Nicola Mannering

Little Pocket insisted that she come to America with me to return the crystal to the Hopi People. That was just over two years ago. She was eighteen then. “I can carry the bags and look after you, Mum.” And she did! She also became chief navigator, because she was unaccountably fast at deciphering the complicated roadmap we took everywhere. And she has an impeccable memory. “We turned left here, so we need to make a right, and turn off at that roundabout,” she would say definitively, and she was always right! She is sharp as a pin!

And she made me laugh in the most inappropriate places, and not just a little, but until my sides almost split! It was great medicine.

Tonight, my twenty-one-year-old daughter, Little Pocket, phoned. “Mum,” she said, “I’ve got a breast-lump.” My heart stopped for a moment. “I’ve been to the doctor and she’s sending me to the specialist.” I remained calm. “It’s just the body,” I told myself. I asked her questions. “How soon can they get you in? Will they do a mammogram?” “No,” she said, “a fine needle aspiration.” I told her I would make some calls first thing in the morning to find out more, and that we would fly her down to Nelson if it would be quicker. Whatever could be done.

Little Pocket is her Native American name. Her given name is Anna. White Cloud, our Assinboine, out-of-the-body friend, had told her she used to be a healer, and she always wore a little bag with her crystals and stones in it around her neck. So everyone called her Little Pocket. When White Cloud told her this, she reminded me that even as a five-year-old, she would spend most of her pocket money buying little chips of crystals and semi-precious stones. And she kept them in a little draw-string bag. She still has it!

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