Becoming a Local

Becoming a Local

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            Several Montana friends have asked me, please, to not comment about the weather while I’m down in this southern sunny clime. That seems a reasonable request to me since you, my friends, on the High Line are currently experiencing the annual return of the Ice Age. 

            It has always struck me that weather in Montana has a separate and distinct personality,  unpredictable in mood, even schizophrenic, of which one does well to be wary. Living up north, I was constantly on the look-out for its next meteorological move, almost afraid to open the door to see which mood was on my step. 

            In comparison, weather here seems actually boring, every day the same. Don’t worry. Be happy. The sun shines. The breeze wafts tenderly off the ocean. When it rains, the sky falls. Fifteen minutes later the sidewalks are dry. What’s to comment? (Remind me of this when the hurricane winds batter the city and/or in August when the mercury rises to 116 degrees Fahrenheit.) 

            Meanwhile I promise to keep my weather comments to a bare minimum. I have been told in the past that I have a tendency to gloat, an ugly quality, especially from your best friend whom you love dearly. I argued that I don’t gloat. I am eager to share my experiences. 

But, in respect, I will not mention that I check the Havre Daily forecast with a hint of glee. That would be rude of me. 

Now that I am practically a “local”, I feel competent to give advice about what to bring when you come visit. 

            Money, four cotton tops, four shorts, sandals and a pair of tennis shoes, underwear and a toothbrush. That about says it all. I presume you will wear one set of these items. That means the rest fits in a backpack with room to add a few small items I might request that I cannot find in Mazatlan. You will bring more, of course, probably lug a suitcase along, but it is unnecessary and you won’t wear more than those four cotton tops. 

            If you want your phone to work, add Mexico to your plan before you arrive. Then unless you want a four thousand dollar bill, hide the phone. 

            Lupe bought me a Mexican phone from Moviestar. Sounds exotic, does it not!  It’s just another phone company. He chose that one because they assured him they set the phone so everything would be in English. Voice mail, voice instructions, those things. That was our assumption. The actuality is that the phone allows me to speak into it in English, if I can get the call to go through. Everything else is in Spanish; voice mail, voice instructions, the folded paper of instructions that came in the box, tips, promotions. I know enough to figure Moviestar is trying to give me deals. 

            I would give you my number but you don’t want the charges per minute. Stick with email. Besides, if I heard my phone ringing, I probably wouldn’t remember where I hid it. Oh, just another minor detail—I have somehow brilliantly managed to lock out incoming calls.  

            Every block provides opportunities to eat, such as the little breakfast and lunch place on the corner a few feet from my apartment door. Yesterday I explored beyond my block, in search of a lavanderia. I found one just two blocks away, along with at least eight other eating establishments of various sizes. And a place to get my hair cut and nails beautified

            Between the laundry and my hair cut, a man named Rudy stopped me. “I remember you. You were at the Luna Palace.” I had purchased a raw opal from him. A good memory is as a polished jewel. It is flattering to be remembered. 

            Just last week on the beach Roger asked me, “Where is your ring?” Roger had sold me a ring with a Mexican agate two years ago. I never saw him last year. 

            Right before Evelyn flew back to Harlem, New York City, she and I were having a Coca-Cola at my corner comida. A man from Edmonton with whom we’d had a long conversation just the day before walked by not recognizing either of us. 

            “He didn’t even know us,” said Evelyn.

            “Well, we have to remember,” I replied, “to them we all look alike.”

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

December 5, 2013

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Fifty Shades of Mexico

Fifty Shades of Mexico

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            Real Life is not a perpetual vacation. Yet aspects of the last couple weeks feel like one. I love meeting old friends, Mexican, Canadian and State-siders, and watching faces light up. That is real connection—that is my “welcome home”. 

Sunshine days, balmy nights. Often I wake with the voice of Cat Stevens singing in my head, “Morning has broken, like the first morning”. All the shrimp, red snapper, and mahi-mahi I want to eat. Exotic fruits, papaya, pitaya, pineapple, coconut and melons. Lounging on the beach beneath a palapa with friends, limonada in hand. Seeing the sun drop sizzling into the Pacific every night. These are mere details. Each day free of the pain brought to my body by the cold, I feel stronger. “Praise for the singing, praise for the morning.”

I have only one more night at the resort. I count down the days until my friends fly back to their homes. My newly-rented studio apartment does not sit empty and neglected. Yesterday Evelyn and I walked over for some cleaning and sorting. Evelyn is my friend from Harlem. Harlem in New York City. We chuckle over our unusual connection, roll up our sleeves, fill buckets with soapy water and wash cupboards, drawers and every surface within swipe of cleaning rags. 

In past moves, I rushed to create order, cleaning, painting, unpacking, placing, not pausing for breath until done. Working on Mexican time, I walk over to my apartment every day or two, putter a bit, sit and contemplate, maybe open a box and grin to see what trifles I had placed inside. What was I thinking when I packed that? Then I realize each item is perfect, metaphorical “comfort food”, items which will nourish my hungry spirit on lonely days. I empty a box, open another and set it aside. There is always manana.   

Today I choose to stay on the beach. Vanity, or is it a false modesty, disappears. I’m a shade-bather. I don a bathing suit and a sarong and saunter down to the palapa, pull my chaise into the shade, open my book and using it as a prop, watch the waves roll in. I no longer care that my legs host a road map of surgical scars and my thighs jiggle when I walk. I look around me. Truly I am the only one who ever cared. Suddenly I feel grateful to have legs that work. A few days in the shade and I have turned a lovely rosy brown.

One day Kathy, Richard, Evelyn and I took a bus, six pesos each, to the huge market in the historic Centro district. I had a small list of things I need, the first of many such lists to come, so we shopped. The market has everything imaginable and some things one could never imagine until one’s been here. I scouted out spices at one stall and pointed at jars, asked for a quarter kilo of cocoa and cinnamon, lesser amounts of paprika, oregano and other seasonings, indicated by cupping my hands, nodding my head for “enough” or holding fingers apart to indicate “a little more”. At a booth with simple household items I chose brooms, a mop, a toilet swabber, two plates, a tortilla press, a limon (lime to us) squeezer, and a molcajete made of basalt rock. The molcajete along with the tejolote is the traditional food processor. While I bargained for these necessities, Richard dashed out to the street and waved down a pulmonia, an open-air vehicle looking like a modified golf cart with a Volkswagon engine, found only in Mazatlan, to carry us and our purchases back to my apartment. The pulmonia reminds me of a “surrey with the fringe on top”. 

Laden with bags and bristling with broom handles we scurried into the pulmonia sandwiched against the curb by huge belching buses. There was not time to negotiate the price—we simply crammed ourselves onto the open seats. 

As a rule, one never gets into a pulmonia until one has established a firm price. The dickering is part of the fun, part of the custom. But here we were, so I leaned over and told the driver where we wanted to go, knowing it usually cost sixty to eighty pesos to go from the market. Expecting the worst, an inflated price and either an argument en route or grim resignation, I asked the price. 

“Thirty pesos,” he said. Thinking I heard wrong, I asked the driver to repeat. “Thirty pesos.” 

When we arrived and trundled out onto the sidewalk, I handed the driver a hundred peso note. He returned seventy pesos change. I gave him a nice tip and still the total price was an unprecedented bargain. Do you think it was the brooms?

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

November 28, 2013

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How I Lost My Sense of Humor and Found Dry on Wry

How I Lost My Sense of Humor and Found Dry on Wry

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            The first day on our scenic detour through the Baja Peninsula was an exercise in holding my breath and shoving phantom brake pedals through the floor of the passenger side of Roshanna Van. I left my fingernails imbedded in the dash. My friend Lupe corkscrewed us up impossible peaks on an itsy-bitsy two-lane with no shoulders, not even a white line in places, a transport truck on every curve. He was focused but calm. 

            One might say I was the slightest bit tense. Lupe’s friends had told him that it took two days to drive from Sonoyta at the border to Mazatlan, same to Los Cabos. In kilometers, close. Wrong comparison. Corkscrew mountain goat-path trails versus four-lane modern toll road. When we stopped for the night, I knew how far we had not come. My title was holder and folder of the map. 

           I had committed to a trip I didn’t really want to take. That night I rooted around in my bag of survival tricks for an old friend I had not seen for years. I searched nooks and crannies. I turned the bag upside down and shook it violently. I heard a wee small voice say, “Sorry, he doesn’t work here anymore.” I was devastated. I needed him. Self-pity had pulled me out of some rough spots in my past. Into, out of, who can say? 

            The following day, as we snaked our way around more mountains, I grieved the loss of everything in my recent life, including Self-pity. Lupe said, “You are awfully quiet. What’s wrong?”

            “Nothing,” I lied.

            “Come on.” (He said this with a ‘you-can’t-fool-me’ lilt.) “You have a little bit of attitude.” (How dare he say something like that? He doesn’t know me well enough.) 

“I’m feeling disconnected from everything and everyone I ever knew.” Then I pulled out my fake-positive smile mask and continued, “But I’ll be okay. Tomorrow I will feel differently.” 

            “I feel the same way,” Lupe said. “My friends told me, ‘Straight roads, easy drive, lots of beautiful towns where you will want to stop and stay.” (Later those words became our touchstone joke of the week.) 

            But the jokey part didn’t happen right away. First I grew fangs and claws. First I had to glare at Lupe and compare his disconnect to my disconnect. Mine was much bigger, more crushing and dramatic. Just ask me. How dare he think our situations anything near similar.

            About then is when I realized I had lost my sense of humor. Misplacing my humor is more devastating than losing my money and underwear in Los Vegas. I had slipped into black-and-white (no rainbow hues), either/or (no alternatives), all good/all bad (no everyday in-between) judgmental thinking. I hate myself when I do that. But not until I had hated my friend for just a few kilometers. 

            To add insult to injury, he began talking about my Roshanna Van in an intimate way. “She likes me,” he said. “She is like the kiss of a butterfly. (Now he’s a poet?) I think maybe she likes me better than she likes you,” he teased. One thing I really like about Lupe is his dry wit, his wry way of thinking. Normally, I like his quirky humor which compliments mine. 

            But when my own humor hides behind a wall, I detest being teased. “I have a twenty year relationship with my sweet Roshanna Van. She’s not going to let the first pretty face that comes along turn her head. She and I are buddies.” I slammed a metaphorical door. 

            Oops. I heard myself. Heard all my icky fears and ugly attitudes. I cried, apologized, laughed. That was the turning point of the trip. 

            Two days of mountains, two days of desert, and a final day’s drive along highway with glimpses of spectacular beaches and we entered Cabo San Lucas, my sense of humor restored, mostly restored. 

            Still, my friend said, “I see your face. I hear your voice. I know you try but you are not really happy. Let’s go on to Mazatlan and get you settled. 

            We took the ferry from La Paz, an eighteen hour trip across the beautiful Gulf of California. I am so glad I didn’t have to drive Roshanna Van down the steep ramps into the lowest of five levels of vehicle decks in the hold. 

            Today I am in Mazatlan. I have an apartment, a nest from which to search for a house. Once more, I feel centered, connected. Today I’m going to Cerritos for fried fish freshly flopped out of the Ocean, grilled over open flames, under cobbled together make-shift shelters on the beach. Home again.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

November 21, 2013

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Grieving the Leaving and Turning the Page

Grieving the Leaving and Turning the Page

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            As I threaded my way on a crazy-quilt patchwork route through Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Nevada and Arizona, headed for the border into Mexico, I have memorized, imprinted and loved every scrap of color and beauty. Except for one drab piece of brown southeast of Yakima.  

            For much of the trip tears rolled down my face. Each bend in the road seemed to generate memories; memories of those in my life who have died, memories of precious times with friends and family, memories that I had hoped would lie buried forever. I drank deeply of each memory.

            Ever since I made the decision to move, I have been aware this is my opportunity to create a new life, a life without the familiar comforts of place, friends, language and culture. For me, this means I can also leave behind some old, worn-out beliefs. While driving through that drab empty brown, I “got it”. I “got” that I really will create a new life. I “got it” on a deeper, visceral level and burst into loud, gasping wails doing seventy down the freeway. 

            Exciting? Terrifying? Cleansing? Rejuvenating? Yes, all at the same time. Along with all the tears has come a heightened awareness of how special it is to be alive each new day. Each day is a new page on which to write my new life script. 

            Along with heightened awareness has come a lowering of my cellular brain mass. Or something. Let me describe a typical day. I drove the Spaghetti Bowl into Las Vegas to spend a couple days with Tim and Tara. Tara is one of my “girls”. She and my daughter Dee went to college together, spent holidays at my home and Tara even lived with me a while. Tim and Tara teach school in Vegas. 

            I asked Tim to help me download Microsoft Word. I had belatedly discovered that my new/old-reconditioned laptop computer did not have Word. That explained why I could not get it to load a new Word page for me to write. Believe me, I had tried. In the process Tim asked me for my email address. “sondrajean@yahoo.com”, I told him. I left out the “.ashton” part. Visa took my money. Microsoft refused to download. Tim fiddled around with no success for an hour. Finally he called Microsoft for support. As we are together going over all the data again, I strung together sondrajean.ashton@yahoo.com. (There you have it if you would like to email me.) When I realized my mistake, I wanted to shoot out my eyeballs and bury my corpse in the desert. 

            See, writing a new page each day without the past hovering over everything one does is like being a young child who has not yet learned her ABC’s. That’s me. It can be infuriating. I’m learning all kinds of new things from the basement up. 

            It gets even better/worse. The afternoon I left Tim and Tara in Vegas, I headed for Kingman, Arizona. The entire route had me exclaiming, “Oh, My God,” around every bend of breathtaking beauty. I pulled into a clean, cheap and adequate motel in Kingman, secured a room and opened the back of my van to get my bag.  

            I had placed my bag where we three each had to stumble over the top of it to get out the door. Tim and Tara had spent the afternoon out. They got home at the same time I was patting around for my invisible bag. We both called and got each other’s voice mail. Finally connected. “Tara, I would replace everything but it has all my new underwear. And my money.” They brought me my bag. They drove my bag to Kingman that evening. 

            I felt like Scarecrow on the Yellow Brick Road, all straw and no brains. Two weeks ago I spent fifteen days soaking in lithium-laced hot water springs in the mountains of Montana. I would love the explanation that I am still in lithium la-la-land. Part of me wants to return for another dose. 

            The rest of me is committed to move forward, turn a fresh page and when I find myself tripping down the Yellow Brick Road, I can always sing and dance.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

November 14, 2013

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