Sweat the small stuff!

                        Sweat the small stuff!

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I am unhinged. This morning my daughter sent me a picture of a lap blanket she bought me.

I am in tears. The blanket, purple and turquoise, with feathers and butterflies and such, is beautiful. Beautiful.

You know who uses lap blankets?

Old women, that’s who! Old women! A few days ago I had another birthday. The good news is that this morning I woke up still alive and grateful. The other side of that coin feels like a slap in the face.

These last couple weeks have been hard. I rappelled down the steep cliffs into a pit of depression, dragging along all my niggling fears and worries in my backpack, knowing I could feed and grow them in the fertile pit.

Lethargic days. No energy. Nights my mind managed to find some unsolvable problem, danced around a Mobius Strip from whence it could not jump off.

Maybe my birthday precipitated it. Maybe not.

I muddled around in the muck and mire a few days, lying awake through the dim hours of the nights.

 I tell it like it is. One night I said aloud, “I’m scared.” “Scared of what?” the saner part of me asked. And answered, “Scared of dying alone in poverty.”

Talk about a slap in the face. But that is what it took for me to begin the arduous climb back out of the pit, leaving my backpack behind.

I had to ask for help along the way, of course.

Josue came to talk with me. We both ended in tears, talking about being scared. When he left my patio, I felt better just for the talking.

Charlotte sent me a link to watch, live, an osprey nest in Missoula. Seeing an osprey hanging out in a spot familiar to me brought memories from when I’d lived in Missoula, as well as the pleasures of simply watching ospreys hang out.

Crin took me for a walk in her neighborhood park in Victoria, via a series of photos. Seeing the daffs and tulips and primroses and especially the forsythia perked up a little piece of my heart.

Kathy, who got stuck in Banff, not by her choice, and not a hardship, not to be outdone by her sister, took me on a walk along an icy mountain stream. I could feel the cold, smell the ice and the pines and firs.

Gary wrote me about an “ah-ha” moment. After twenty-seven years of slogging in real estate, he said that staying home is powerfully healing, stripping away his workaholic guilt, allowing him to truly enjoy those close to him. It is good.

Pam, with whom I shared that I dragged my painting supplies out of storage, set up an easel, selected a canvas, sent me a link to a Havre artist who shares her insights and perceptions. A gift.

Janet and Tom, my only remaining gringo neighbors, who chose to stay on the Rancho, said she and Tom express gratitude daily for simply being here, a place beyond any dreams they’d ever had. Those simple words touched me and reminded me, to not compare my insides with somebody else’s outsides. I’m always wrong. We share a living dream.

Michelle from Oconahua, up the road a piece, emails daily; Are you okay? Need anything?

Ben reminded me that most of my worries are none of my business. Blunt. But correct.

Dee observed, in the midst of all my angst, “You are reading national news, aren’t you.” It was not a question.

“News? What news? It is all speculation. Maybes. Dire predictions. Conspiracies. Idiocies. Gossip. The sky is falling.”

“Quit it,” were her words of advice. “I think I will,” I agreed. I’m not one to capitulate easily to my bossy daughter but I recalled how many times over this last year I’d said to her, “Don’t watch the news! It makes you crazy.”

What makes me feel good today? Getting up in the morning, still alive. Making cowboy coffee. 

Planting another pot of lettuce. Walking the Rancho lanes. Gorditas for lunch. Dabbing paint on canvas. Picking a papaya from my tree. Talking with friends.

Waiting for my old-woman lap blanket. It’s all small stuff.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

April 23, 2020

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When Our Children Are the Age We Are in Our Minds

When Our Children Are the Age We Are in Our Minds
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Remember when we were six going on seven. Remember when birthdays were a joy, a cause for celebration, awaited with keen anticipation. Remember the excitement of twelve going on thirteen, becoming a teenager. Or counting the days until we passed that major milestone and turned twenty-one. Ah, the sweet expectations of youth. Then suddenly we were twenty-nine and heading over the hill.

A few weeks ago I enjoyed the Christmas feast with my cousin Shirley and her older son, Tim. While sewing gift pillows for Shirley’s grandchildren, Truth and Titan, sons of her younger son Terry, I pondered all the lost years when Shirley and I lived a thousand miles apart. We never got to watch our children grow up as playmates and friends. So I made Tim a pillow too, a quite large pillow, a consolation gift for the five-year-old Tim I never knew.

In the course of our conversation, Shirley mentioned that Tim had turned fifty. My head whipped around for an astonished look at Tim, who nodded his head, then back to Shirley. “No,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. With my keen analytical mind, I instantly did the math and agreed, “Yeah.” My oldest is forty-five. My youngest is thirty-four. How can that be? I myself have barely reached forty-five. Right?

Wrong. Oh, so sadly wrong. How can my daughter be forty-five? I think I am forty-five. I feel forty-five. I walk into my bathroom. I contemplate the stranger in my antique mirror, faded and spotted with age. The mirror. The mirror is faded and spotted with age. I don’t recognize the stranger standing on the other side looking back at me. The fat old baggage. No, I don’t know that strange woman. I know me. And she is not me. I know what I look like. I remember perfectly well.

I have not changed a bit. Well, maybe a little bit. But just the other day, let me tell you, I felt carried back in time. It happened like this. I was leaving the Big R pushing a cart full of cat chow and wool socks. As usual, the wind at the top of the hill was blowing, teasing my hair and mussing my clothes. But the day was balmy for December, almost like spring. And suddenly I was filled with such exuberance, such a feeling of vibrant youth that I wanted to run across the parking lot. So I did. I jogged behind my cart, hanging on, in case I lost my footing. For a few paces I ran. I laughed that I could do such a thing. Okay, so maybe it looked pitiful. But what if I had ignored the urge and walked sedately to my vehicle? I would have missed the joy.

Remember how our parents used to admonish us, “Act your age.” Did you ever answer back (silently in your mind, of course, so you wouldn’t be backhanded into next Friday), “But I am acting my age.”

A couple years ago I was in Mazatlan, Mexico, with my friends Kathy and Melanie. I wanted to go parasailing. I wanted to parasail so badly that in my imagination I could feel the sensations of flying as though they were real. My friends put up a fuss. “You can’t,” they said. “Remember your banged up leg. If you go, you are on your own. We are not going to nurse you when you break your bones.” Finally the day came when I could put it off no longer. I went up, up in the air, tethered by a long rope to a boat way down there on the water. Oh, it was the most beautiful sensation, flying with the pelicans and frigate birds, just like I had imagined, times twenty. I’m glad I didn’t let my dear friends mother me. Now I parasail every year.

I’ve got to confess this. Sometimes I see a handsome young man and I think, “Oh, if only I were twenty years younger.” Somewhere in the deep dark recesses of my mind the gears whirr, “Look again, Chickie.” “Okay, so what I meant is, if only I were forty years younger.” Thank all the gods that ever were that nobody can read my mind.

So enjoy your gift, Tim, you hunk. Listen, kids, we are not ready for the nursing home yet. Maybe when we are really old, like about one hundred twenty.

Sondra Ashton
HDN: Looking out my back door
January 12, 2011
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When Giants Roamed the Earth

Happy birthday to Me, Happy Birthday to Me, Happy . . . you get the idea.

My phone rings. “Happy Birthday, Grandma.” It is three year old Annie and her teen sister Nadia. “How old are you today, Grandma,” asks Annie.

“I remember the dinosaurs,” I reply.

“Oh, Grandma, you must be reee-ally old,” said Annie. They are on speaker-phone. I hear sophisticated Nadia snort and leave the room. “Tell me, tell me all about them,” Annie demands.

I’m a poet, not a scientist. I describe giants roaming the earth, green and brown and purple. Then I contemplate that scientists also must be poets to be able to flesh out in color the look of the beasts, beginning with nothing more than a pile of bones. “I’ll show you what it was like in the dinosaur days when you visit,” I promise.

When they arrive, we head out to the ranch owned by a young man from my high school days. I had phoned ahead for permission to take the children out into a field where cattle grazed. I carry a thick blanket folded over one arm.

We slip the wire off the post and go through the gate. The barbed wire gates braced with diamond willow stays have not improved in design in fifty years. I struggle to get it closed. “Those are cows,” Annie crows. “Where are the dinosaurs?” Nadia rolls her eyes.

By luck, we have chosen a balmy spring day for our scientific expedition. I spot the perfect slope for the experiment, neither on the crest of the hill nor in the bottom of the coulee. I spread the blanket on the grasses and we lay down. Immediately Annie jumps up and wanders off in exploration of buttercups and rooster heads. She gathers a fistful of wild flowers, a gift for her Grandma. With promises of dinosaurs and cookies, I induce her to stretch out with her big sister and me on the blanket.

I string together stories of dinosaurs, inland seas, and glaciers building huge moraines of gravel. I’m being nine parts poet and one part scientist. We cover a lot of geologic ground, when Annie tugs at me, “Grandma, the cows are coming. We need to go home.”

“Goodness no, child. This is why we are here. Rest your chin on the ground and watch the cows. Pretend we are as small as those little gophers popping out of their burrows. See how the cows seem to get even bigger as they come closer.” The girls settled into the game. They hardly breathed as the cows in their curiosity wandered right up to us, snuffled at our heads and then went back to grazing. Nadia’s eyes were as full of wonder as her little sister’s.

“Whoa. Grandma, he sniffed me. I’m scared.”

“Nobody said being a scientist is easy. We are lucky. Our monsters are plant eaters, so they didn’t want us for dinner. Now let’s eat cookies.”

That afternoon we visited our famous local dinosaurs, Elvis and Leonardo, at the museum and the field station in Malta . Both kids were entranced with the exhibits. The next day we drove to Eastend , Saskatchewan to see Scotty , Canada ’s most complete T. rex. Where are the dinosaurs? Dead ahead.

Sondra Ashton
Havre Daily News: Home Again
April 9, 09