My son, now age 10, in his Star Trek uniform.

James Doohan died yesterday. My two young boys would tell you he played "Scotty" on the Star Trek original series. They would tell you he ruled the Engineering department, carried more brains and guts than tools, and knew how to massage life into fading dilithium crystals. They would tell you how he saved the Enterprise from certain warp core breach death, from Klingon and Romulan torpedos, from the bad choices of Captain Kirk himself. Scotty was The Man. My boys would tell you something else, too. Scotty was the only Star Trek character they met in real life.

A couple of years ago, when my boys first discovered Star Trek, I saw an ad in the newspaper. "Meet James Doohan" ran along the bottom of the page, in heavy black Helvetica. Why not? I thought. I grabbed the boys and we drove through the south canyons, to a book store stuffed in a new suburban strip mall. We parked between two white SUVs, in front of a cell tower shaped like a palm tree with antenna fronds and a hard green plastic exterior. Palm tree from the future, I thought. Just like Star Trek.

James Doohan sat at an elegant wooden table. He didn't wear his engineer's uniform. He wore beige Dockers and a blue knit sweater and had a few extra pounds and wrinkles, but it was Scotty just the same. A line snaked through the store, old men and young men and moms and teenagers carrying new Star Trek Original Series DVDs and copies of Doohan's Beam Me Up, Scotty book, all ripe for autographs. My son, then 9, carried rolled blueprints of the Enterprise I bought off of eBay, and my youngest boy, then 7, carried his Scotty action figure. We were set.

Read the rest of the story here! It has a surprise ending!

My suspended son, enjoying the Captain's chair!

I got a call from the elementary school administrative assistant this morning.

"Mrs. Jaworski?" I could hear her tapping a pencil against the desk.

"Uh yes, and it's Ms., please."

"Your son, 8, has been suspended for the day. Come here and pick him up."

She didn't give me time to answer, to ask questions, her voice disappeared as if someone cut the line. I stood in the kitchen, my bare feet aching from yesterday's marathon, and I took a deep breath. My son can be a nut at times, but he's never done the kinds of things that troubled kids do. He doesn't talk back, he doesn't pick fights, and he's never destroyed property. I couldn't picture him doing anything scholastically evil. Maybe he stripped and ran around the school naked, I thought. I grabbed my keys and headed out the door.

The principal met me in her office. She closed the door tightly behind me and invited me to sit in a stuffed orange vinyl chair.

"Mrs. Jaworski, 8 has been suspended from school for one day." She wore an arctic blue power jacket over black slacks, and I self-consciously tried to pull my hooded sweatshirt further over my pink pajamas.

"It's Ms., please. And sorry for my attire, but I ran a marathon yesterday and I'm too sore to change this morning." I tried to infect her with my smile, but she wore a tight-lipped expression as frosty as her jacket. "So, anyway. What did he do?" I picked at the hem of my sweatshirt, looked just to the right of her face. I couldn't meet her eyes. I felt nervous. I felt underdressed. I wondered where 8 was.

So she told me what he did. And as she told me, I started to laugh. I didn't laugh a little, either, but I belly-laughed and grabbed my stomach. My son stood with his class this morning, put small right hand over heart, faced the American flag, and recited his own personal pledge of allegiance:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United Federation of Planets, and to the galaxy for which it stands, one universe, under everybody, with liberty and justice for all species.

"Mrs. Jaworski. This isn't humorous. The Pledge is an extremely important and patriotic moment each morning in the classroom. I am ashamed of your son's behavior, and I hope you are, too."

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My son in his Star Trek uniform, meets "Darth Maul" Star Wars actor Ray Park.

My Kentucky grandmother kept a small cedar box hidden beneath the lace ruffles skirting her bed. I found it playing hide and seek with my sisters, my stomach pressed into the dust-covered worn floorboards. I held it in front of my face with one hand, my chin resting steady on my other arm. Small. Simple. Square, sturdy, made of sanded wood and glue, painted dirt red. I lifted the lid and peered inside. A carved cedar owl with stubby wings and eyes like runny fried eggs stared me down, warned me to close the box, forget he existed. His eyes were my grandmother's eyes - large and almond, expressive, holding mountain secrets - and I felt my mind slide stray jigsaw pieces into a completed frame. I knew.

"Gramma! Gramma!"

I left my sisters searching moth ball closets and the row of anemic lilac bushes for me, ran down the street to the poor-lady beauty parlor where she sat, unfiltered cigarette in one hand, raven gray hair wound in tight pink curlers.

"Gramma! You're Indian!"

I emphasized the word "Indian" like it was a party word, a lightening rod of corn power and personal recognition. I grinned, my hands on my little girl hips, and I realized I had Indian hair, too - dark and fine and black river long. I'm an Indian. Me! Indian! I didn't notice the cold and quiet smog that swirled from the hair-do ladies, covered my grandmother in some suburban shroud.

"Shush, Birdie. We'll talk 'bout it later."

We didn't talk about it later, not that smoke down summer, not until I turned thirteen and the townie pothead girls started beating me up every day after school because I played saxophone and never bought school lunch.

"Gramma? Why do those stupid girls hate me? I don't have any friends."

I twirled the curly phone cord around my hands, pictured my grandmother smoking and drinking cheap beer out of a chipped coffee cup.

"Birdie, listen up, hon. Everyone has a tribe. I ain't with the tribe that I grew up in. I got a new tribe now. You collect your tribe during your life. God brings them to you. One at a time. Birdie, one at a time. You know your tribe when you meet them."

Please read the rest of this story and find out how my son found his own tribe.