Perceptions
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While mopping my floors, I escorted an ant out of my house
and set it free. Do not get excited. I don’t know why I did not squash it
underfoot as I usually do. Ants are the bane of our lives here. So many sizes.
So many varieties. A never-ending supply.
Don’t even think that I’d gotten Zen over that ant. I didn’t
even give it thought. Simply picked it up in my fingertips and flipped it out
the screen door.
If I had been going Zen about anything, I should have been concerned
for my newest house guest, Pierre, the lizard, around which I had just swished
my mop, one of the small variety, quite capable of startling me several times a
day. It is not a gecko. I don’t see gecko feet. I’ve not heard the gecko bark and we’ve shared
space this past week. My discarded ant could have contributed to Pierre’s food
supply. Lizards eat bugs. Ants? Spiders? Bugs of which we have plenty, outside,
not in my house. Okay, some in my house.
I am quite capable of reading deeper, esoteric, meaning into
any situation and being utterly wrong. Perhaps over-thinking is a form of
self-entertainment. No Zen this time.
Yesterday, mid-afternoon, the sky suddenly loomed low and
black. I went outside and looked up toward the top of the mountain. I swear I
could hear the rain coming. I, quick, wrote to my daughter, Dee Dee, “I hear
the rain hitting the tree leaves, looks like a huge storm. I want to let you
know we might lose power.”
At our elevation, most of the trees are broad leaf types. (We
have some pines, which I call frothy pines because the clusters of needles look
frothy.) When the rain hits the broad leaves, it is noisy like hail falling.
Swoosh, down the mountain the storm roared. An hour later I
wrote my daughter. “Well, that went over in an instant. We had gusty wind, a
light sprinkle, the black clouds rushed over and beyond in mere minutes. The
noises I heard? Wind rustling the leaves, not rain. Not rain. I was wrong.”
A couple of weeks ago our rainy season began. Rain daily,
rain nightly, with hardly a pause. I like rain. No complaint about rain. This
year we have a different pattern to the rain. Since living here in the
sub-tropics, what I have known, what I expect, are sunshine days and rainy
afternoons and evenings. What are landed with this time around are gray,
gloomy, wet days, all of them. I’m not saying this means anything. It just is
the way it is.
I will say that with a solar water heater, a good day is a
day when we have enough hot water that I can shower, even when the water is not
scalding hot like I want it! I like my solar water heater. However, it does
require significant patches of sunlight. My water is cold. My house is cold. Last
night I went to sleep with my wool socks on my feet, thinking about sliding a
pair onto my hands.
Oh, well. Ants are not important. Rain will fall. Sun will
shine. People are important.
A couple weeks ago my daughter went to Great Falls to attend
the memorial for her Aunt Lois. She met up with, connected with cousins she had
not seen in too many years, not since all the cousins were curtain climbers.
A sad element of divorce is that relatives get displaced or
misplaced. Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we, with one judgment, cut
off half our family? These young men are my nephews. I wish I could have gone
with her. I have some stories I could have told. Lois was only a year or two
older than me. Our lives split off in different directions.
Speaking of different directions, Where, oh where is my
Pierre. I hunted here. I hunted there. I looked around most everywhere.
I’d become enamored with my little companion. He was no
longer afraid of me though I must have loomed large in his life. Maybe he left
family out in the rock garden. Maybe he’d only come inside to explore. Maybe he
discovered that the grass was not greener. Maybe he wanted his mommy.
Pierre the Lizard has done a flit. He has escaped the
confines of domestic life and is once more at loose in the wilds. I feel
bereft. I kind of miss him.
Sondra Ashton
HWC: Looking out my back door
July 3, 2025
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