“Mira.” My grandmother would point up to the sky as she took her last few smokes of her Salems; “Va hacer aire.” I must have been about 6 or 7 years old but I can remember looking up and seeing these oddly formed clouds; broken up pieces scattered all over the sky. Some looked smeared, as if someone had spilled water while they were painting them. Dicho y hecho, there was wind later that day. I always thought my grandma was a bruja cause how did you she know it was going to be windy that day? The weather people hadn’t forecasted it, but somehow, she knew how to read the skies.
Today as I was putting clothes away, I could hear the wind outside my window. It had been windy all day, but the evening wind felt different. There weren’t any clouds today, which made the winds even more surprising, but still I welcomed them. As a child, I remember my classmates being afraid of windy days at school. I remember the chaos; balls going all over the place, trash cans being tipped over, smaller kids being dragged (I was one of them). Even so, I was always so intrigued by its strength and ability to move and even destroy things. As an Air sign myself, it made sense that wind was something I was so fascinated by.
I have also come to realize that wind speaks, especially at night. You can hear it howling and rumbling. At times, you can also hear it whisper. Ancestral knowledge teaches us that every element is a wise teacher, if only we slow down enough to listen. The difficult part is that our modern human ears will fail us at this task. The Spiritual teachers speak to us from the Spiritual realm and sometimes logic is not part of that equation. In order to communicate with these Great Wisdoms Keepers, we must detach from our earthly worries and egotistic drives. We must remember our interconnectedness with our element relatives and our Great Mother. We must trust that we have also been gifted the ability to communicate with the Spiritual Realm. Sadly, the effects of trauma, colonization and capitalism keep so many of us severed from this connection. It feels almost impossible to find it and so many of us were not taught the “old ways.” Or so it seems.
My grandmother was a chain smoker, but she was frugal. She made a pack of cigarettes last her at least several days to a week. She achieved this by breaking each cigarette in half, which doubled her supply. Every morning, before her café con pan, she would put on her mandil and smoke her first half. As I got older, I would catch a glimpse of her standing on our porch, looking out with her stoic demeanor. She would have one hand in her pocket and the other taking what appeared about 3-5 hits from her cigarette before she would drop it to the floor and step on it. Now looking back, I realize that this was her morning ritual. This was her offering to the day. I believe that she was also listening to hear if her petitions had been answered from her prayers the night before.
A devout catholic woman, my grandmother prayed her rosary almost every night. She taught my siblings and I how to pray; on our knees for about 30 minutes every night. Thankfully this didn’t last long as my parents intervened. After that, she would have us pray for about 5 minutes every night. At the time, it was torture, and although I no longer practice Catholicism, I am forever grateful to my grandmother for teaching me the art of prayer. Here is where I found the ability to listen to Spirit, but it took my grandmother’s passing when I was 30 for me to realize this. I know now that she was teaching me the skill of detachment and stillness; of meditation and mindfulness; of listening to hear from a place deep down inside of me.
As I stand in my room doing mis que haceres, I take a moment to listen to the wind. Stillness and chaos; cycles ending; cycles beginning; death and rebirth; grief and hope. I then remember reading somewhere that suggests to shake your indoor plants to mimic wind as this helps to stimulate growth and strengthen their roots. Ha! If that isn’t a metaphor for trusting ourselves to withstand the unexpected challenges of life. Instructions received.
As I reflect on the message of the Wind Wisdom keeper, I look back on how my grandmother knew that the winds of change were coming; maybe she learned to read the sky patterns because she understood her interconnectedness to the elements. Maybe she never directly told me, “I am teaching you to listen to the Elders,” but now over a decade since her passing, I sometimes see those same cloud formations in the sky and say out loud, even when no one is around, “Va hacer aire.”
Adriana L. Medrano, PhD 