Lullaby

“[The snow] came in thick tufts like new wool—washed before the weaver spins it. Ayah reached out for it like her own babies had, and she smiled when she remembered how she had laughed at them.” 

The above passage establishes the importance of memory to “Lullaby” as well as the relationship of memory to the Navajo understanding of time. In reaching for the snow, the now elderly Ayah remembers her own children and becomes childlike in her own actions; her life, in other words, has come full circle in a way that mirrors the idea of time itself as cyclic. The snow reminds Ayah of wool, since weaving is one of the primary motifs Silko uses to illustrate Ayah’s experience of time as nonlinear.

“They walked to the old stone hogan together, Ayah walking a step behind her mother. She waited alone, learning the rhythms of the pains while her mother went to call the old woman to help them.” 

Ayah’s memory of giving birth to Jimmie highlights the idea of motherhood as an experience that connects her to the natural world. Ayah goes through childbirth guided by her own mother; in this way, the process of becoming a mother links her to the generations of women who have lived before her. The physical experience of labor also reinforces Ayah’s place in an eternal natural order, as the “rhythms of the pains” recall the rhythms of the earth itself.