Smallish Moments of Glee

 

Smallish Moments of Glee

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I’m fairly predictable. Each morning at sunrise, Lola and I walk the lanes to the highway, stop a moment to watch the goats being milked at the goat-milk stand across the road, turn for home, coffee and a nosh. This walk is for Lola. So what if I enjoy it just as much.

Now with my new trike, I have a new routine. After coffee and a few chores, now that my shiny new trike has an extended seat bar for my height and I have sneakers with soles so flexible they hug the pedals, we bike the same pathway, two or three times. Not at warp speed, mind you; I’m still in Granny Gear.

Lola seems rather blasé, bored. I’m “WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

I’m so happy with my trike. She hasn’t bucked me off. Yet. I’ve named her. Dora, the Explora.

However, with every up, comes a down. Now that I’ve pretty much mastered the straight and narrow, I yearn to venture out, but how? I’ll worry my problem a bit. Where there is a worry, there is a way.

I’d no more than turned my face toward my casa and Dora’s new parking shelter today, when two rib-racked horses followed me down the lane. “Not much to nosh around here, sweet guys, but you are welcome to try.”

We are well into the Dry and quickly settling into the Hot. Grass is short and brown. My two new acquaintances didn’t stay long, headed back to the highway in search of greener pastures, which I hope they find. Simply being near horses makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

As Dickens said, “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” I confess that I have difficulty keeping my focus on the balance during these particular times. I get discouraged. Another writer acquaintance reminds me that in every bad, there is the possibility for good, just as in every good, there is the possibility for bad.

I planted a mango tree in my back yard the first year I lived here. I dearly love the fruit of my mango tree. More than that, I’ve come to appreciate the energy from this particular tree. Laugh if you want. When I feel stress, tension, or anger, I go sit under my mango tree and let it all my anxiety flow into the ground. My tree surrounds me with shade and a sense of peace.

Generally, my sweet scruffy Lola follows me and sniffs out all the neighborhood doings of interest to a dog. She finds the most scintillating patch of sunny grass, throws herself onto her back and rolls and wriggles and scratches and squiggles with the widest grin and the most vivid expression of glee on her face. I cannot help but let her glee transfer to me.

This morning, while soaking in Lola’s grassy glee, my mango transferred a half dozen yellowish-green crawly bugs, onto my head and the back of my neck. Soon, a half-dozen Western Tanagers swooped into the mango tree, Through the leaves, side to side and back, scarfing down a buggy feast, saving me from new despair.

The good, the bad, the up, the down. We get it all.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

April 1, 2026

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