There is one image that comes before all others, taken a long time ago and thousands of miles from here. And there is the memory tied to it, buried so deeply and so diligently as to have almost faded altogether until now. Should the entire construct of my world, my very soul, come crashing down in some unforseen horror, I will still be who I was in that image. I was given a blanket and a head dress handed down through generations, invited by people I'd never met, to be part of a sacred circle with Tlingit families in a language I didn't know, to a tune I had never heard. In a longhouse far away, I danced with them, and was alive. I was five years old.