The Birds and The Bees and Flush Toilets

The Birds and The Bees and Flush Toilets

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            Every morning at first light a symphony of birds sings me awake. I don’t say it’s necessarily pretty birdsong. The New York Philharmonic it is not. But it is loud. And it is a mixture of voices of whatever birds are hanging out in this part of the state at any particular time. Perhaps a better description is of musicians tuning their instruments prior to the performance. Tuning takes a good hour. At full light each singer flies off to greet the day with its perfect song.

At any one time I look out my windows and see dozens of birds, a bouquet of variety. I wish to know their names. Some I can narrow down to the general family with my “Birds of Mexico”; sort of like, “That one looks like an Ashton but I’m not sure which branch of the family.”

Spring segues into summer. Babies learn to fly and forage; parents shamelessly make more babies. Baby hummingbirds, tiny bits of color, whirr from flower to flower.

Speaking of shameless, I wish you could have seen the rabbits last night, a type of cottontail. They raced over the brick walls of the planters, around the yard in crazy circles, he chasing she, within a meter of my feet, stopped, decided I was friend rather than foe, and continued on their zig-zag chase.

Every morning at first light I race out to gather avocados fallen from my tree before the squirrels find them. Squirrels chew a hole through the flesh in search of the nut in the middle. I keep the ones in best shape, dole them out to my neighbors, keep one for myself and share the rest with the squirrels. Today I gathered avocados, key limes and bananas and cilantro, all within yards of my door.

Lizards and iguanas abound. My personal backyard iguana, who hangs out in a drain pipe, tolerates my presence. Yesterday I surprised Iggy on my patio, nosing my rosemary. Surely iguanas don’t eat rosemary. He gulps hibiscus flowers like they are ice-cream cones. Baby lizards streak by everywhere I look. Lizards, iguanas? Who can tell at that size? Except for the neon green variety, unmistakably lizard.

I saw my first tarantula. That was exciting. Just a baby. “They are shy, don’t bother them and they won’t bother you,” both Leo and Josue tell me. Uh, huh. Okay.

My new neighbors and good friends for many years, Kathy and Richard from British Columbia, flew in for a few days to take possession of their new home, around the corner from me. They are discarding things right and left, going through the whole process like I did, making lists of what they need to bring when they drive back next fall.

We make the most of our together time, sharing meals, long conversations. I’m the “ground-breaker”, they say. My experiences help and guide them. For example, I’m so pleased with my solar water heater, with the boiling hot water it produces. I’ve related my story in great detail, how I needed a new tenaco and then a new propane tank and then a new water heater—but wait!

Both Leo and Josue, my helpers, convinced me to consider a solar water heater. I will recoup installation costs in a year. My propane usage, limited to cooking, is minimal. It may take me a full year to use the amount of propane I previously used every two months. And my water heater, powered solely (pun intended) by the sun, is environmentally friendly. I’m on the cutting edge. Leading the parade. Kathy and Richard have decided to get the same system.

Josue is building (It’s a process!) a new septic system and drain field for my friends, scheduled to be done before they arrived last week. However, Abel, the concrete man (his job, not his description) was delayed and then the monsoon rains dropped out of the sky to create further delay. They have partial use of their system but my friends pop in and out of my house for bathroom and showers.  Their bathroom should be fully functional by this evening.

Meanwhile, my bathroom is supposed to be disabled this afternoon in preparation for new floor tile, a new toilet, and eventually, a new sink cabinet. In a turn-around, I shall be running next door to become acquainted with any quirks in my friends’ bathroom. Good friends cheerfully share the flushes of life.  

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

June 30, 2016

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One Hundred Degrees of Solitude

               One Hundred Degrees of Solitude

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            “So, Sondra, why aren’t you married?” Bonnie questions my back. There I am, lying unclothed on a bed, needles poking all over me, getting an acupuncture treatment for sciatica and related pains.

            How can I answer? Her question triggers feelings of discomfort, squirminess. But I don’t dare squirm with needles poking out all over. Okay, yes, the squirmy came from inside, not outside. Still.

            I’m asked this question a lot. Almost everyone I meet has asked me why I’m alone. Alone is not the norm. The rule is two by two, right? Two birds, two bees, two elephants, two iguanas. Adam and Eve.

            Now and then,  like when sitting on a bench at the Plaza Friday night, watching the couples stroll, holding hands, young couples, old couples, two by two, I ask myself that question, “Why am I alone?”

            “It’s not my choice,” I answer. Yet, it must be my choice. I am alone.

            I like marriage, sharing joys and sorrows, sharing. Life is not cakes and roses, at least not in my experience. Going it alone is exponentially more difficult than pulling as a yoked team.

            I’ve been alone many years. I’ve not met a man I want to team up with, at least not after I’ve gotten to know him. Maybe that street has two lanes. I’m awfully independent. I have opinions. Makes a lot of men of my vintage very uncomfortable. So, let’s say no two of us have met who want to pull as a team.

            But maybe, that is begging the question. I wonder if the question behind the question, is, “How can you do the things you do, live in a foreign country, travel, do everything by yourself?” Generally followed by, “Aren’t you afraid?” Ah ha—the real question!

            Now that one I can answer. Let me illustrate my situation.

            The rainy season started last week. It was like Somebody drew a line on the calendar. Up to Monday, every day beamed unremitting heat and sunshine, dry, dry, dry as dust. Then Monday night the Mother of all Storms hit, drenching us with refreshing rain.

            Every night the sky opens up, washes and rinses and squeezes until the clouds are wrung dry. Most nights flashes and booms accompany the downpours.

            Last night the Grandmother of all Storms visited, gifting us with an explosion of thunder that quaked the bed beneath my back. I lay, holding my breath, eyes wide open, heart pounding, skin tingling. Fear!

            Lightning and thunder, these mountain storms, don’t scare me. But at the same time, some moments are scary, if you can see the difference.

            That’s what being alone is like for me. I’d rather have a partner holding my hand when life lights up the sky and quakes the earth. But I don’t. I’m not afraid. But sometimes it is scary. If I let fear rule my life, I’d never do anything. What? Sit and knit?

            Bonnie, if you really are simply curious why I don’t have a man, I could say, “I grew up old-school. Men seem to not lack for partners and in today’s culture it is okay for a grizzled old man to sport a teenage girl on his arm. I’m realistic. Nobody, young or old, is knocking on my door, floral bouquet and diamond ring in hand.  Maybe I want too much but I can’t imagine this seventy year old woman going through life with a partner who does not, cannot share similar life experiences. Now that would be scary!”

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

June 23, 2016

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When A Crisis Isn’t A Crisis Is A Crisis

When A Crisis Isn’t A Crisis Is A Crisis

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            Back when people first began using e-books, I guess that is what one calls them, my daughter, Shea, said, “Mom, you are such a voracious reader. You should get one of these. You’d like it.”

            “And lose the visceral pleasure of a book made from trees? The thickness of the cover, whether hard or soft? The texture of the pages? The smell of ink? The smell of a new book? Or old? The satisfaction of physically turning the pages? Being able to write in the margins should I choose? Lose the sacredness of a book?

            No, thank you. I can’t imagine life without real books.”

            Then one day I moved to Mexico, left behind my extensive library, and bought a Kindle Paperwhite e-reader, in reverse order.

            I read a lot. Not a day goes by without reading. Reading is a piece of who I am and always has been. I remember sitting on the floor at my Dad’s feet with the Sunday “funnies”, picking out the words (I especially liked Pogo), long before I started school.

            By the time I was a sophomore I’d read everything in the school library. Then I discovered the tiny but crammed city library, up narrow stairs above the old Civic Center building in Harlem. Wherever I lived, I had the library.

            My children listened to me read stories while they nursed. Now and then, once they were older, we all sat at the dinner table with a book in hand while we ate. Those were special times, separate but together, bonded with our individual passions. 

            Morning coffee tastes better with a book. I water my plants, then sit and read a half hour. Trim and prune and plant, stop and read. Hang laundry, mop the floor, get in a few more chapters. So goes my day.            

            When I made the switch from paper, it took about three days for me to get used to my Kindle reader, to make it an extension of my skin. I still love books made from trees and occasionally read one, but the Kindle is so handy. So easy to use, so lightweight, so portable, so easy on my eyes. I named him “Kin”. We became, well, intimate.

            One day last week Kin up and died, gave up the electronic ghost, expired, bit the dust, bought the farm, went West, kicked the bucket, assumed room temperature and closed the book.

            I knew Kin wasn’t well. He seemed to suffer a general feeling of malaise. He became sluggish, difficult to open, paused overlong before turning a page. He didn’t respond to electronic CPR. His condition quickly accelerated. Kin refused to open at the last page read but insisted on reading over two previous chapters while at the same time refusing to go beyond a certain page. E-book Alzheimer’s. Finally, he simply refused to open at all. The End.

            I had logged a lot of hours with my friend, my constant companion, my solace in times of trouble. May he rest in peace.

            I did what any self-respecting reader would do. Panicked.

            Once I got my breathing, pulse, heart rate, blood pressure and imagination under control, I ordered a new reader, he whom I shall call Kin II.

I tried to ship Kin II to friends in British Columbia who are arriving in Etzatlan in a few days. Turns out I can only have it shipped to the States. I knew that. Ordering from another country is complicated. So I shipped it to my daughter, Dee Dee, post haste, spare no expense. Time is crunched, remember.

“Daughter, I have an emergency.” I explained, asked her to relay it on to my friends the moment the package showed up in her rural eastern Montana mailbox. “Send it express.”

Meanwhile my Canadian friends sold their home, frantically packed and moved to temporary digs in preparation for their eventual move to Mexico but that is a year in the future. Meanwhile, their address is no longer their address. “Send it to Richard’s office,” directed Kathy. “If the package is delayed, we’ll pick it up on our way to the airport.”  Best case scenario, right?

We all are laughing at me. I know full well this is not a real crisis. It’s a small inconvenience.

Meanwhile I am re-reading a few favorites in old-fashioned paper book form, the few real books I brought with me.

When I meet my friends at the airport in Guadalajara, I shall rip Kin II out of Kathy’s clutches and embrace him like a lover.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

June 16, 2016

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Sink? Swim? Tread Water?—Jump In The Deep End

Sink? Swim? Tread Water?—Jump In The Deep End

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            I’m not much of a swimmer. Those who tried to teach me gave up. My first husband said if ever I was in trouble in the water, he’d swim the other way for fear I’d drag him under. That episode didn’t raise my confidence.

            But I can’t think of a better analogy for what I’ve been doing the last three or four or five years than treading water.

            All my life I’ve had a premonition that I would live half of forever, not unrealistic given the history of the women in my family, most of whom lived into their nineties and longer. But living that long was never my goal.

            When I was twenty-three I should have died. That’s how they told me, the patrolman and the mechanic who towed my mangled pick-up and the insurance man. “You should have died.” They and others used those exact words while I was a month in a hospital bed in Great Falls.

            My life has been hard (but life is hard and nobody ever promised me it’d be easy). I’ve carried the effects of that wreck in my body every day. But I must have been born under a lucky (albeit wandering) star because somehow, thanks to many lifeguards along the years who’ve pulled me out of dangerous waters, I’ve learned to squeeze every moment for the gold, even if it is a golden reflection of the sun in a mud puddle.

            That doesn’t mean I’m always positive, always “up”. Heck, I get depressed, down and dirty, just like anybody else. Those who say they don’t, lie, intentional or not.

            So I was sitting in a rocker in my back yard watching a white butterfly the size of a plate, drifting in the breeze, looking for all the world like a sheet of fluttering rice paper, when I realized tears were running down my cheeks.

            “My heavens, Girl, you moved to Mexico to wait to die.” (I talk to myself. Often I’m the only human around.) Well, it’s true. My first trip home to Montana I began checking out nursing homes for when I could no longer live alone. I figured I’d not make it to seventy-five, the way I felt physically.

            That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy every day. I did. That’s who I am. I enjoy. But underneath my pleasure lurked a deep sense of resignation, of treading water.

Sitting in my chair watching that butterfly, I realized I’d undergone a cosmic shift.

            “Cosmic shift? Sounds awfully grandiose.” Oh, I mean a shift in my own wee limited cosmos.

One minute I’m wading in a shallow pool and suddenly I’m swimming in the deep waters. That’s how I feel. I don’t recall jumping in. Maybe the waters rose around me, gently.

Three months ago I moved from the coast (where I was perfectly happy) inland to the mountains (where I am the same happy—no more, no less). Bought a house; house with problems. Every house has problems. So it’s not the house that makes a difference. Wherever I go, there I am. It’s not the place that makes a difference. I didn’t win the lottery or grow new legs or find magic mushrooms.

            Living, whether deeply or on the surface, is an inside job. I can’t explain even to myself.

            Living fully, to me, means I can’t sift through the stuff that makes up each day and pick or choose. Some events I welcome; some I’d rather do without. But I get to have the whole mixed-up bag. Not everything is black and white. I have “treading  water” days.

I still can’t envision dragging my battered body into my nineties. But I’m swimming through the waves without fear of drowning.

None of us know, right? I may not have tomorrow but I have today. And, among the lizards and scorpions, today has lacy white butterflies. Not every day is a butterfly day.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

June 9, 2016    

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Hard-Headed Woman Finds Treasure In Back Yard

Hard-Headed Woman Finds Treasure In Back Yard

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            Eureka! I’ve just discovered my back yard. That’s not to say I never knew I had a back yard. But I dismissed it. “Dismiss.” Hang onto that word.

My first focus, of necessity, centered on my humble casita, on making it fit for human habitation.

 Next I devoted my time and attention to the front portion of the property, cleaned out the storage bodega, fancied up my patio, built brick bases for potted flowers and herbs. Each evening I surveyed my “kingdom” from one of my rocking chairs, smug about its beauty.

Now and then I stood at my windows, overlooking my back yard, watched Leo mowing the grass or chopping back the overgrowth. Now and then I ventured out to ask, “What is this flower, what is this tree, is this a plant or a weed?” Now and then I frowned at an interloper and voiced the royal decree, “Off with its head.” 

Thus having dismissed the existence of half my property except to grace it with the occasional glance, I told friends, “I’ll never use it. There’s no place to sit. The front patio is so wonderful that I cannot imagine using the back.”

Thus I snared the notion in my self-limiting mindset, wadded it into a crumpled ball and cast it in concrete. Dismissed.

Fully half of every day I sat on my front patio. For a few minutes I surveyed the back from the windows inside my casita. The way it was, the way it is, the way it will be forevermore, amen.

I hate myself when I trap myself into one of those immovable mindsets. Actually, I never know I’m stuck until something occurs to jerk or jiggle me up and out.

Meanwhile work moved forward. The concrete man came and made a sidewalk along the length of the back of my house, a practical necessity to keep the water from puddling on the brick during the up-coming monsoon season.

Leo hauled away loads of immature but invasive amapa trees and upstart jasmine, akin to an (imaginary) mutant towering Russian thistle in our Montana wheat fields.

I discovered a guava tree along with a beautiful fan palm and other plants I cannot name, all hidden in the underbrush. I planted a golden chain tree, as well as mango, orange and key lime trees.

I began to see vistas, possibilities, arrangements. I bought two oleanders and two more hibiscus. What can I say, the iguanas love the blossoms.

One morning I was in the yard chatting up my key lime, admiring its tender baby fruits, when my new concrete slab caught my eye. It’s not very wide. But just maybe . . .

I tromped around front, grabbed one of my rocking chairs, dragged it to the back, set it on the concrete, a close but comfortable fit, and sat down. I stayed an hour, in the shade, on the concrete, while my erstwhile concrete mind-set crumbled around my shoulders.

Birds flitted and flirted through the trees, played in the sprinkler, preened yellow, orange, turquoise and green feathers. Butterflies, the size of plates, mined and milked bougainvillea. Hummingbirds zoomed in to steal honey from every blossom a little here, a little there.

Two rockers and a table have found a new home on my “sidewalk patio”. Please join me in my new favorite place. We’ll sit in the shade on the west side in the morning, sip coffee and enjoy the entertainment as the little critters put on an improv show.

With my hard-headed dismissive attitude, I nearly missed finding the gold at my feet, the “Treasure of the Sierra Madre”, and I didn’t even have to dig. Eat your heart out, Humphrey.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

June 2, 2016

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Fred’s Fill Dirt and Croissants—Technology Or Inventiveness?

 Fred’s Fill Dirt and Croissants—Technology Or Inventiveness?

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            I treasure a postcard from Missoula in the early ‘80’s. The card pictures an earth-moving business in the background. In the foreground perches a stand from which the proprietor sells croissants. It was pure Missoula. At that time every convenience-store clerk had a master’s degree and held two or three jobs just to survive.

            In contrast, a friend forwarded me a look into the future. It sounded like 1984 on steroids. I thought the article painted a bleak picture. Obviously from the presentation, whoever put it together thought the predictions the best thing since, well, sliced bread with peanut butter.

            From the forecast, technology zoomed ahead so quickly that in a few years one would never have to lift a finger or even leave one’s abode, not for any reason. Medical care, grocery delivery, recreation, friendships, occupations, long life. Everything imaginable would be done by super-technology. There would be no auto accidents because transportation would be technologically controlled. We wouldn’t even die. Live forever, oh king. I hope you are laughing.

            Well, who knows? But we live in the here and now. I’m not technologically adept but find my devices to be flawed, even if more often than not the flaw is operator error. You are still laughing, right?

            My personal here and now happens to be a village in the mountains of Jalisco. Guadalajara, an hour away, is the technological center of this country.

            But my pine tree episode brought my Missoula postcard to mind vividly.

            My tree, a type of pine native to Mexico, stood thirty-plus meters high and a mere two meters from the wall of my casita, beautiful, with a root system wreaking havoc. The roots carved a crack the length of my floor, right through the center of the tiles. I can’t undo that damage. But the tree had to go.

            One can’t just cut a tree. A trip to a government office with pictures of the damage quickly secured the necessary permit. I got three bids. If you’ve ever had a tree professionally removed, you don’t even want to know how stupid cheap my bids came in. I chose the middle bid from two brothers who handed me their business card: waiters and caterers, day job and special events. Tree removal and plumbing on the side. Some construction and electrical. Another reminder of old Missoula.

            Wednesday Jorge and Sergio showed up as promised. Professional equipment included a pick-up truck, a small chain saw, a hand saw, a machete and an assortment of ropes.

            Sergio monkeyed up my pine tree, hacking branches with his machete as he went, leaving stubs for grips, hand and foot. Jorge dragged the branches to the pick-up to be hauled away. By the end of the first evening my tree was limbed out, the top roped around for cutting the next day and the pick-up truck loaded so heavily it sat on the wheels.

            The second day the brothers arrived late, having changed two flat tires. Again Sergio scooted up the tree, rigged himself into a kind of rope-saddle, pulled up the hand saw and flapping in the breeze like a flag, sawed the top three meters almost through. He tossed a rope to his brother who hitched it to the back of the truck and pulled the piece until it snapped. Sergio then lowered the top to the ground on ropes. Jorge chopped the trunk into pieces for removal.

            Sergio secured the next section with ropes, pulled up the chain saw, and cut the trunk nearly through. Tossed down a rope and they repeated the process. Thus, in incrementally shorter sections (heavier, bigger around), eventually they will remove my tree.

            The man at the Tlapaleria (materials for construction) said it succinctly, “Gringos have technology. Mexicans have inventiveness. Most Montana men and women, used to doing what it takes to survive, appreciate technological advances as well as inventiveness. We know beef doesn’t grow digitally in grocery stores!

            Fred, peddling his fill dirt and croissants, would salute Jorge and Sergio, were they to meet. But if Fred is still around, my money says all three men carry smart phones.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

May 26, 2016

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No Matter. Try Again. Fail Again. Try Better

            No Matter. Try Again. Fail Again. Try Better

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            Thank you, Samuel Beckett. I am such a fool. No matter. A good thing about old age is that I am a fool with much less baggage. Physical and otherwise.

            When I moved to Mazatlan on the Mexican coast I significantly pared down the “stuff” in my life. For example, I had accumulated approximately forty bath towels, decent quality. How many towels does one woman need? One in the laundry. One hanging on the rack. One folded, on the shelf. I confess that I brought six.

            Clothing? I turned my back on full closets. I kept lightweight cottons and a couple casual dresses, three sets of clothing for visits to cold Montana. (They breed in the closet, but no matter.)

            Kitchen items. I brought little and have given away much of that. I mix and make everything from scratch, by hand. It’s amazing how few tools that requires.

            In March I did something I thought I’d never do again. I bought a house in Etzatlan, in the mountains near Guadalajara, a wee casita, lock, stock and barrel; whatever they left was mine. I was excited. I moved in and had an immediate revelation. I am a fool. What the owners left was trash. I got to clean it up and throw it away. Lucky me.

            What’s done is done. My neighbor Josue, or Josh if you prefer, is a young man of many talents. He agreed to build me kitchen cupboards to replace the crumbling press-board garbage that barely held up the sink.  No, that’s not right. He didn’t replace the old but created a kitchen to fit my needs.

            We took our time, a commodity of which I have unlimited amounts, at least for today. Josue rebuilt my kitchen and it is perfect. Everything fits. Everything is beautiful. Now he is working on a wardrobe for my bedroom. The bathroom cabinet, crumbling and warped, will be last to go.

            It’s a process. Some of my ideas won’t work. I let him know that this old woman doesn’t mind being told straight up, “That won’t work, you old fool.” We laugh.

            Out of my experience with my new home, I’ve come to be thankful that nothing in the house (except the house itself) was decent. Once again my initial judgment, thinking I’d bought a pig in a poke, was wrong. If the stuff had been good, I would have slapped on a coat of paint and lived with what was here and not received the joy I have from creating new to suit my exacting needs, unerring sense of style and impeccable taste.

            Some baggage is easily shed. I’m a woman of seventy and some. Image, that bugaboo of the young, became of no consequence long ago. I walk with a cane. I accept help from young people without a qualm. Rules I grew up with are meaningless. I eat when and what I want, sleep when I want, following my body clock.

            I wish I could as easily shed my certainties. Much of the time I am aware that I know nothing. What a relief when I know I don’t know.

            When I think I know, more fool I, I’m always wrong. I have no idea what is good and right for you. I barely keep track of what is good for me and that is only for today. Tomorrow has its own uncertainties.

            I used to think if only I “knew” I could exert a measure of control. I laugh at myself today. Control is another illusion I’ve thrown on my personal trash heap, though I pick it up and brush it off from time to time, wondering if it might not be useful.

            For me, and I don’t recommend it for you, life is more fun, more adventurous, more flexible, when I don’t have to be right,  when I’m wrong, when I’m a fool, when I get to try again. 

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

May 19, 2016

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