep piece of him forever lies in the ground in the church at Bonanza Creek Ranch, under the Big New Mexican Sky, tied with Halyna and Serge. I understand that he will never again dance with the unabashed vitality and possibility of youth that I remember. But to see Reid dance again at all will be a triumph of sorts, grace in its glory.
 
I do not know what it is like to lose a friend like Susan or Halyna so violently and suddenly. But like many, I do know what it is to lose someone I love with all my heart. So many of us are walking around with webs torn asunder, with holes into which grief, fear, doubt, disappointment, and pain fester. 
 
But it is this – this having loved and having lost - this is what shows us the need to hold all the tighter to the new threads people give us, and to the old threads friends and loved ones continue to share with us. This understanding helps us appreciate the daily chance to connect even casually, to live with integrity, so that we hold each other up. This understanding motivates us to eschew any irresponsibility, selfishness and entitlement we feel because we deeply understand we are all in this together.
 
Legendary musician and songwriter Robbie Robertson, of Mohawk and Cayuga descent, understands these dream catching webs. He does not believe in boundaries: not of race, religion, gender, nationality.  His song Ghost Dance can be seen as a powerful testament to those who weave strong webs in the face of those who do not:
 
You can kill my body
You can damn my soul
For not believing in your god
And some world down below

You don't stand a chance against my prayers
You don't stand a chance against my love
They outlawed the Ghost Dance
They outlawed the Ghost Dance
But we shall live again, we shall live again
We shall live again

​A crossroads of sorts:
 
At 38, after six years of online dating, and literally over a hundred dates, I accept the fact that I may never marry or have children. 
 
It is not the life I had envisioned for myself, but it is the life I am living at 38. 
 
To assuage the loneliness and create some sort of family, I decide to eschew the “Spinster with the Cat” stereotype and get a dog instead.
 
Jeff and Maddie, two of my best friends, both in serious relationships, have recently adopted dogs. (As life would have it, they will become the Godparents of my second daughter five years later). I enlist their help, because despite the ban on pets in my apartment complex, most tenants have cats. I rationalize that a dog of similar weight shouldn’t present a problem.
 
“Yes, Stephanie Young is my tenant,” Jeff lies to the Pasadena Humane Society on the phone when they call him.  “I see. What size?...I don’t want a large dog in that apartment ....What breed?... A rescue? Well, how much will it weigh when it’s grown?....”  They have no doubt that Jeff is my landlord. (He is a great writer....)
 
The Humane Society rates dogs based on how they interact with kids, other dogs, when startled, etc. The black and white dog (size of a cat) wandering the streets of Altadena is about six months to a year old (based on dental records) and receives A’s on all her ratings.  I want her. The problem is, someone else does too, and has registered for her before me.  When the Humane Society decides she is ready to be adopted (after no one claims her), the first people on the list will have half an hour in which to adopt her. If they do not, I will have one hour before they go to the next people on the list.
 
How is it that my siblings and friends seem to have married and had kids so easily whereas my even getting a dog feels so complicated?  I take a deep breath, determined to make friends yet again with resiliency.
 
I’m surprised and scared when the call comes. I rush to Pasadena, and fill out paperwork, naming her Homestead Lane Young. I choose this name for the countless carefree childhood summers on Homestead Lane in Cape Cod at my grandparents’ home.  Homestead because she will be my Home Girl.  Homestead mostly because with her I will build a Home. 
 
We bond quickly and thoroughly. She assuages my loneliness; becomes the reason I must return home. She will not only change my life, this dog. She will also change me.
 

She is as sweet as she had appeared.  But after two weeks, the landlord says I must get rid of her or be evicted. I have every tenant in the building sign a petition that they like the dog, and since they have cats, would like her to stay. Nevertheless, she must go. 
​
I scramble. My parents refuse to help. No friends in LA can help. I’m in deep.
 
While I look to move, I bemoan my dilemma to my sister in Tucson.  Her aunt through marriage who lives down the road from her agrees to foster Homie in Tucson. 
 

​Alice is the first of Homie’s many gifts.
 
An artist, Alice is warm and open and says Homie can stay as long as she likes, which ends up being six months. Later, Alice is the first family member I introduce to Jory when we are dating. When Alice comes out for our wedding, Homie is thrilled to see her. 
 
When my parents, twelve years later, move to assisted living in Tucson, I continue to find refuge and shelter with Alice. “Pain,” she shares, “Is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

​At 88, Alice still lives in her two-bedroom home with her dog Josie and cat Inky. She tutors, does water aerobics, art, and hosts groups like “Ladies in our Eighties” and potlucks for the neighbors. My daughters and I adore her. This, I realize, is how I want to age. I take notes.
 
Jory is yet another gift that Homie aids and abets in. 

​I meet Jory through an online dating app.  Allergic to all cats and some dogs, Homie is that rare species Jory can be around with no complications, and he revels in this. In fact, Jory grows to adore Homie so much that after we are married he reveals that if things hadn’t worked out between us, he was hoping he could take Homie. (Fat chance).
 
Like me, Homie adapts well to married life. She becomes a staple at a few tasting rooms where we join wine club memberships. She especially loves sitting on my lap during the long drives to Los Olivos and sticking her head out the car window, feeling the breeze. She takes such joy in the small things.
 
But not all is pleasure: Homie is attacked by another dog and almost dies. Homie gets hit by a car. Homie suffers pancreatitis – twice. Jory jokes that she is the Mr. Bill of Dogs.  I see her as my soulmate in resiliency. 
 
As the years go by, Homie, Jory and I adapt to new roles.  When I am pregnant, Homie becomes very protective of me, and starts sleeping on top of my legs, as if she intuitively knows things are different. She is both my protector and comforter. 


When we become parents, she rises to the role of nanny. She welcomes teeny Lillie Grace home from the NICU, and a year and a half later, greets Ali by licking her baby feet as an initiation into the family. Finally, four years later, she cuddles newborn Tyler, as if reassuring him that being adopted in to this family is not such a bad gig.  She naps often with the babies, and allows them to tug on her ears, drape themselves over her. As the kids grow, they share a deep bond with her, the kind that only comes when initiated at birth.

​Our days are filled with ordinary Homie moments: greetings when we return, walks, cuddles and lots of play.  
 
Homie is also a leash in creating life-long friendships. When I begin working for Silvana, we discover that she is as attached to her dog Annie as I am to Homie, and this creates a path of trust in our getting to know each other. Jeff and I convene every Saturday morning with pancakes and Homie and his dog Cocoalina to write. We think our writing will launch big careers. Hope springs eternal, but it’s Homie and Cocoalina and those pancakes that forge our iron friendship. Tutoring clients like Shelley and Lauren become cherished friends as we bond over our pups.
 
Whenever we travel, we have dear friends stay with Homie. Donna becomes Homie’s favorite, and texts us countless photos of her. You want a Donna when you are separated from one of your kids. 

​As the years melt away, Homie ages. Her eyesight worsens, as does her hearing. I age too, waking up needing to stretch and take supplements just to feel like I used to when Homie and I first found each other. Like most pets, Homie loves having us home during COVID. When we move to New Mexico, she and I struggle with the altitude change: she panting endlessly, me struggling to catch my breath every time after I climb the stairs.  
 
Then my parents’ quality of life precipitously declines.  I see this decline in Homie. Everything ends. But this I do not want to end. We must carry Homie up all stairs now, even over the doorstop outside.  Her back legs are stiff with arthritis, her eyes clouded with cataracts, her hearing impeded. I intend to post on Facebook for Homie’s fifteenth birthday, but can’t face how much she is aging. Just as my mother’s dementia flares, I feel in my gut that Homie is slipping away from me too.  
 
Homie spends more time sleeping now, often up against the floorboards. She no longer goes on walks.  We take her outside regularly to do her business, and she will spend fifteen minutes in the backyard, then bark at the windows for us to carry her back in. Once inside, she will poop on the rug. Our new family room rug reeks of urine, despite all our efforts to clean it.  We know she is failing, but live in a relative cloud of denial.  She is not in pain.
 
On the morning of Tyler’s fifth birthday, I carry her outside. As I place her down, her back legs give way, and she gives me a long look. “Sorry pal,” I tell her as I go back inside. She manages to stand, do her business, and bark. I bring her back inside. 
 
A few hours later, I am frantically trying to finish a book for a discussion I am slated to lead when Jory urgently yells for me to come downstairs.  I arrive to see him and our houseguest John bereft. “Homie’s dead,” he tells me. “What?!” I respond, because although I heard him clearly, I cannot process those words. He repeats himself, and adds, “She’s at the bottom of the pool.” 
 
The pool is at the other end of our yard, and Homie always avoided it. Although we had wanted to convert it to salt water, finances dictated that it stay chlorinated. Later, I remember that Homie’s smell and sense of taste were completely intact. We had been at this home for ten months, and she hated going over to the pool. Even when we sat by the pool, she always wanted to get away from it. It dawns on me later that she knew what she was doing.
 
John had let her outside, as we always do. After ten minutes, he went looking for her.  
 
Jory and John are standing there, clearly in shock. Fully clothed, I jump in to the water to greet her one last time. I take her in my arms and bring her to the surface. I lay her on the pool side and pull myself to her side. It is obvious that she is gone. Wet and sobbing, I also later realize that the tears are for me, not for her. She has a look of total peace on her face. She was ready to go.
 
Hovering over her body, all I can think to do is thank her again and again for being my companion, my buddy, my guide, my soulmate. She walked with me into middle age, from an unattached girl to a wife and mother of three whose body is aging, whose parents are dying, who understands all too keenly the fragility of our lives.
 
The kids say their goodbyes and Jory makes all the arrangements. I cut Homie’s fur for us each to keep (having made her clay footprints at the same time I had them made of the babies). It is still Tyler’s fifth birthday. Homie has passed the torch from the first adopted kid to the last.
 
Hours later, I call Jeff crying. He had done the same with me, when his Coco died years before. Likewise, I text Silvana in Milan to share the news.  Annie and her next dog Bolt have both already left her. She understands. Shelley sends out a book for the kids about The Rainbow Bridge.

Days later, Donna drives out from Los Angeles with a treasure trove of Homegirl stories and photos. “Don’t you remember?” Donna asks, “The first time I stayed with Homie you told me: anytime something is bothering you or confusing you in life, rub Homie’s belly and she’ll give you the answers you need.”  I had forgotten. Donna shares that the day we moved from Los Angeles, she came to not just wish us well, but also to rub Homie’s belly.
 
For the first time since I can remember, the weight and warmth of Homie at the foot of the bed are gone. I long to hear her snore when asleep and pant when awake. I think of the many cherished life lessons she gave me. The one important thing she did not teach me, I now realize, is how to live without her.
 
Overnight, the storm clouds of grief have lodged in my lower back, embedded themselves in my hips, entrenched themselves in my shoulders and neck. My body feels twenty years older. For the next week, I embark on daily neck work, yoga/stretching, scalding baths for muscle relief, time in the massage chair, long windy walks on the ridge.  All of it helps. None of it helps.
 
Only hours before she left us, we had purchased tickets to Albuquerque’s Indian Pueblo Cultural Center for the following day. Now none of us feels like going, but we go, knowing that we must get out of the house. There we are reminded that we are only stewards of all that surrounds of us, not owners or masters. That the earth and all in it have intrinsic wisdom, and that life is cyclical. Things my head knows, but my heart rebels against. Homie knew it was her time. I must respect the order of things, even when they break my heart. 
 
The Master Potter of the Acoma Pueblo Marilyn Ray is at the Center that day. Ray creates her pieces with native Acoma clay and natural pigments. We all do a double take: there on the table is a handmade figurine of a little black and white dog sleeping peacefully, with a bird on its back.  Our friend John buys the piece for us, and as Ray wraps it, I ask her to include with it an Acoma blessing. Having just lost her dog a month ago to bladder cancer, Ray’s eyes well up with tears and she gives me a bear hug. 
 
A week later, Homie’s ashes return to us. Unbeknownst to Jory, the urn he had selected the day before we met Ray is a perfect match for her pottery:

It’s simple physics: Matter can neither be created nor destroyed.  So Homie is still with us, just in a different form I remind myself. My openness will determine how well and how often I see her: in the flowers she used to stop and smell, in the enthusiastic greeting Josie gives me when I visit Alice, in Ali’s requests for massages and cuddles at night, in the joy that is there in simple things if only I notice and take it.
 
I often find myself stopping by Homie’s urn, lightly rubbing the side of it. Sometimes I am seeking answers, sometimes just her gentle reassurance.

Literally: this was at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center the day after Homie left us....