I Wanna Be a Tree

 

I Wanna Be a Tree

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“In my next life, I want to be a tree.”

“A tree? Why, Mom, would you want to be a tree?”

“Because they are more intelligent and kinder than humans.”

“A Sycamore, Mom. Be a Sycamore. I don’t even know what one looks like but that tree popped into my mind.”

We each went to our computers and landed on the same site. Though we are 2500 miles separated geographically, we are otherwise quite close.  

“Holy Guacamole, these trees are beautiful.”

“Ooooh, I want to be a Sycamore.”  I said, with appreciative awe.

Dee Dee said, “The Sycamore symbolizes strength, protection, eternity and divinity.”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s too beautiful.” Pause for reflection.

“I’ll probably be a Jack Pine, clinging to the side of a ravine, down by the Missouri in that area we call Blue Heaven. I’ll be stunted, twisted and wind blasted, but I’ll cling between the rocks.”

“Don’t be silly, Mom. If you are going to put in your order, put it in big.”

We laughed.

“Where from come the glum?” she asked.

I didn’t have an answer. I’ve always thought myself positive, upbeat, a glass running over kind of person. Could be, I’m not who I think I am. Could be, that is the story I like to tell myself.

Take this morning, for instance. May is our hottest month and we are setting heat records in this part of the country known for being not too hot, not too cold, but, just right, Goldilocks.

As I said, it was morning. Never mind that the thermometer hit 103 by 4:00. Mornings are mild, pretty perfect up until noonish. Then the climb. By 6:00 the temp begins descending the scale. Nights are generally tolerable to pleasant to light blanket.

Me? At 10:00 in the morning, I was moaning about the heat. The heat would not be intolerable for hours, at least four hours. Was I enjoying how lovely, how pleasantly perfect the morning happened to be? No, I was moaning the yet-to-come.

Who is this person who took over my body? I want to know.

This thing I did know—I needed to enter my private sensory deprivation tank for a reset. This magical isolation chamber is whatever and wherever I want it to be.  

The next morning my world had transformed. Okay, my world was the exact same as the day before, so maybe the change was more personal, myself with freshly laundered eyeballs.

The same birds sang more gloriously. The same sun coated the morning in gold-dust. The same air refreshed my spirit. The same trees provided an encompassing umbrella. The same temperature/weather was pleasantly perfect, just as it always is this time of year, at least until noon. The same loving dog alongside, my wag-tailed companion.

Maybe, just maybe, I’d best keep my focus on being as kind as I am able to be in this human life I have today. I have to live this one to the finish before I need to be concerned about what’s next.

Still, I want to be a tree in my next life. I’d love to be a Sycamore, surrounded with the companionship of stately Elms and gorgeous Horse-chestnuts.

If I end up clinging to the side of a rocky ravine over-looking the Missouri, so be it.

Knowing myself, it won’t matter. Whether I’m in the east or in the west, I’ll still have days when I grumble that it is too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, too crowded, too lonely. I will still be learning how to push my reset button.

Meanwhile the thermometer is climbing to 102 again. But I have a book, my feet propped on a stool, and a cold agua fressca at hand. Doesn’t get much better than that.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

Sizzling in May

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Hacking through brambles in the rabbit hole

 

Hacking through brambles in the rabbit hole

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Like Alice, now and then I take a dive down a rabbit hole, purely for entertainment. Oh, well, and so I can feel superior, yes, smug in my own knowledge.  

I’m not on Facebook, but when I check weather on my computer, I get a sidebar of widgets, (love that word), that is every bit as good as FB for misinformation, from what I’m told.

So, there I am, trawling along through non-news, political rants, hundreds of chocolate-chip cookie recipes and other trivia, when I spy a household hint, called a hack, more about that later, for cleaning stains on a mattress.

I never click to open. Never. I simply enjoy swimming along, checking out the bait. If I do bite, my computer unhelpfully deluges me with similar suggestions, all at odds with each other, each claiming to be the right one. Like religion. 

However, after my last surgery I was bed-bound for a month. My new lovely mattress garnered stains. I had it professionally cleaned so it is clean but still stained.

I took the bait, swallowed the hook. I clicked. I jotted down the recipe for the cleaner, which called for 1/3 tablespoon of dish soap.

I kid you not. One-third (1/3) tablespoon?

 Do our schools no longer teach basic weights and measurements? Well, here is a hack for you, my dear child. One Tablespoon equals three teaspoons. Three teaspoons equal one Tablespoon. In the olden days, for clarity, we would write, 3 t = 1 T. Like a scientific formula. Therefore, 1/3 tablespoon is 1 teaspoon. Simple.

Let me digress with a rant about the evolution of the word, hack. Or is it devolution? To me, hack is an ugly word, mean, right up there with slay, pillage, bully, chop, cut, sever. Bloodletting.

Immediately I picture hacking through the blackberry brambles with a machete, trying to clear a space for a garden. I know. Old school.

Then we all got computers and, voila, hack changed to mean some elusive somebody, get out your tin hat, who wriggled through a crack in your firewall and stole all your private information, no matter that most of it is boring.

I struggle to understand how hack came to be equated with helpful. Along with Helen’s Household Hints, Matt’s Mechanical Magic, Gert’s Garden Genius, and so on.

Not only does each hack claim to be the right way to proceed with whatever the project, the person sharing (?) the hack, loudly attempts to convince you that you have been doing it wrong all your life. As have your parents and grandparents. Each way to do mostly simple things lays claim to be minutely different. Each way is the right way. Most importantly, no matter what, your way is the wrong way, because, obviously if you are wrong, you want to know how to be right.  And, there is a helpful product to help you onto the right way. Ka-ching. Clever.

On second thought, perhaps hack is positively the best word.

No longer do we need take the information we possess, sit quietly in front of the problem, turn it this way and that way, seek advice and help if necessary, from an actual person, come to an understanding, and fix the problem if it is fixable.

Choose a hack, gather the products suggested, follow the You Tube video, and done. Easy-peasy. No thinking necessary. I have been assured there are hacks for absolutely everything. No need to call on the skills of a plumber, an electrician, a mechanic, or any other trained person.

Me, like I said, I’m old school. I’ve a feeling the electrician, the mechanic, the agronomist, are patiently waiting for the hackers to screw up.

I’ll call the plumber first, before I screw it up, after I make sure the plumber didn’t get her training on Facebook.

You go on and do it the right way. You are more clever than me.

You ask, Did the hack work? Did I remove the stains from my mattress?

No. I haven’t tried it yet. I don’t have a 1/3 tablespoon measure in my cupboard.

Sondra Ashton

Havre Weekly News

May in Mexico

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Heart Attack

 

Heart Attack

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The other morning I visited with a long-time friend who lives in California. We don’t visit frequently, but when we do, it’s always good. Ideas fly and grow and develop and land in our deep hearts.

My friend Anne belongs to a small church with an aim to make a difference in their community, to really matter to those they serve. With all the best intentions in the world, they formed a committee to put together gift bags for people in their area with no fixed abode. “Homeless.” I heard it is illegal to use that word. So shoot me.

On the way out of church one Sunday, Anne grabbed a handful of give-away bags and tossed them in the back seat of her car. One day she spotted a homeless man she sees frequently on her walks, remembered the bags, parked, walked over to the park bench and sat down next to him.

Anne struck up a conversation and handed the man a bag which he took with a long side-look before he opened it, pawed through it. . . and took two pair of socks. “I can use these,” he told her, with thanks, and left the rest.

Think about it. The useful supplies had been thoughtfully put together. It contained such goodies as shower gel, a bar of soap, toothpaste, a toothbrush, floss, deodorant (Deodorant?  Really?), shaving cream, scrubbies and so on. How are you going to use these if you’ve no regular access to water? I’m not saying this was wrong, just not thought through with imagination.

On the heels of this conversation, my daughter and I followed with a talk about food banks we have known, such as the one that allowed only 2 cans of soup per family, but each can had to be different. I’d be desperate indeed to combine tomato with cream of mushroom soup. Or the one with the list to make sure you don’t get any food but every second month. Who makes up these foolish rules?

All this talk threw me back to my first days in Chicago, mid-1970s, living in a car with a baby and a toddler until we could find a house to rent on hope and promise, using gas station facilities when necessary, which was frequently. We managed. I suppose you could not call us homeless because we had a car and a few dollars.

A kind woman let us rent her house without money up front. We set up housekeeping with what few supplies we’d been able to cram into the car. We went to the Safeway store a few blocks away for a minimum of groceries. On our way out of the lot, we drove around behind the store to the other exit.

This particular Safeway had a kind manager, who, every afternoon, put shabby vegetables and out-of-date foods by the loading dock behind the store for people in need, homeless and otherwise. We stopped to ask what was happening.

One of the men came over to the car, looked in, and said to the people there gathering supplies, “Hey, she’s got babies.”

Suddenly the car was surrounded by folks passing in milk, butter, cheese and all manner of good food. These homeless men and women, human beings with stories, treated us with love and compassion and helpfulness.

We shopped behind the store the first couple of weeks and inside the store thereafter, the whole time we lived there. That was one of my life’s low times, but I remember that Safeway and those people with gratitude.

All that talking and thinking and remembering elbowed me into an urge to put skin and legs on my own gratitude and go do something about it.

Just so happened that Leo was pruning the plumbago alongside my patio. I went out and said, “Leo, I’m having a heart attack. I need to make it better. Would you have time right now to take me to Etza Frut to load up with fruit and veggies for the care home?”

That about gave Leo a heart attack, the way I presented it, but he put down his pruning shears and off we went. “You buy what you and Pepi think best. I don’t need to make the choices,” and handed Leo some pesos. I’m rich in comparison to people with no other place to go. The care home is run on donations, no government grants.

While waiting, I slunk down in my seat. Nobody needed to know my part in this. When Leo returned and loaded the back of the car, seats lowered, with a good supply of fruit and veggies, I sent him across the road for beans and rice, an afterthought. It’s amazing what these good store owners will throw in when they know where the food is headed.

Homeless, in a care home, standing in line for commodity cheese, in a mansion; we all have a story. Some stories more . . . interesting, more . . . colorful. We are all human beings.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

April ending, hot and dry.

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Summertime, and the living is dusty

 

               Summertime, and the living is dusty  

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That may not be how the song is sung but that is how we sing it in Etzatlan this summer.

We juggle the procession of seasons, winter flips into a few days of spring, which gets dropped on the floor and immediately flames into summer, temps in high 90s up to 100 this week.

Dry and dusty. What little breeze we get brings cane ash and field dirt, right into my casa where I can enjoy it at leisure.

I yearn for what I now think of as normal times, when the rains come in June, bringing two and a half months of spring. Ah, spring. Will we have spring this year?

Meanwhile, we have no water. The entire town of Etzatlan is without water. Just outside city limits, we still benefit, not the word I would always choose, but, benefit from delivery of city water.

Gravity pushes water from ground pipes to the rooftop tinaco. My tinaco is not empty. Yet. I use water judiciously, knowing my tinaco may empty at any time. When I moved here, I bought a small tinaco, perfectly adequate for one person. Today is the first time I’ve revisited that decision. Done is done.

I change my ways. Wear clothes longer, hope they pass the sniff test, yours, not mine. Towels will work a few more showers, sheets soak more dreams. Hand wash laundry as necessary. Few flushes. Hoard every drop of water as best I can.

Leo and I chose which plants to let die but the choice may not be ours.

We are in the middle of the two month campaigning for government of country, states and municipalities. Rumors abound that the sudden water shut-off has political implications. I hear things. I know someone who knows someone who knows someone who works for the water department. I know too  much.

Well. Or should I say wells. Strange that a city using several wells suddenly runs dry, all on the same day. But, what do I know? Nothing. I know nothing. See above.

Jane, my friend Michelle’s 96-year-old mother, has passed on. This is one of those days which bring on a soup of emotions, relief that she is out of pain, sadness that she is gone, a soup seasoned with anger, grief, emptiness, stories outrageous.

It has not been an easy three weeks. Jane was delirious most of the time, refused to eat, refused to move, needed basic care, needed her surgical dressings changed daily. Fortunately, Ana had taken an intensive nursing class a year ago and stepped in to handle that part of the burden. Medications eased the pain and delusions. Jane died at home, in her own bed, surrounded by family, peaceful in her final hours.

Early the following day Ana arranged for the medical sign-off for natural death and registered the appropriate paperwork with the government. The tasks of finality move quickly here in Mexico. Leo and I drove over to say our own good-byes and to be with Ana and Michelle while they awaited the hearse to pick up Jane’s body for cremation.

Several of Ana’s family were there, people who had gotten to know Jane and appreciate her wit. It was a sweet time and I’m glad I got be a part of it. Most of the time we sat or stood or moved about under the trees around Jane’s wee casita, talking quietly, or quietly contemplative. Ana and Michelle let us love on them without any need to play hosts.

When the hearse backed down the drive, we said our final goodbyes, then stood in respectful silence while the two men went about their work. When the hearse left, heartfelt hugs all around, and we each dispersed to our various homes.

One of the stories Michelle told us was that when Jane lived on the coast above Puerto Vallarta, every Friday night she went to a particular bar for karaoke. Two songs, she sang, without fail, “Summertime” and “Danny Boy”.

This morning, the lazy summery tune meandering among my thoughts, I sat beneath my mango tree, pondering the vagaries of life, remembering Jane, unable to ignore three large green mango fruits hanging in front of my face, green but will be ripe to pick next week. April.

Yes, our summertime. However, the fruit of this particular mango tree, branches already laden with hundreds of babies, ripens in July. July! We live in a topsy-turvy world and must stand in awe.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

April Summertime

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Birthdays and Other Afflictions

 

Birthdays and Other Afflictions

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I’ve never made a big deal of my birthdays. In childhood, my birthday presents were always books, which was exactly what I wanted. Coming from family raised during the Great Depression, a gift was a Big Deal. I’m pretty sure my Dad never had a birthday present.

For decades, beginning in my forties, I began skipping the “9” years. Instead of forty-nine, I became “almost fifty”. I did not see 49 as a positive gain. Almost sixty. Almost seventy.

This year, a “9” year, I turned almost 80 as the moon crossed over the sun.

I doubt that has any great significance. There are such things as coinky-dinkies, thank you, Jimmy Durante. You have to be old to remember that man. Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are. In my defense, when I watched Jimmy Durante on television, I was really young and he was really old.

My birthday night was also a night of no moon. Make of that what you will.

I appreciate that young people today talk about everything, big and little, stuff my generation was not allowed to even think about—nor did we have the basic information to allow us to think. It might seem the young ones talk too much, but, hey, talking, talking, talking the forbidden is new experience and the new will wear off. Conversations which were taboo to people of my generation will become common.

One of the items on that long, long list of things nobody told us would happen when we got old, one among many of the dreaded, dreadful taboo topics, hold your breath, is hemorrhoids.

Guess what I got for my birthday.  Yep, that “H” word as one of my friends calls it. She still cannot let the forbidden word slip past her lips.

I determined years ago that I will talk about whatever crosses my path, painful or not. A little research showed me that hemorrhoids are common in older people, a natural, (painful), progression, so to speak. Cripes.

Since most of the people I’m in touch with are aging and/or aged, when I visit, I announce my new affliction with gusto and a big smile, “Guess what? I’ve got a hemorrhoid.”

After the bug-eyed looks of shock wear off, most of my friends then share their stories of how they dealt with said affliction. Medicine works. I recommend medicine.

On the way to the Farmacia for my medication for hemorrhoids, I noticed every other building in town is plastered with political posters. This is an election year in Mexico.

While not everything in Mexico is wonderful, and I do tend to wax lyrical about what I find wonderful, like any country, Mexico has big faults, some Grand Canyon big.

Let me sing goodness about the election process, at least this part of it. Campaigning is limited to two months. Two months of loud and predictable and tiresome promises and lies. Two months. June 2, people will head for the polls and vote and that is done. Done. For six more years.

Speaking of falsehoods, excuse me a moment to talk with my editor.

Tim, if it is not too shaky or fuzzy, I would like to change my photo from hollyhocks to a birthday photo Crin took of me on my patio. Could you also have your photo person do a little, what do they call it, photo shop? Air brush? Remove glaring defects? Make me beautiful?

Just kidding. I know they can’t do the impossible. However, could they take some of the worry away from my face? Oh, and I had not combed my hair. If it doesn’t work, keep the hollyhocks, please. Thank you.

All in all, I had a good birthday. My daughter called and sang me the birthday song. A friend left me a basket of fruit on my patio table. Others took me out for breakfast. Another friend made me an apple dumpling and gave me a rock. Friends are good. (The rock is a pumice stone for cleaning lime scale, a last minute, thoughtful, “we gives what we gots”.)

And, true to history, I bought myself a book.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

April birthday week

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Sometimes when life

 

            Sometimes when life

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Sometimes when life gives you lemons, well, you can’t make lemonade when life drops the whole tree on your head, can you?

The entire last month has been terrible for my friends, Ana and Michelle. First one of the cats got strange. Cats can be strange, so what! However, when something is wrong, something is wrong. After several visits to the nearest small animal vet in Tala (Havre to Loma), Blue was diagnosed with diabetes and Cushing’s disease. Blue is on medication, blood jab and insulin shot three times daily, for diabetes. Cushing’s has him gluttonously raiding the pantry, eating anything. Flour, seaweed, beans, baking powder. No food is safe from his claws.

Blue’s care alone is hugely stressful. Then Jane fell, broke her other hip, and landed in the hospital for surgery. Jane is 96. Stress climbed off the upper end of the chart. After two frantic weeks fraught with problems of every sort, Jane is home in her own familiar surroundings, being kept as comfortable as possible. Jane needs ‘‘round-the-clock care. A lovely nurse comes in for the long night shift.

During this entire time, Ana and Michelle are building a guest house on their property. So everything is disarranged, dusty and dirty, with the work crew on site, needing occasional supervision, decisions made, changes okayed, the usual.

Then one of Jane’s house cats dashed the door to freedom, slipped through the gates onto the street where a passing car promptly smacked it. Cat couldn’t move.

A local large-animal vet took pity, went to their home and put the poor cat with a crushed pelvis out of misery. That would be “the last straw”, would it not?

I’ve become The Ear. You know, the one who gets to hear the worst details, the one who listens, mumbles, nods. The one to whom it is safe to say, “I’m afraid I might explode into flames.”

Why have I become the Safe Ear? I’ve been there, haven’t I? Maybe more times than many, slow-learner, me. “Lemon tree, very pretty. And the lemon flower is sweet. But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.”

I used to wonder what was wrong with me, living from disaster to disaster, drama and adrenaline. I would look around and see everyone, yes, everyone, seemed to be literally everyone, living shielded lives, walking on golden clouds, halos glowing, no dirt ever smudged their robes.

Little by little, my eyes opened. Maybe some hid it better, but none of us are immune from disaster. First, I had to get out of myself long enough to be able to see you, to really see, to listen, without a glib answer.

A friend I’d always envied, to whom nothing bad ever happened, had cancer but didn’t talk about it.  A couple who had the perfect marriage went through the hell of divorce. We found out after it was over. A close friend birthed twins who died within days. And so it went. Death, divorce, disease, drugs and alcohol, severe disabilities, accidents, depression. Slowly, I began to see. Nobody was immune.

Life is a mixed bag, of course. We get it all. I doubt anybody really gets left out. Nobody really gets the whole lemon tree dropped on them all at once. It just seems that way in the moment. What we like to label “bad” happens. “Good” happens, too. Even good in big batches. Not only that, we are great for mis-labeling. Think about it.

I’m glad I can be an ear to my friends right now. Believe me, those two friends, among many others, have been “ears” for me too. I’ve learned to say, “I need to talk about this. I need help.” Often. Talking doesn’t erase the problem but it helps. Me. I’m not so self-important.

Sometimes when life gives you lemons, you are flat out of sugar. Sometimes when life gives you lemons, you can borrow a knife from one friend to cut the lemons, borrow a press from another friend to squeeze the juice, borrow sugar from another friend, and together, make lemonade. We don’t have to do it alone. Lemon tree, very pretty.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

April, lovely April

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