Can’t beat the heat!

 

Can’t beat the heat! 

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The other day I got excited. Movement catches my eye. I was near the window, sensed happenings, looked out and saw that I had a new neighbor. Oh, my, he was so handsome, black, with stunning confirmation.

Here in our little town, populated by women much of the year, husbands, brothers, son and other family working up north, there is an unprecedented number of houses under construction. The land around, tall with unkempt wild grasses, makes the structures look abandoned. No. Houses are awaiting the return of the owners to begin the next phases of construction.

Across my street and down one is a house under construction where I spotted the movement and my beautiful new neighbor. In my mind I was already crossing the road the next morning to talk with my new friend.

A couple hours later, I looked out the window and saw a white pickup truck with stock rack hauling away my beauty. In the yard, almost hidden among the grasses, was a sweet little brown mare and a black burro. What!

“Oh,” I said aloud. “I know why Black Beauty came to visit.” Well, at least I have the mare, the burro and a baby to look forward to visiting.

In the nine plus change years I’ve lived here in Jalisco, I cannot get used to spring being the hot season, summer the cooler rainy season. It’s backwards.

And hot it is! I briefly flirted with buying a portable swamp cooler. What? To use for two months and store the remainder of the year. Store where? Every inch of my space is in use, functional and pleasing to the eye. I have that gift, to create order and beauty. Soon we will have rain, early this year. So say the old-timers, of which I am one.

The cicadas have been yammering on for an entire month, early this year, which is how we know the rain will follow their song, as always. Folk lore, yes, but lore which seems to be imbedded in reality. Funny, how we welcome cicada “song” with joy when first we hear it. Funny, how at the end of a few weeks, the screech seems to rip tears in my mind, it is so loud and so harsh.

Michelle and Ana, neighbors and landladies, have a lovely pool which I can use. Just about the time we could get in the pool comfortably, early spring, we all came down with Covid. Well, that set us back several weeks. I used the pool a few times. Hurt my hip pulling weeds. The bending over thing, you know. Then my back went on the yip. It’s been probably three weeks since I’ve dipped.

Every time I’m ready to go to the pool, and this is coincidence, my friends drive out the gate. Or the young  man who cleans the pool comes a day early. Or, what happened yesterday is that Ana and Michelle, on the spur of an inspired moment, decided to head out and spend a few days in and around Ajijic.  

So no pool for me until they return. After all, I am 80, count them, a lot of years, old. My heart is healthy but one never knows when the reaper comes. I’d hate for my friends to return and find my body floating in the water. As I told them, I won’t go in the pool unless they are home. I don’t need anybody else to be in the water. I just want them nearby.

So how do I beat the heat? At pool time, I turn my shower on cooler than I normally like, and bask under my rain shower. Can one bask in a shower? I do. What can I say? It costs nary a peso and it works, cools me in the heat of the day.

My rain-shower keeps me sane under the shower of cicada song. Think of an old-fashioned blackboard scratched by a hundred long fingernails, over and over and over. Cicada song.

Time to go pet the brown mare across the street before the sun swings around. She could use some consolation after being loved and left. I leave the burro alone. It has huge teeth.

Bring on the real rain. I’m ready.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

May 29, 2025

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