My Mothers Day Retrospective

 

My Mothers Day Retrospective 

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At 3:00 in the morning on the Mexican holiday of the Dia de Madres, I startled awake to the blast of a band playing outside my bedroom window.

Naturally, I was out of bed in a flash and over to the window to see what brought on such music in the night. Despite the fullish moon, the sky held just enough clouds for the night to be dark. My window is high from the street and nobody ever looks up. I was invisible in my perch.

In front of the house next door, a pickup truck had parked. In the truck bed and around the truck were possibly a dozen, maybe more, band members, playing every kind of instrument. And, they were good. I mean, really, good. I watched as lights came on in various rooms of the neighbor’s house. Eventually, someone came to the door, undoubtedly Mom, walked outside and stood at the entry gate.

The band played at full heart. I didn’t eaves drop at the window long, climbed back into bed and enjoyed the twenty minutes or thereabouts of wonderful music, claiming the splash-over of the Mother’s Day serenade for myself.

In Mexico Mother’s Day is a Big Deal. It is celebrated on May 10 every year, no matter what day of the week that happens to be. This year it was Saturday.

I’ve no pretensions to be a musician but I do know when music is good, when it is tolerable, and when it can be dreadful.

At 3:00 the previous afternoon, I happened to be at my kitchen window and saw the young neighbor boy leave the house with a beautiful clarinet in hand. Ah, that answered a lot of questions I had about the mysterious (to me) musician in the neighborhood. Frequently, I listened to somebody practicing, often solo, but sometimes in company with other instruments, usually traditional but often jazz. For a practice session, he or they, was/were amazing.

What I found delightful is that the practice sessions were lovely listening. So this young man, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old, is a good musician. No matter where life takes him, he will always have that.

On our Mexican Mother’s Day, I learned that people here in Oconahua hire musical groups to serenade their Mothers. They move from street to street, from house to house, bringing music and love and fun and surprise.

There are several bands, formal and informal, in our town. This seems to be quite the musical community.

When I talk about the group who showed up outside my window, I call them the “young band” only because I could see two young men with clarinets on the north edge of the group, my neighbor and another young man. Our band could have included all ages. It could have been a neighborhood youth group. It was too dark for me to take a census.

The following day, another Mother’s Day, I enjoyed a visit with friends, John and Carol, soon to head out for Minnesota. I served scones and iced tea on the patio. A good time was had by all.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

May 15, 2025

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Down and Out in Paradise

 

          Down and Out in Paradise

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You know how sometimes you can be thinking about a friend or an acquaintance and the phone will ring and suddenly you are talking with that person? This is sort of how my last few weeks have been but with a wry twist.

I have been hearing from people with whom I’ve not spoken in a while, friends and acquaintances. Their words mirror my feelings.

“I don’t know if it is the long winter or all the horrible news and strife in our country but I can’t seem to find my balance. My equilibrium is out of whack.”

“I turned 70 and my body betrayed me. Macular degeneration in both eyes and some days my hips won’t let me walk. My use-by date seems to have come and gone.” (Wait until you hit 80, I thought, but am too kind to say.)  

“I want to lose myself in gardening but I can’t even seem to be able to do that.”

 “We’ve lost another friend. Did you hear that Terri (or Mike or Bob) died last week?”

I could go on and on but what every example, said and unsaid reveals, is that we, my friends and I, have all found ourselves mired in the murky bottom of a slough of depression.

My friends are my mirror, so I’ll speak of myself.

I don’t feel exactly the same way every day. I’ve mild depression with variations on the theme. Some days I’d tell you I feel discouraged, down in the dumps, flat. Other days I might say I’ve no strength. Go away and leave me alone. My energy has up and gone.

Clinical depression is an entirely different matter. My malady is plainoldnormaleveryday depression. It is sad that we all feel so dejected at the same time. Usually, one of us can bring the other out into the sunshine of hope.

Which leads me to a really weird postulation. What if this is the way I’m (we) should feel? Look at it this way. I’m in one of my latter cycles of physical change. Some days it seems nothing works the way it used to work. I read the obits just to make sure my name isn’t listed. I’m grieving lost family, lost friends, lost chances, lost functions, lost country.

For example, last night Michelle and Ana and I climbed the stairway to my roof to pick guamuchil pods, here known as Mexican candy. This is the week of a special celebration local to the peoples of this area. While extracting one of the legume-like white fruits and popping it into my mouth, I looked across to the adjacent mountain. A long line of folks dressed in bright costumes trooped up the mountain in procession.

“Ten years ago, just ten years ago I could walk that pathway,” I said to my friends. I might still have been walking up while they were coming down, but I could have done the trip.

What I’m struggling to say is that maybe mild depression is simply a reaction to all that is around me, my present circumstances, not good, not bad, just the way it is.

Rather than fight it, why not accept the feelings and do what I always do anyway. Talk to my geraniums. Prune the oregano. Talk with my friends. Read. Watch the birds. Eat ice cream. Let Lola bury her slobbery muzzle on my white pants and look into my eyes, tail wagging.

I’ve even got a new therapy. Now that we are well entrenched in our hot season, I’ve begun walking the swimming pool, end to end, turn and back. I’m doing this for my knees and hips and back. Walking the pool (I never learned to swim) seems to be good for both body and soul.

Whatever I feel today, this I know: tomorrow I will feel differently. I may not feel better, but I will feel different.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

May 8, 2025

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Don’t know where I’m going but I’ve been here a while.

                Don’t know where I’m going but I’ve been here a while.

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That line came to me as if in a song. Nobody ever accused me of being musically inclined. Like most of us, I too have music in my soul. Sing along with me and let’s see where it takes us.

Yesterday, armed with a bundle of flowers, we attended the burial of our friend Leo’s grandma, who at 96 said she felt so very tired and went to sleep the long sleep. The ceremony touched me deeply.

I was surprised at the number of folks there whom I’ve met. I garnered my own bouquet of hugs and tears and waves along with a few of “Wonder who she is and why is she here?” I forgot to bring a hat, ended up standing in blazing sun, when one of the aunties scooted over to my side and held her sunbrella over both our heads.

Every woman in Mexico owns a colorful sunbrella and uses them. I just wrote “sunbrella” on my shopping list. I never felt the need for one until now. A hat will do, but what if someone next to me needs shade?

In the rainy season, this colorful device doubles as an umbrella but I’d rather be wet than scorched.

I’ve been here long enough to attend a burial, two viewings (similar to a wake), a baptism, and a first communion. That might mean I’m well entrenched. At least I felt so when the auntie shared her shade without a qualm.

In my collection of pleasurable connections, add in one zoomer of a birthday party for my best friend in high school, Charlotte. Her best friend, Karen, now living in England, was present also, along with Charlotte’s siblings, children and extended family. We all had two hours of stories, recollections, memories revived, meeting family we’ve not met. Two hours of warm fuzzies. I confess that when I said my good-byes, I was crying, tears of pure joy.

 I’d no more than zoomed out of the birthday party when my email pinged with a most surprising blast from the past, another thread of connection which I’d thought long cut asunder. Sandy, a friend from former years, mid-80s through the 90s, found me. We lost each other years ago when she went on the road with her husband.

Sandy and I had shared many adventures and a few mis-adventures but the thing I most treasure from her friendship was her ability to shake me out of taking myself too seriously. What a gift to be reconnected!

I truly never know where my day will take me. I’m along for the ride and glad to have a ticket.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

May 1, 2025

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Fire on the Mountain

 Fire on the Mountain

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Not on my mountain. Not the mountain on which I live. But over toward the east, far enough away that the glow was huge, lighting the sky scary. Far enough that I could not smell smoke, even though wind was blowing from the east. This event occurred a week ago but I cannot get it out of my mind.

Night. It was night. When dark descends, I retire to bed with my current book, propped on a huge “reading pillow”. The pillow doesn’t read; the pillow allows me to read comfortably in bed. Generally I read until my eyeballs fall down.  

I got out of bed to put away my book, and out the window, saw the fiery glow behind the horizon to the east. I stared at the phenomenon for several minutes. I couldn’t see leaping flames so with my keen logical mind, I determined that the fire must be several miles away.

I climbed back into bed, snuggled myself into comfort for sleep.

The committee decided to convene. “Oh, no, you don’t.”  “Fire, silly. Headed this way. And you want to sleep? Dumb, dumb, dumb!”

Another voice queried, “Don’t you think it might be wise to rouse the neighbors. In fact, why is the neighborhood so quiet? Fire is not to be ignored.”

“Fire races like, well, like wildfire, through the dry grasses and over the hills and before you know it, fire will be licking at your feet.”

Obviously, sleep was out of the question.

“Don’t you think you should organize a go-bag, just in case you must run?”

I decided that if I needed to evacuate, I’d take a spare set of clean underwear and socks. I’d wear my hiking boots. Passport. Water. Why would I want to lug around more than I could easily sling in a shoulder bag?

Then, with the help of my various friends-of-the-night committee, I wondered if I’d be safer closing all the doors and windows of my house and waiting for the flames to pass by. Surely there would be enough air in the house to keep one set of lungs happy. We are surrounded by a cobbled street and lots of concrete driveway and patios, and we live in brick and stone houses. I should be impervious to fire. Right? Maybe? Possibly?

Sure, it is the dry season, lots of tall brown grasses, groves of trees further up the mountain but not so many trees close by, not like a forest, here, just normal yard trees. (Never try to reason with the committee.)

“But the big danger with fire is that it sucks all the oxygen from the air, right? You’d be a goner before you ever saw a flame. You could die and never be singed.”

Now I’m getting sweaty, nervous. I can feel the flames out there eating the miles.

In the quiet of the night I continued to entertain this conversation, or it held me captive, a full half-hour. Finally, wondering why the night continued to be muffled beneath a blanket of quiet, why I smelled not a whiff of smoke, why I heard nary an alarm, I got out of bed and went to the window.

Lighting up the entire sky, my raging, leaping flames of fire, the gigantic full moon.

Perception, you deceiver. You surely fooled me.

It took so little to trick me. An awareness of our extreme dry season, an awareness hiding at the very back of my consciousness. A glow in the night sky that had not been there an hour previously. Knowledge that this time of year grass fires are a constant danger. Help from the voices of fear and anxiety and what if.  One plus one equals fire. So simple.

I’m glad I didn’t sound the alarm. I’m glad I didn’t wake my neighbors. I’m glad the joke was on me. I’m glad the fire was nothing but the mountains of the moon, that big dead rock in the night sky, reflecting other fires.

Fooled me. I forgot the maxim: Where there is fire, there is smoke.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

April 24, 2025

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Back to the Whole McGillicuddy

 Back to the Whole McGillicuddy

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Last Sunday Ana, Michelle and I had breakfast out, the real Mexico way. This, in itself, is not important. On Saturday, Ana had gone to her Uncle’s 90^th birthday party. This is important.

Tuesday was my birthday. Michelle and I drove to Etzatlan, masked and gelled with gloppy hand sanitizer, for a treat at a coffee shop. Ana stayed home, feeling unwell. Ana’s symptoms made me frown. I had, a mere couple of weeks ago, recovered from the latest covid variant and many similarities popped up.

When we returned from cake and coffee, Michelle had Ana do the coronavirus test. Ana tested positive. I isolated behind my fenced area. Michelle hitched up her mask and took on both women’s chores. At this point, Ana was very ill.

The next day Michelle hollered across our patios that she tested positive. Now I am in full worry mode. They have dogs and cats and chickens and sheep to care for in addition to themselves.

Michelle assured me that she was asymptomatic and able to do chores for now. She reminded me they have a town full of relatives to call for help if need be.

Me, I’m not worried for myself. I had two weeks of recovery behind me so figured I was graced with at least three months of immunity. Right?

Meanwhile my email was pinging and dinging with notes from friends afar who were also stricken. I would tell you what I think of this Covid virus but you might be inclined to dent my tin hat while I’m wearing it so I shall restrain myself.

Ana had been sick three or four days when I woke in the night thinking about immunity and what that means. Not the least bit worried, just to prove a point to myself, the next morning I reamed my nose and tested. I must have stared at the result a good ten minutes, stunned. Positive. How could that be? I’m immune. Right?

I waited a full 24 hours to repeat the test. Just in case I’d stuck my big toe in the test kit or in some other way compromised it, I tested again. I’m not feeling sick. I am testing positive. Thankfully, Michelle and I both are asymptomatic but that also means that while we are positive, we are carriers. I could infect you and I’d rather not.

I alerted our friends from the rancho to stay away, let them know that we are not entertaining guests at present.

Over the past couple of months I had noticed that more people in town were, once again, going about their business masked. Since my own bout with the disease last month, I  began masking when in the car or in tiendas. But not always. My guard, like most everyone else’s, was down.

We three have reverted to the whole McGillicuddy of precautions. I don’t like it. I doubt my friends are thrilled. Masks are irritating. Hand gel is gross. Isolating defies every instinct. Distancing, same. I want to touch, shake hands, see your smile, (read your lips).

We three here are in agreement about our actions and precautions. You do what you want. I understand. I have absolutely no advice. I don’t know enough to give advice.

At any rate, there is a lot of sickness out there. A lot of people are asymptomatic with Covid. I got sick the first time at a party in which nobody was feeling ill, yet someone carried it to me. We had all let down our guards. Lots of hugs, touches, closeness. Same for Ana at her party. Even people who have been recently vaccinated can get it but not feel ill and share it widely. Allegedly. How fun!

I’m okay. Don’t you worry about me. I’m appalled, not that I have the Covid virus, but that I could so easily and unknowingly give it to you.

Just in case, I’m writing this masked. I am isolated, 2500 miles away. I disinfected my hands. You are safe from me.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out 

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Eating Out in Real Mexico

 

Eating Out in Real Mexico

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Real Mexico is where I live, rather than in resort Mexico. No beaches, artist colonies, high-rise resorts with all-inclusive services, time-share sales goons here. Just us folks.

Ana said that all the restaurants in the area used to be open air, palapa style with palm or bamboo roofs, just like the place where we went to enjoy breakfast Sunday morning, on the edge of San Marcos.

The kitchen is over at one end beneath its own bamboo roof, a counter island between the half dozen long tables and the stove. We diners can watch the woman patting out tortillas, and, oh, such good tortillas, or be mesmerized by the young girl running baskets of carrots and bushels of oranges through the juicers.

Behind the eatery, across the fence, are pastures with cattle grazing, up into the far hills. Across the highway, fields blue with agave stretch almost to the mountains.

There was little traffic on the highway, so near to where the pavement ran out. Dirt roads cross the mountains into Amitlan de Cana. There were hundreds of bicyclists, a group of whom crowded around two of the tables.

We shared our table with a pleasant young couple.

We had invited friends to join us that Sunday morning. They chose to go elsewhere. In the choosing, according to an email they sent me, they kindly did the thinking for us, listing in bullet points, the reasons each of us would rather they didn’t join us. None of the reasons listed applied as often is the case when someone else decides what we think.

In all fairness, when I think I know what someone else thinks, I, also, am usually wrong.  

Our friends, and they are friends, have relatives visiting and decided to go to the Hacienda del Carmen, a completely understandable destination, one of the tourist highlights, of which there are few in the vicinity.

The restored ancient Hacienda is a lovely site, grand old Spanish buildings, on acres of landscaped grounds, complete with artistic gardens, ponds and pools and swans and peacocks, posh hotel rooms and a spa where one can be treated to massage, facial, pedicure, manicure, mud bath or salt scrub and such delights. 

I’m not being sarcastic. It is a wonderful place with a real indoor restaurant serving delightful food, with a choice of seating indoors or out. Mimosas. Did I mention mimosas?

We could have asked to join our friends for breakfast. They could have easily added three to the reservation. I confess that part of why I didn’t explore the option to eat with our friends was a tiny sliver of resentment that eating here or there was not explored voice to voice to choice.

We will be seeing our friends within the next week. I will explain that it is not nice to do my thinking for me, thank you very much. There will be a lightbulb moment of “Oops”. An apology and a laugh at our foolishness.

We three enjoyed our relaxing meal, without the option of mimosas or other fluffy drinks. I watched my orange/carrot juice being made. We didn’t get to wander around opulent grounds. I know our friends enjoyed their meals, without our option of slipping treats to the brown dog resting in the shade of the palapa, keeping an open eye for any bit which might slip from my plate.

Yeah, Real Mexico. Think about it. Which would you prefer? To eat with the cows in the pasture across the fence or with peacocks strutting the lawns? A choice of four items or an extensive menu with an even larger wine list? Our total bill for breakfast for three was half the cost of a meal for one at the Hacienda, not counting mimosas.

Okay, okay. When you come to visit, I’ll take you to the Hacienda.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

April 10, 2025

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Read the Fine Print

 

Read the Fine Print

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The small print is put in place for a good reason. Sometimes it is more important than the big print. Fine print has a purpose. Read it. Somebody must read the fine print.

I think the fine print should be at the top, not the bottom. Unfortunately, I too often neglect to even see it.

A silly, unimportant, example is a recent puzzle I ordered. I was ordering five jigsaw puzzles. That was my intention. Five puzzles to keep me busy for many months because I don’t binge on puzzles. They are for my occasional pleasure.

One puzzle depicts a beautiful scenic garden gazebo filled with colorful bamboo furniture, surrounded by lush tropical plants, alive with bursts of color, detail to keep one, well, puzzled.

However, I failed to read the fine print and even missed the big print. 1,000-piece puzzles are best for me. They keep me occupied for days. My project table is the perfect work size for 1,000 piecers.

I set my fresh puzzles in a pile for “later”. When I got a “round tuit” and opened the box,  Whoa! Wait a minute. This is a 300 piece puzzle. How did that happen?

I had not even seen the big print. I saw beauty and dumped it into my cart, and hang the details. To make my puzzling mistake more interesting, I worked it from the center out, edge pieces last.

I’d like to blame my family. We actually, usually, do read the instructions though. It’s what we do with them that changes things. Often, often, I read the directions and puzzle through them for a while, no hurry. Then I figure out a different or better or easier way to assemble the widget or bake the cake. It is a troublesome failing.

Back in high school Algebra was my bugaboo. I would get the right answers; we had to show our work, of course. I got marked down for doing it my way. I could not wrap my head around why that mattered. Stubborn got in my way.

My friend Denise told me she just sewed a shirt for her husband but she made a mistake. “He doesn’t know, won’t see it, and I’m not telling,” she said.

I’m doing all my sewing without patterns or instructions, so I’m quite familiar with getting to a roadblock, having to back track, pulling out stitches all the way. Sit with it, let it tell me how to fix it. I told Denise, “That is why God invented gussets.” I am very good with creative gussets.

I’ve often wished people came with an instruction manual. In a way, I guess, we do. But to read each diffferent how-it-works instructions, we, the reader, must slow down, listen very carefully to the other person, not so much the words, but the fine print behind the words. 

Jerry, a long-time family friend, contacted me the other day. Jerry just celebrated his 36^th Sobriety birthday. We were commiserating about my son, who went off the rails a couple years ago and recently clawed his way into a treatment facility.

Both of us had read the fine print. We saw the red flags waving before my son’s problems became visible. We heard the warning bells and screaming sirens.

Unfortunately, I can’t fix his problems with my gussets. I can only fix my own problems. Sometimes. That’s my full-time job. My son must find his own directions.

Sis said, “You can’t make gravy with a tire iron and tube patch. All we want is to be loved and to love. We just go about trying to find love in wonky ways. Some of us read the instruction manuals in a foreign language.” Amen, I say.

Jim said, “Everybody is getting along the best they can with what they’ve got.” (See above about foreign language.)

Jerry and I reminisced about when a group of us gathered Friday nights to play pinochle. None of us were rich. We had good times.

In closing, I told Jerry along with those of you who play pinochle, “Hearts are trump and I’m shooting the moon.”

Lest I forget. It is best to read the fine print. Read it first.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

April 3, 2025

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Roadkill with Oatmeal Brain

 Roadkill with Oatmeal Brain

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I make plans. Life smashes plans.

Last week I had social plans, lined up, all in a row. Because of trauma dredged up by news of my son, I wanted to cancel all the plans and binge on self-pity. But I was determined to suit up and show up, knowing I would enjoy outings with my good friends despite myself.

You know how sometimes when you awaken, you don’t feel tip-top? But a cup of coffee makes things better, right? In the hour between get-up and the-car-is-leaving-now, I felt “worser” and then “worser”.

With reluctance, I handed my concert ticket to Michelle and said, “Give it to someone, anyone, I don’t care, I can’t go.” On the way out of town they kidnapped Monica, Ana’s niece, and it happened to be her birthday, so wasn’t that perfect?

At home, I had a miserable day, not focused on anything but feeling like roadkill-day-one.

Roadkill-day-two was supposed to be therapy-in-the-pool day. Trying to fool myself that I felt better, I realized I felt worse.

You know that quiet little voice that sometime niggles in your ear and that is easy to ignore? Exactly. That one. Eventually, I paid attention to her and dug my test kit out of medical supplies. When does Positive feel Negative? No, I am not pregnant. I have Covid. I had managed to dodge that bullet through the whole pandemic, until now.

Today, I would not mind if positive meant pregnant. There has been one Virgin Birth. Why not two? My daughter assured me there have been thousands. Thousands claimed, that is.

I quick-told Michelle and Ana that I am poison. They quick-told Kathy, Crin, and Carol to turn around and go home. No pool therapy today. We’d all been together for a Thai feast, all exposed to one another.

Roadkill-day-three I tried to fake that I felt better. It didn’t work. I’m used to pain. I can handle pain, no energy, congestion, fever, chills, swollen glands and all the ugly rest of it. Instead of visiting an archeological ruin, I am one.

The hardest thing for me is oatmeal brain.

I like oatmeal, steaming in the bowl, laced generously with brown sugar, drenched in a lake of milk.

Oatmeal brain feels like cold oatmeal got dumped cold into my brain pan and congealed into a lumpy mass, no sugar, no milk. Incapable of thought impulses. Incapable of creativity. Incapable. Rendering me into a state of stasis.

Roadkill-day four found me no better but I wanted to do just one thing. I had not lifted a finger for any chore since being stricken with the plague. Sweep the floor or wash sheets? I don’t sleep on the floor so that was a decision requiring no brain.

The thing about roadkill is that on the first day one knows that the flat slab once carried life. By day four, roadkill resembles a dirty piece of ancient cardboard. Oatmeal brain turns crusty around the blackening edges.

Day five. Can desiccated cardboard be freeze dried and rejuvenated later, kind of a Resurrection?

The days rolled on monotonously. Until one morning, like magic, I knew my body was being reconstituted.

My brain? Since I’m using breakfast food as an analogy, think of it like a progression. Oatmeal to scrambled eggs to the time honored brains and eggs. Might not get any better than that!

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

March 27, 2025

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Speaking of ears . . .

 

Speaking of ears . . .

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Just last week I said that when I need to talk, you are my ears. So here goes.

Gary phoned me. He’s my son’s Dad, not biological but the only Dad Ben had. When Gary and I came to a crossroads, he and I stayed friends. Gary and Ben were always close. I suspect Gary married me to have Ben for a son. A phone call from Gary these days is not always welcome news.

This call held hope. “Sondra, I just returned from driving Ben to a Recovery Center. He worked hard the last four months to get himself into treatment.”

A couple years ago I told you the grim news that my son had plunged back into the world of illicit chemicals. How did I know? He quit talking to me. That’s how I always know. Ben and I have a good, warm and fun relationship, except when he’s using.

He has a history. When a teen, the nice doctor gave him oxycontin for back pain after he was rear-ended at a stop light. Ben freed himself from that once he discovered the dangers of legitimate pain pills.

Which came next, divorce or heroin? Doesn’t matter. What followed was three years of horror for the family until Ben was arrested by the County Sheriff, who’d found him tossed in a ditch, severely beaten, with a backpack of illicit goods. Jail and an excellent recovery program led to almost ten good years of hard-won sobriety.

So why did this man who had rebuilt his life, cleaned up the damages from the past, begin using? Addiction cannot be blithely explained. As with most addictions, this time the downhill skid happened more quickly and more severely than in the past.

I am glad that my son is in treatment. I am even more hopeful since he did the work to get there by his own efforts.

I am ever so grateful to be 2500 miles away.

Gary, his father and landlord and enabler by default, said that for the past year he has felt like the frog in the kettle of water over the fire, unable to jump out.

When Ben gets out of treatment he will have a huge mess to clean up and nowhere to land. The house he has been living in will be destroyed, too dangerous to rent to others because of the intensity of drug use. Meth permeates the walls.

Did I say I am ever so grateful to be 2500 miles away? I do not intend to be the next frog to jump into the water pot.

I sound uncaring. My heart hurts so much that some days I am physically ill. I would hurt my son more if I became his next enabler. Yes, I will bear on-going pain watching him struggle.

Treatment does not guarantee an outcome. Treatment is merely a first step of help. The results are all up to Ben. That’s a huge task but there is immense help and Ben knows it.

“Gary, I hope and I pray that Ben is able and willing and wanting to do the hard work, to open himself up to his own pain. You and his daughter are at the top of the list of people he will need to reach out to with honesty, with reparations. Then his old boss, a man more than kind, who gave Ben every help and encouragement. Then his friends, Jerry and Jeff and Shea and Shawn, all good people who have stood by with help and love.”

I would like to see that work done. This is a list on which I don’t mind being last. I am not being selfless. I’m being very selfish.

I’m angry and trying not to misplace my anger. I’m hurt. I feel helpless because I am helpless.

I’m going to Guadalajara with a carload of friends to a concert when I don’t want to go. I’ll show up for water therapy at Michelle’s swimming pool, our first dip in the not-quite-warm water. I don’t want to get wet. Then I’ll go with Jim to explore the archeological ruins at Ixtlan del Rio, where I’ve wanted to go for years, but I don’t want to go right now.

What I want to do is curl up in a ball with my own grief and self-pity and guilt and fear and pain. I want to feed it and pet it and watch it grow, like a well-loved pet. Even that is addictive.

Instead, I’ll “suit up and show up”. I’ll do my own hard work and try to stay out of the way. I’ll love and hope and converse much with my own Higher Power. I’ll reach out to my friends for their hands, knowing I need help.

Hey, thanks. Thanks for your good listening ears. Thank you for your help.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

March 20, 2025

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