Maybe Behind
The Bathroom Door
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I’ve lost my robe. I’m beside myself
with anxiety. I didn’t realize it was gone. In fact, I have no idea exactly
when I misplaced it. Surely, I couldn’t have thrown it away. I depend on that
robe. It is a piece of me.
My hermit robe. A “security blanket”.
I wore it from the day I moved to Mazatlan. Protection in my desert of
solitude. It circumscribed my hermitage, defined my retreat.
Yesterday Bonnie said, “Sondra. You
look so different.” We met in March, when I bought my casita. Bonnie manages
the Rancho for her mother. She is a practitioner of several forms of Chinese
medicine. She’s my acupuncturist and my friend.
“Your face, you look so . . . happy.
Tranquillo,” she continued.
I looked around at the beauty, the
garden I’ve created around my home. Who wouldn’t be happy?
When Bonnie left I walked around my
yard, thinking about my years in Mazatlan, the changes I’ve wrought in my eight
months in Etzatlan. That’s when I discovered that my robe is missing.
My apartment in Mazatlan, a block
from the beach, was a perfect retreat house for me. I walked to the fruteria
for groceries. I walked my laundry to the lavanderia. Several people greeted me
regularly. I looked forward to seeing familiar faces. Every several days I
called Carlos with his pulmonia to take me places I couldn’t walk. In winter
months I visited Ted and Frank, apartment neighbors.
Often days passed without me talking
with anybody. I reveled in my solitude. My life as a recluse suited me. I
needed it. I needed the quiet. I needed my time for healing in my desert
hermitage. I wore my hermit robe comfortably.
My life didn’t change overnight when
I moved to Etzatlan, near Guadalajara. My first weeks I cleaned and fixed the
inside of my casita, alone, content with work at which I’m good.
I suspect, a guess, mind you, the
changes began when I shifted my attention outdoors. This morning when Carol and
John, “sometime” neighbors, came over, they asked, “How did you develop your
garden? Did you start with a landscape plan? How did you begin what could be an
overwhelming project?”
Plant by plant. I took out planters.
I added planters. I removed trees. I planted trees. I made spaces where flowers
flourish.
My garden evolved, is still growing and changing. I suspect
this will be true forever, my forever, as long as I’m here to derive pleasure
from the privilege of creating spaces where beauty flourishes.
Along with the flowers, I count people friends in my garden.
Some, like me, live here year-round. Some locals. Some Americanos. Some arrive
for weeks or months and then go to another home for weeks and months.
Recently, I’ve added daily language study to my life. Not
that it’s a necessity. I can, and have, gotten by with rudimentary Spanglish,
pointing and desperate gestures. Like a toddler, I’m beginning with basics.
I’ve yet to figure out how to introduce “El perro camino sobre mi camisa” (The
dog walked over my shirt.) into everyday conversation. And I’m not sure I have
the correct verb tense. But I’m doing it.
Recently, Bonnie’s daughter, Samantha began teaching Qigong,
a Chinese energy movement practice, in the park behind our cluster of casitas. We
meet for class twice a week, people from our Rancho, people from town. Between
times, my neighbors meet in my back yard patio for practice daily.
See what I’m saying? My life has turned downside up.
It’s not all rosey-posey. My brand new non-working
refrigerator has not been replaced, two weeks now. My yard resembles an open
pit mine around my septic system. Poco y poco, tanks are cleaned only to find
the drain is clogged with Yucca tree roots. Yucca, that same pretty summer
flower along roadside barrow pits, is a tall tree in my yard, same creamy
cluster of beautiful flowers. The roots, millions of tendrils, grew to
encompass the tanks and clog the pipe. New pipe, new drain field, coming up. I’m
still researching for a new computer since my trusty desktop died of old age
and other infirmities.
Next step for my garden? The soil in the flower beds
surrounding my yard is tired. I’ll dig out all the hundreds (literally) of
lilies, planted helter-skelter, replace the dirt with composted topsoil, add a
serpentine path through the middle of the five-foot wide flowerbed, replace the
plants in neat clusters. What do you think?
My hermit robe is still missing. By the way, my bathroom
doesn’t have a door, merely a curtain. But if I had a bathroom door, that’s
where I’d hang my robe, on a hook, safe for when I need it. I’m naked without
my trusty robe, aren’t I? I need my robe, don’t I?
Sondra
Ashton
HDN: Looking
out my back door
October 20,
2016
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