Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

how she sees our relationship. She sees mud where waters run clear. No
good, papasito. No good!”
“She could change. Maybe she only needs a good man to love her in
spite of her bad ways. I see all that you say, but I can’t help myself.” I
couldn’t help but wonder if Panti was seeing too much good in her. I had
the same habit of being too trusting. I remembered what my Assyrian
grandfather, Simco, used to tell me, “Honey, you listen to papa. You so
good you crazy!”
Panti leaned over on his pick for a moment, wiped his brow with his
stained, embroidered handkerchief, and sighed deeply. I half expected to see
tears fall from his eyes. Instead, he only shrugged and said meekly, “Well,
I’ve already invited her to come to your ranchito for your Primicia. Maybe
with some time together away from the village gossip and my
grandchildren, we’ll have a little lovers’ escape. When she sees my work
and my gift, I think her heart will be softened. She’ll become the good
woman I know is hiding behind the shrew.”
Since she had never done anything unselfish for him, he planned to test
her devotion by asking her to scrub his laundry in the river while they
stayed at our farm.
I was thrilled at the notion of having him become part of my household
for three days, which was as long as he dared disappear from his patients.
On the way back to Ix Chel Farm that afternoon, I thought about how
Don Elijio, a man with the power to work with spiritual forces, was also
completely vulnerable. He was a frightened old man feeling unloved,
misunderstood, and abandoned. In love he had the same problems as
everyone else. Somehow this made me trust him all the more.
As soon as I got home, I announced my news of the forthcoming
Primicia. Everyone was as excited as I was. My son James, now twenty,
was staying with us during a break from college. He and Crystal were
thrilled by the idea of an ancient ceremony in their mother’s honor.
The thought of having a Primicia as a thanksgiving was quite fitting, as
we were celebrating an anniversary of Ix Chel Farm that week. We knew
we had a lot to be thankful for: we were still alive and together, none of us
had been bitten by a snake, we had a bit of fresh, organic food on our table,
and Don Elijio was sharing his knowledge.
Greg and I decided to build the altar for the Primicia on the ancient
Maya mound we had uncovered during construction. There we had found