An elder · seventy-nine winters · three children
Grandchild, sit with me a while. I raised three. Two of them quit calling, and for four winters I sat in this house and told myself it was their doing. It was not all theirs. Somewhere on the other side of that quiet a grandson was growing up without me, and I did not know his voice. What I learned in those four winters I have written down: what I said that pushed them off, what I should never have said twice, and how an old man makes himself somebody people come back to. Thirty days of it. Nobody handed this to me, and I will not carry it into the ground.
This is not a book about being Native. It is thirty days from an old man who happens to be one.
I spent four years waiting for an apology that was never going to come, and I called that waiting ‘keeping the door open.’ It was not open. I was sitting behind it with my arms crossed.
Amos Redhawk · Day SixI.Where you are right now
If even one of these lands, there is nothing wrong with you. Nobody sits us down and tells us this stretch of the road is coming.
The weight
After the thirty days
II.The book · three parts · thirty dated days
Each day is short. Four or five pages, ten minutes, one thing to do before dark. You do not have to finish it to start feeling it. Most tell me Day Eleven is where it turns.
Days 1–10
Days 11–20
Days 21–30
III.A look inside
I will not show you a cover and a table of contents and call it a look inside. These are three pages from the middle of the book, in the same large print you will get. Read one, grandchild. By the bottom of the page you will know if this old man has something for you.
Marcus has a boy. Had a boy when it started — he’s grown now, twenty-two, and there are four years in the middle of that child’s life that I know nothing about.
If there are grandchildren in your situation, you have been carrying two losses this whole time and only one of them gets talked about. I am going to give this one its own day, because in every group of parents in your shoes, this is the thing that comes out last and hurts worst.
You lost your child. And then you lost a child who never did a thing to you, who is not old enough to have an opinion about any of it, and who is being raised right now to think of you — if they think of you at all — as somebody who wasn’t around.
Now I have to tell you the hard part of this day, and I am going to be blunt because I watched a man in this town do the other thing and lose everything twice.
You may not go around your child to get to the grandchild.
Send a card. Birthdays and one holiday. Addressed to the child, mailed to the parent’s house, going through the front door like an honest man. Nothing in it about the parent. No hint of a grievance, no I miss you so much, no nobody will let me see you. A card a child could read out loud at the kitchen table without a single adult in that house flinching.
Four years in, on a Sunday in February, I went out with the broom like I always did and I swept off three chairs in about two inches of snow, and I stood there with the broom in my hand and I thought: I have done this two hundred times.
Two hundred Sundays. I had swept those chairs for people who were not coming, and I had told myself the whole time that it was love. That’s what I called it. Keeping the chairs ready. Keeping the porch light on. Being the one who never gave up.
Standing there in the snow, I finally saw it for what it was, and I want to hand you this exactly as it came to me, because it is the hinge of the whole four years.
It was not love. It was a vigil. And a vigil is a thing you hold for the dead.
Love does something. A vigil just waits, and while it waits it quietly eats a man alive — because every Sunday you sweep is a Sunday you have told yourself your life will begin when they come.
I just stopped waiting by the phone. I stopped arranging my Sundays around a thing that was not going to happen on a Sunday. The door stayed open — it is open tonight — but I quit standing in it.
Six days now I’ve been taking sentences out of your mouth. Today I put some back in. Take these nine replacements and put them where the nine old ones used to be.
Now you’ll notice some of those are shorter than the thing they replace, and two of them are silence. That’s not an accident. A great deal of what an estranged parent needs to learn is simply to say less.
IV.Printed for the eyes you actually have
Most books written for people our age are set in the same small type as everything else, and then somebody suggests you buy reading glasses. The download includes both settings. Print whichever one you can read at the kitchen table without leaning in.
I spent four years waiting for an apology that was never going to come, and I called that waiting “keeping the door open.” It was not open. I was sitting behind it with my arms crossed, listening for a knock, and calling that patience.
What almost every other book hands you.
I spent four years waiting for an apology that was never going to come, and I called that waiting “keeping the door open.” It was not open. I was sitting behind it with my arms crossed.
Included free at every level. Same words, readable.
V.The turn
Every piece of advice below is well meant. Every one of them kept me stuck another year.
VI.What it is worth
Add it up plain. The book, the large-print edition, the audiobook and the guide come to $79. Today it is $34, once, and it is yours for good.
Three Chairs, the full 30-day bookThree parts, digital PDF, 144 pages
$4418pt large-print editionSized to print at home on ordinary paper
INCLUDEDThe audiobook, read by AmosArrives October 5, free to everyone who buys before then
$16The Sentence You Can’t Take BackNine things never to say to a grown child
VII.Two free guides
The book is the thirty days. These two are for the night before and the morning of — the sentence you are about to say, and the call you have been putting off.
Nine things never to say to a grown child, each one with the reason it lands the way it does, and the plainer sentence to use in its place. Short. Keep it by the phone.
How to make contact after two years of silence, or ten. The opening line, the length, what not to bring up, and what to do with the answer either way it goes.
VIII.Choose how you want to begin
Everything here is digital — an instant download, nothing shipped to your house. Every level includes the 18pt large-print edition, and the audiobook lands free in your inbox on October 5 for everyone who buys before then. Most begin with the book.
Three Chairs, on your screen and in your ears tonight.
Save $10 today
$79 value · pay $34
The book, plus the dated practice that actually puts it to work.
Save $35 today
Coming in a few daysThe Companion, the Workbook and the Repair Map are being finished now, grandchild. The book is yours tonight, and these come to your email the day they are ready. Nothing more to pay.
$167 value · pay $44
Both books, all the audio, and a letter from Amos every Sunday for a year.
Save $115 today
Coming in a few daysThe second book and the Thirty Days pieces are being finished now, grandchild. The book is yours tonight, and the rest comes to your email the day it is ready. Nothing more to pay.
$340 value · pay $99
Read it for two weeks. If it does not change how you see the quiet in your family, reply to the receipt and every dollar comes back. No questions asked, and you keep the book.
IX.From readers
is-sample classes and this notice. Easiest way to collect them — email every buyer on day 7 with one question: “which day landed hardest?” Keep first name, last initial, town and age.
★★★★★
Day Eleven was the one. I have said six of those nine sentences to my son, some of them more than once, and I never once heard how they landed until it was printed in front of me.
— Dale R., Springfield, MO · 72
★★★★★
I used the first call almost word for word. Two years of nothing and she stayed on the phone forty minutes. I am not saying it is fixed. I am saying it started.
— Marilyn T., Erie, PA · 69
★★★★★
My daughter is not coming back and I have made my peace with that. Days twenty-seven through thirty were written for me. I listened to them twice in the truck.
— Wendell H., Kingman, AZ · 77
Portrait goes hereAmos, closer, hands visible, indoors. 1:1, 1000×1000 or larger.
X.About the elder
I am seventy-nine. I live in town, not out on any romantic stretch of land — a small house, a porch, and three chairs on it, two of which sat empty a long while.
I am a Native elder, and I want to be straight with you about what that does and does not mean here. This is not a book about being Native American. It is a book from an old man who happens to be one. The teachings are older than any of us and belong to no single people. Folks of every background have sat on this porch and found themselves in what I am telling you. You will too.
You will hear me call you grandchild. It is not because I take you for young. My grandfather spoke that way to anybody who came up his steps, and it meant one thing: sit down, you are welcome here. I have kept it. Marcus’s boy Danny calls me Grandpa again now, and I do not take a word of that for granted.
I am also not a man who got this right the first time. I got it wrong for four years running, loudly, and I lost time I do not get back. That is the only credential I have got, and it is the reason I can tell you exactly where the ditches are.
It is not a book about how to die. It is a book about the years you have got left, and who is sitting down with you in them.
— Amos
XI.Before you decide
Grandchild, you have spent a lifetime showing up for everybody else. This is one small thing, for you. Nothing is wrong with you — you only needed somebody to say it plain.
Send Me the Book ·Before you go
Take the $44 set — the book plus the thirty dated days that put it to work. It is covered by the 14-day promise: if it does not change how you see the quiet in your family, every dollar comes back and you keep the book either way. There is no risk on your side of this.
Send Me the