Less than a week before sitting down with my wife and grandsons to express our gratitude for the many blessings in our lives (and to chow down on roasted chicken, stuffing, mashed potatoes & gravy, pumpkin pie, etc.), I received an email from Janet Yoder, a Seattle-based author whom I’d gotten to know through Meyer Signs’ Tales of the Magic Skagit podcast series.

The opening line of Janet’s email read, “Our beloved friend Lois Dodson passed away Thursday evening. She was a marvelous human being, a storyteller, a counselor, a fabulous cook, a generous soul. Plus she was fun to spend time with. She could make us laugh and make us cry and make us know what is important in this life.”

Janet wrote about Lois Dodson’s mother, the celebrated Vi Hilbert (taqwšəblu), in a marvelous book entitled, Where the Language Lives: Vi Hilbert and the Gift of Lushootseed. I experienced Janet’s book as a poetic celebration of the remarkable life and accomplishments of an Upper Skagit woman who was instrumental in not just preserving the Lushootseed language of the Swinomish and Skagit People (among other tribes), but in promoting it as a living language to be learned and shared by any who have wondered what human beings in the Magic Skagit sounded like a few millennia or so ago.

My wife and I had the good fortune of meeting Janet and her husband, artist Robby Rudine (who like his spouse had studied Lushootseed with Vi at University of Washington), at a book signing in Bellingham where Janet talked about her and Robby’s decades-long relationship with taqwšəblu, the story of which is the essence of her book. Arriving with Janet and Robby was another speaker, Vi Hilbert’s daughter Lois, now in her eighties.

I was immediately struck by Lois Dodson, a small woman who was anything but diminutive, not only because of her presence and the stories she told of her relationship with her mother, but for the more unlikely reason that she reminded both my wife and me of my late mother-in-law. The voice, the mannerisms, the unassuming candor with more than a hint of feistiness…all of this strongly recalled one of my most favorite humans of all time. Contrary to all the mother-in-law cliches, my mother-in-law (aka, The Granny) and I were tight, and seeing Lois at the book signing (now more than a year ago) stirred up some really good feelings that naturally attached themselves to Vi Hilbert’s daughter.

My wife and I would have an opportunity to spend time with Lois just a couple of months later. With the help of our friends Michele Calvin and Tony Cladoosby of Beaver Tales Coffee (now in both La Conner AND Oak Harbor!), a podcast interview session with Janet Yoder and Robby Rudine was scheduled at the La Conner Swinomish Library to discuss Janet’s book. We were honored to have Lois in attendance as well, thanks to Janet and Robby’s invitation to her and their gracious offer to provide transportation to and from her home in Sedro-Woolley.

The results of that interview (which was followed by a wonderful meal at COA) were released on the Tales of the Magic Skagit podcast channel as a three-part series at the end of December 2022 and extending into January of this year. The interview provides an intimate insight into one of my Magic Skagit heroes, and if you are unfamiliar with the life and legacy of Vi Hilbert, I heartily encourage you to listen to the series. But what you’ll also learn about is the life of Lois Dodson, an accomplished person in her own right and a much revered member of the Upper Skagit tribe. You’ll quickly appreciate just why I found myself so drawn to Lois — even if you didn’t know my mother-in-law.

It can’t be easy being the child of a celebrity, or of a parent who is placed on a pedestal, regardless of their personal humility. Lois didn’t dwell in her mother’s shadow. She earned the respect and recognition she received during her life, academically and professionally — and she battled with some of the same barriers and stereotypes due to gender and ethnicity. In the process, she admitted to having a conflicted relationship with the language her mother had dedicated her life to promoting. Part of that conflict was Lois’ own sense of perfectionism (the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree) and a daughter’s innate resistance to “becoming their mother.”

Whatever concerns Lois may have harbored regarding the extent of her mother’s linguistic shadow, she spent a lot of time accompanying her to events in which Vi was invited to share the stories that she had accumulated over her years of documenting and teaching the language of her ancestors. By contrast, Lois noted during our interview, her mother had frequently admonished her to “speak only English…be a good American.” After her mother’s passing, however, Lois began to assume her mother’s mantle of “story teller” in gatherings of the Coast Salish communities — and I can assure you from having spent time in her presence that she could hold your attention in a quietly assured way that made you listen more intently. That’s the secret sauce of being a good storyteller, by the way.

A few months ago my wife and I took Lois out to lunch at The Garage Cafe in her hometown of Woolley. I don’t mind shamelessly plugging The Garage Cafe, not because Meyer Sign will be a penny richer for the largesse, but because it’s the kind of place you want to take someone if your objective is to make them feel special.

And Lois was special.

It was a wonderful afternoon. We learned more about Lois’ family. Her granddaughter, for example, is Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe (having received the name of her great-grandmother), the author of Red Paint: The Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk (a great read, btw), talked about places around the world that we had visited and how important it is for people to experience other cultures, and traded humorous and sometimes jaded observations about the state of the world and the overarching necessity of living like brothers and sisters if we’re going to survive on this planet. And the whole time we were having this conversation I kept thinking about how much it felt like one that I could have been having with my stone cold Okie mother-in-law over her legendary pot roast (pass the gravy, please).

One of my plans for the new year was to give Lois a call and see if we could take her to tea at White Branches. I knew she’d get a kick out of it because my mother-in-law would have. I was hoping as well to learn more about the stories Lois had inherited from her mother and ask if she might be willing to share some of them with my Tales of the Magic Skagit audience. Sadly, that’s not going to happen; but although I wish my wife and I could have had more time with Lois, I’m so grateful that we had the opportunity to meet her — and that I can share her voice and the memories it conveys to folks who weren’t similarly blessed.