Reckoning of My Mission Bell 

Reckoning of My Mission Bell 

 

“Missions were sites of conflict, conquest, and forced labor.”

California History Social Science Framework, 2016.

 

How much I adored her

cast iron campana, erect in morning light, 

astride a rural bridge, entrance to our home,

          13 plus feet tall, shepherd’s crook holding 

          a California El Camino Real bell, 

          its green patina wizened to dark brown.

I imagined it to say, This hacienda welcomes you!

 

I’m not sure we can keep her. My husband

          winces, flashes his Are You Kidding Me look.

          Annoyed, he listens.

 

40 years ago I taught 4th graders 

state history, indigenous peoples’ cultures…

No model missions in my unit

          rather, Spanish settlement & land use. 

          a mention of manifest destiny

          (Somehow I failed to teach how landscape

holds history, genocide of California’s Natives.)

 

El Camino Real Bell, my husband gifted me

celebrating our dream-home, terra-cotta

saltillo tiles & bells grace our property.

          We even replaced it after theft.

          … A journey of new learning shatters 

          my understanding. My bell, a symbol

of cultural erasure, brutal truths. Crap!

 

Friday night ladies, chardonnays in hand, talk politics:

Liberals removing historical statues!

They just want to erase history!

          How my conscience writhes, my beloved bell

          weighs like lead in my gut. I learn

          some people have taken down their

El Camino Real bells. Does removal shape change?

 

I dream of people journeying to foothill baths

          through lands our orchards now occupy. I feel 

          their spirits, hear their weeping.

 

Time to create a new symbol, new narrative

my own space to acknowledge violence,

California’s colonialism in this shepherd’s crook,

          a curve of dominance, not protection.

          I place a fountain encircled with bougainvillea 

          below, honoring Yokut peoples here before me

whose teardrops fall beneath my mission bell. 

 

June 26, 2021

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