It’s not a perfect world . . .

 

It’s not a perfect world . . . 

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Honest to Pete, sometimes I’m blind as a bat. Yes, I know; let the clichés roll on.

These last six years that I’ve lived in my Etzatlan house, I thought my bodega roof drained frontward. My neighbor Janet asked if I knew what that large pipe was about on the other side of our shared wall. What pipe?

We asked “the boys”. Yes, that pipe drains the gutter from my bodega roof onto the other property and makes a right mess. Joe and Yvonne used to own both houses. They were here only in the winter and they didn’t care. It never rains in winter.

I was still mightily puzzled. I look at my bodega side wall and it obviously drains frontward. Leo suggested I go inside my bodega and look at the ceiling. Oh. It slants to the back. I stand outside and look at the side wall again. Oh, there is a false front, well, false side front, built up to complete the only enclosed wall of my patio roof.

Six years I’ve lived here and not seen the obvious. There is a lesson in here, folks.

A couple days later Josue, with Leo’s help, rerouted a drain pipe to cross along my back wall, down a hitch in the wall’s get-along, to shoot roof water onto my patch of front grass. It’s what “the boys” call a “Mexican fix”. It’s not pretty but it works.

We have a similar expression in Montana. We would say “we cowboyed it together”. I’ve seen baling machines held together with more wire on the outside than what went to making hay bales from the inside. Cowboyed together.

While the drain pipe was being built between rain storms, my refrigerator quit working. I reached for an ice cream treat mid-afternoon and found soup. I called Leo to help me transfer my foods to Crin’s refrigerator, empty since she is not here.

This was on Wednesday. Leo phoned Damian, the appliance repair person. Two hours later, true story, Damian came, puttered and poked and declared the Freon needed replacing and hauled my refrigerator to his shop. Imagine that! A repairman showing up in two hours!

My refrigerator was very cleverly manufactured with an enclosed back, not removable. On Friday afternoon Damian brought home my refrigerator with a Mexican fix. On the clever back side there is an equally clever addition of pipe running bottom to top or is it top to bottom? I don’t know. I don’t care. My refrigerator works.

Amidst this flurry of activity, I’d said to Josue, “I have an idea.” People close to me have learned to cringe when I use that phrase. But he’s a brave young man and listened closely as I explained that I’d long wanted to have my couch cut down into a chair.

My couch (with matching chair) is a wooden frame that I’d had made in a traditional rustic style in Concordia, a small town outside Mazatlan noted for wooden artisanal furniture. It seemed to me that in my small space, a chair made more sense than a couch. I’d have a matched set along with my rocking chair. “Also, I’d like for the two chairs to be finished naturally, not this traditional dark brown through which the lovely grain hardly shows. Can you do that?”

Josue carefully examined the project. “Si. A Mexican fix. I can do it.” He took away the couch that day. Five days later, he returned with a beautiful pecan colored chair, the finish warm and showing the lovely wood grain to full advantage.

While Josue is working on my other chair, I’m cowboying together down-filled cushions for both chairs. Fortunately, I had several all-down back cushions to use for filler. My backyard looks like a chicken slaughterhouse, but I’m nearly finished.

I stood at my kitchen window last night and watched water gush from my new bodega roof drain. My refrigerator pops on with a click but hums right along. I love my new chair with new puffy, flumpy down cushions.

As my friend said to me last week, “It’s not a perfect world but it’s not bad.”

With a little ingenuity we will cowboy together the broken parts of our imperfect world, as best we can, one small project at a time. It might not seem like much but every bit counts. I’ve often said that there is little that cannot be fixed with duct tape, WD-40 and Bag Balm.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

October 14, 2021

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In My Next Life . . .

 

In My Next Life . . .

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 We stood side by side on the ditch bank, relaxed, Dad leaning on his irrigation shovel. The July afternoon was quiet, air hardly moving, hot, dry. I was in high school but I can’t remember which year.

A wisp of cloud lifted above the horizon. We stood together, in silence, watched the cloud gather substance. The spring rains had abandoned us that year. Here it was, mid-summer, and the earth gasped for moisture.

We tracked that cloud all the way from the cusp until nearly overhead. Time had no meaning. And we watched that little bit of hope dry up and dissipate above us, turn into nothing, disappear.

Dad looked at me with a half-smile, his eyes full of humor, and kind of shook his head. Then he headed off across the field of sugar beets and river water to shore up a bank across the way. You know, that is one of my favorite memories, that moment of hope, gone, and accepted.

I like weather. I talk about it all the time. Still raining here, by the way. None of the younger people can remember a year so wet. My concrete patio is leaching calcium and lime so I know the water table is right up to there. I don’t worry about flooding but what if my house simply slides off the foundation while the earth turns?

When I was younger I never thought to be a meteorologist. Well, that’s not totally true. Back in the mid-70s I lived in Great Falls. My next door neighbor Bob, formerly a weatherman with the Merchant Marine, was then a meteorologist up on Gore Hill. To maintain certification, he periodically had to take a test. I borrowed his exam book and read every page, fascinated.

I could have done that. In a more perfect world. My world at that time was poverty and survival and I’m afraid I could not have recognized opportunity had it stomped on me.

My problem is that I found too many fascinations. Looking back, my life seems to be divided into chapters. I suspect we all at times have wished we could relive part of our lives differently. But would we?

My life story has a couple ugly chapters. But given how hard-headed I am, I suspect those chapters were necessary. In retrospect, I would not trade them, mostly, I confess, because I can’t.

I control my life just as well as I control the weather, that is, not at all. If I wiped out the ugly chapters, I’d wipe out a lot of beautiful experiences. So best just accept them and move on.

Life. Weather. My own self. We’re all a mish-mash.

My refrigerator quit working. The ice-cream is soup. The repairman is here.

Today was partly sunny after raining from 6:00 last evening through to 8:30 this morning. My lime trees planted in the lower part of my yard show signs of distress from too much water. They might die dead. Clouds are rolling in quickly, setting the stage for tonight’s promised thunder storms.

I’m on the patio, waiting for the news, good or bad, from the repairman. Lola, my hairy mutt, sensing my distress, bounded over and buried her face against my leg, as if to say, “Just bury your fingers in my ruff, yes, behind my ears, over a bit, yes, right there, because I know that always makes you feel better.”  

If there is a next life, I doubt I’ll have any more control than I do with this one. Knowing me, I’ll need some lessons in living, both hard and soft. Best to just pay attention as it unfolds.

After all, it doesn’t get much better than this, watching the clouds gather into piles, knowing they carry moisture, Lola at my feet!

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

October 7, 2021

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The Way We Were Raised

 

The Way We Were Raised

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Turned out to be a surprise party at my house, planned by Ana and Leo, unbeknownst to either myself or Michelle.

I knew Ana and Michelle were coming over. I’d asked them if they would accept a lovely tooled leather stool that had no acceptable place to live in my home but I thought it would have several spots it would like to live at their place. Michelle said they had to be in town so would stop by to get the stool.

I’d considered asking Michelle if she’d bring her espresso machine but nixed that idea. But I decided to whip together a batch of scones to slide into the oven when I heard them turn off the highway.

In the way of vague plans, this one picked up a gang of hitchhikers along the way. The gals arrived shortly after the garbage truck turned down the lane so I never heard a thing until the jangle-clang of the goat bell at my gate. Ana and Michelle’s voices sang out a greeting as they came through the gate lugging a laundry basket filled with food items to prepare breakfast.

Ana put together breakfast burritos with all the trimmings. I slid the scones in the oven. Michelle set up her aging one-cup espresso machine. We had a regular restaurant going. Leo arrived and Janet walked over from next door. Talk about feast and flapping lips!

I like a good coffee. “I’ve thought about getting one of those small machines but then I’d want it every day and it wouldn’t be a treat.”

“It’s the way you were raised,” Michelle answered. “My Mom is like that.”

“Michelle makes herself an espresso treat every morning,” Ana said.

The eyeballs of my inner understanding shouted “ah ha” and instantly carried me back in time.

My Grandma, who raised me, had trunks of beautiful dishes and tablecloths and assorted treasures which were only used for “good,” special occasions, such as Christmas, only if we had guests.

For everyday use we kept a printed oilcloth on the table. Remember Melmac? And aluminum drinking “glasses”?

I was thirteen when I made the decision that I would not have anything for “good”. Everything I had, beautiful or functional, would be put to everyday use. I rather prided myself for doing a good job of sticking to my decision.

“We are never completely free of the old ideas with which we were raised,” Michelle said, “No matter how vigorously we think we have scrubbed them out.”

“I’ll bring you an espresso machine next time I go to Phoenix,” Janet offered.

Once my guests departed, my mind began a walk-about of its own volition through aspects of my raising. I’d figured to review a long list negative things I’ve overcome. I’ve done it before.

Instead, I found myself thinking about the more positive traits, passed to me through family, and especially my tyrant of a grandmother.

Among things given me by this grandmother, who genuinely resented every minute of caring for me, who had raised seven children during the depression after her husband died young, is an ability to approach problems creatively. 

A good, if somewhat rigid, work ethic.

Self-reliance. Ha. Another double-edged sword, as harmful as it is a useful tool.  

I was in grade school when I made my first skirt with a fitted waistband and placket closures with buttons, no pattern, no zipper, with Grandma at my shoulder. Consequently, I never met a pattern I didn’t alter and later abandoned patterns altogether. My way, by way of Grandma, is not better but surely is more fun.

In the kitchen, leftovers become soup or fritters or meat pies or pasta toppings.

I learned how to use all the parts of a chicken, including feathers and feet.

She taught me how to make something out of nothing, a skill I have needed at times. Running to town with the magic plastic is a last resort solution.

Perhaps, more importantly, she taught me to get up, make the bed and get on with my day, no matter what.

Thanks, Janet for offering to bring me an espresso machine. I’ve thought it over. I’ll stick with keeping that option for the occasional treat. I was raised that way.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

September 30, 2021

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