Girl on Bike, Woman in Red Car

            Girl on Bike, Woman in Red Car

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            It’s a mystery. I hear Jack Webb’s voice (Sargent Joe Friday) in my ear. “Just the facts, Ma’am. Just the facts.”

            July 25, a sweltering sunny afternoon, my granddaughter Antoinette, rode her bike down Kendrick, a side street in Glendive, Montana.

            At 3:30 her Mother sat in her office, recording client notes into a file, waiting for her 4:00 appointment, when her phone rang. “Mom, come get me. I wrecked my bike. I don’t know where I am.” She was on a street she rode every day.

            A woman, whose name we do not know, took the phone and told Dee Dee that Antoinette was on the lawn of the church.

            Meanwhile the woman who had picked Antoinette off the street and helped her to the grass, laid the bike beside her, waited for Dee, got into a red car and drove off. Thank you for stopping and helping, whoever you are.

            Dee’s office was five minutes away. She rushed out of her office, leaving the door open. Dee helped Antoinette into her van, stowed the wrecked bike in the back and drove straight to the hospital Emergency Room.

            At the hospital, Antoinette admitted she remembered nothing. She rode along the street and then she was in the street, down and hurting. Obviously she had a concussion. Her right arm was broken, third broken arm. The flesh on her hand was skinned back. Road rash covered her left leg knee, thigh and shoulder. Her right knee has either a hairline fracture or severe bone bruise. And, she hurt all over.

            It wasn’t until the family got home and Chris, Antoinette’s Dad took the bike out of the car, that they realized that the “accident” was not as simple as believed. Her brand new bicycle was crumpled, the handlebars not just loosened but bent out of shape and the brake line had ripped apart. The tires and seat were twisted. Antoinette’s bike helmet has two holes in the top as well as a long scrape the length of the helmet.

            Those are the known facts. You tell me what happened.

            Antoinette is twelve years old. She’s had mild cerebral palsy since birth. Luckily her disease is not severe.  From birth she has had physical and occupational therapy and she is encouraged to stay physically active. She typically rides her bike a couple hours a day when weather allows.

It is a month later and Antoinette still has no memory of what happened. She has intense headaches and still suffers high levels of pain.

            Glendive is a small eastern Montana town, population about 5500, just off the freeway. Everybody knows everybody.  They are good people, just like our neighbors. Kendrick Street is not a main thoroughfare. Nobody reported the accident.

            Obviously Antoinette didn’t hit a rock in the road and lay down her bike. Who hit my granddaughter? I have many questions and no answers. We’ll probably never know.

            I’ve un-intentionally laid my bike down on the rutted gravel roads I rode around Harlem more than once back in the day. Worst I ever suffered was skinned knees and gravel bits welded to my palm. Something is really wrong in this story.

            It’s a good thing Dee Dee is a bike-helmet tyrant. (Dee said moms of CP kids tend to be tyrants.)  If she weren’t, I might not have a granddaughter.

            I know it seems silly to our generation. None of us ever wore a bike helmet. There was no such thing. But if you don’t have one and can’t afford one, I might know somebody who’d get you one.

            Schools are back in session. Kids are walking and biking, laughing and talking. It is up to us to be alert. Please, please, please, watch out for our young ones.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

August 30, 2018

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And the Cat Came Back

And the Cat Came Back

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            I consider myself a pretty practical person. Yet I find myself incredibly sad, from time to time, mourning the death of Cat Ballou. I had an opportunity several weeks ago to adopt a new kitten from Ballou’s mother’s latest litter.

            “No. I leave in two months to see my family. It wouldn’t be right for me to take a new kitten and then abandon her for several weeks.” See, practical.

            Yesterday morning Nancie phoned. “Can you come over to visit?” My cousin was leaving the next day, back to Washington. We had already made plans for me to spend a few hours with her, so her call surprised me.

            Surprised, that is, until I walked through her gate and saw a rag, a bone and a hank of hair lapping milk from a dish on Nancie’s patio. “Nancie, you are a sneaky sly one.”

            I sat down, lowered my hand and twiddled my fingers. The scrawny cat came over and nuzzled into my fingers, leaped into my lap, stuck her nose up to breathe my breath, settled into a circle on my lap, and purring, fell asleep.

            “I can’t take her. I leave in two weeks.” The other three women on the patio nodded their heads. I smelled a sinister plot.

            I’m no expert on guessing age but this feline was gangly legged, what I call a teen-ager, still more kitten than cat. “And, she stinks.”

            “Let’s bathe her,” and matching action to words, Nancie jumped up, got a basin of warm water, a shampoo and towel. Next thing you know, the cat was in the water, limp in my cousin’s hands, getting a good scrub. I took her in the towel to sop up the water.

            She obviously had been handled, by children. She didn’t object to any indignity. I’ll bet some little girl dressed her in baby clothes.

The cat, just as obviously, had been lost, abandoned, chased away, or somehow on her own for a couple weeks, at the least. She had appeared at Nancie’s door, starved, with several small scratches and a larger wound on her hind leg, was no doubt wormy and maybe mangy, her coat beyond cartoon scruffy.

To add to those indignities, the poor thing is ugly. She’s part Siamese, part Calico. She has splotches of gray, tan and black on her white body, with yellow markings on her ears and kinked Siamese tail. Blue eyes, of course. She was not one to elicit, “Oh, you poor, poor, pitiful thing, come home with me.”

Despite my hard heart, I took her home. Fed her. Made a bed with a Mexican blanket in a large animal crate, smeared Bag Balm on her owies, and held her most of the afternoon.

Cat, dishes and bedding are relegated to patio. At dusk I went inside and closed my door. I figured if the cat was still there in the morning, I probably own a cat.

This cat has been around people. She’s not a yowler. We both had a peaceful night. She greeted me with purrs, weaving through my legs when I went out in the morning to feed her.

I leave in two weeks. If she is still here when I get back in October, then a cat owns me. By then, I’ll know her name.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

August 16, 2018

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The Wrath of Ralph

The Wrath of Ralph

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            Rule # 1: Never write when sick.

            Rule # 2: Do whadevah ya gotta do.

            It’s a virus, I’m sure. Caught it from a hug from Josue, who thought he’d eaten bad mangoes. Four days ago. Mangoes good. Virus bad. Hugs good.  I’m not going to live under a blister-pak.

            I twist myself into knots in order to avoid paying obeisance to the toilet god, Ralph. Fortunately, neither my stomach nor my mind felt hunger that afternoon. I felt listless. I should have seen the clues.

            Next day, you couldn’t have forced food past my lips. The very idea clenched my gut and enhanced my mental picture of myself, on my knees, in the little chapel, paying my respects. Both mind and spirit abandoned me. I wanted to die.

            Day three, I ate bread, a little melon. Energy low. Could see shadows of human on the horizon.

            Day four, enough is enough. I felt better. Ate breakfast. Ralph tapped me on the shoulder. Not now, I said. I need to catch up on all the work I didn’t do the last three days, right?

            Prepped pineapple and mangoes to eat later. Washed dishes, dusted, swept, mopped. Collapsed. Ralph returned in fury.

            No article from me this week. I’m very sorry. I’m on a retreat. A rest. Seeking refuge in book and bed. Making peace offerings to Ralph.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

August 9, 2018

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The P O, a Prayer and Poetry

The P O, a Prayer and Poetry

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            I live at #3 Nopales on a small piece of the Rancho Esperanza set aside for a dozen or so retirement homes. That’s the sum total of any pretense to an Americano community in this still traditional small village of Etzatlan. It’s not an official government-recognized address. No mail delivery.

            Jane emailed me that a woman she knows, a woman without benefit of email (How quickly we believe if we do it, everybody does it.) would like to correspond with me. This is not my first such message.

            But it is the first time I addressed the issue in a non-convoluted way, by-passing third party relays and such non-workable ideas. I often have great, even brilliant, ideas that don’t work.

            The local mail service is in a corner office above the Mercado. A tiny corner office. Mail is delivered by bicycle carriers from blue pouches hung on their battered bicycles. Everybody knows everybody in that small town way. There is little need for individual boxes. The mail boxes off in the corner take up about three feet by four feet of space. Little keyed doors just like ours.

            I presented duplicate copies of my passport, my electric bill to prove where I live, my Residente Temporal card. The amiable clerk filled out what seemed an inordinate number of pages of information on her computer while I stood waiting at the counter. 

            This happened to be an unusually hot morning, one of the few in which it had not rained in the night, in this, the rainy season. Not a breath of air reached the upstairs office. Mucho calor!

            A half hour later, when the clerk finished my application paperwork, she explained that she had to go downstairs, across the street, to the internet café to print the papers for me to sign. The office did not have its own printer. This is not unusual. I’m used to it. Didn’t bat an eye. This is business in a small village.

            I secured a chair from an office next door. Sat and waited. There’s always a line at the internet café.  And of course, everyone knows everyone else. Chit chat of the day. This is not unusual. I picture all this while I wait. I’m used to it. No problema. I have a chair.

            An hour later, I signed numerous pages and now have a key and an official snail mail, real mail address: APDO Postal #3, 46500—Etzatlan, Jalisco, Mexico. Please do write.

            I grabbed fruits and vegetables in the Mercado downstairs and headed to the car which was parked on the side street by the Cathedral.

I was suddenly and inexplicably visited with an overwhelming urge to go inside the Cathedral.

            I sat in the ancient wooden pew and burst into tears. I think that might be prayer. Wordless, no entreaty, no requests for help, no expectations, no thanksgiving, just hot tears. Twenty minutes later, I thanked the Great Spirit and was ready to go home. 

            After washing my face and putting away my groceries, I sat down to work on my poetry.

First and foremost, I am a poet. Ha—wait a minute—I saw that. I saw your eyes glaze over. All poetry is not vague or incomprehensible. I believe my work is accessible, easily understood, simple even. I write everyday stuff in everyday language.

I’ve been invited to read at the monthly gathering of poets at Poulsbohemian Coffee in Washington in September. This is a great honor for me, to once again share my poetry with friends where I once lived.

            So as long as I’m sharing personal information, let me also share this. I have begun an online forum for my poems: www.montanatumbleweedpoetry.blogspot.com. Please join me. I promise to not confound you.  

            It occurs to me that Mexican mail, prayer and poetry have commonalities. I’m never sure the message will get through, it might take a while, and the response might not be what I most want. But why should that stop me?

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

August 2, 2018

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Hit Might Be the Ar-thur-i-tis

               Hit Might Be the Ar-thur-i-tis

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               I woke from my dream with that southern hill-country woman’s voice in my ear. The voice, 

the memory, from past years, was triggered in that non-linear way of memories, by a phone conversation with my daughter the previous day.

               My oldest granddaughter is in a precarious place in her life. A baby with babies. Jessica is young, alone with two babies, lonely, no job, no direction and thinking biologically instead of using her logical brain. I remember those feelings; I was young once.  

Harper’s father sent her train tickets for a visit. Harper is Jess’s older daughter, my great-granddaughter.  Jess wants to leave three-year old Harper for a few days with her Dad, whom she has not seen in two years, while Jess goes off with old friends and has fun. I say this with complete understanding of and compassion for Jess’s need to escape fears and uncertainties she lives with daily. 

What we know of the father’s family is that Jess would walk into a situation fraught with high risk that the other grandparents could snatch her child, among other dangers.

My daughter’s quandary, of which her sharing has given me ownership too, is, where are the borders between interfering, helping, and enabling? Jess is an adult. Well, a baby adult. We know. We understand. We once were all-wise baby adults too, making decisions with body-parts disconnected from brains.

Dee Dee gave Jessica a home when the baby, born to a mother flying high, was a mere six hours old, adopted her and raised her. Jessica is a beautiful young woman and a good mother. But we don’t forget the years of work with a severely fetal-alcohol damaged child, the lack of understanding the consequences of her actions, the areas of brain damaged beyond repair.

We know the dangers. We know the consequences. We know the pain which has no end. We’ve walked that road of bad decisions, my daughter Dee Dee and me, separately and together.

We cried, slobbered on the telephones. Jess is an adult. She’ll make her own decisions, good ones and otherwise and we cannot control her, only love her.  

So I took that to bed with me last night and in that night-time anti-logical way, mixed family worries with recent X-Rays of my own body, riddled with arthritis throughout.

Dreams and memories merged into horse-back riding across the plains, miniature blue buffalo, and a visit with my own mother when she lay dying in a hospital in southern Indiana. Dreams are another anti-logical mechanism.

My mother was committed to the hospital and left my life when I was four, back when there was small understanding of mental illness and treatment thereof.

The visit, when I was in my 40s, was no dream. My mom was a shriveled up little thing, I could have held her on my lap. We spent hours just loving each other without words, forgiving and accepting forgiveness.

Across the hall an elderly man lay, also silently dying. He had a stream of relatives in and out his hospital door. One morning I overheard his wife complain. “Ah don’t right-ly know, “she said. “Hit might be the Ar-thur-i-tis.”

I’ll always remember that scene. When nothing seems to work, when life is a muddle-puddle, when faced with the impossible, I think, Hit might be the Ar-thur-i-tis.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

July 26, 2018

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Slantways, Like a Crow

Slantways, Like a Crow

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            That morning while eating a plata de fruta on the patio, ten feet from the incoming tide, a family of Tenates, Grackles to you and me, swooped onto my table.  They look like ill-groomed clowns, like they got up on the wrong side of bed and forgot to comb their hair.

While I believe sharing food is good and honorable, these birds are of the crow family, and like their northern relations, are unrepentant scavengers. I invited them to leave. They grinned, all six of them, and perched on the chair opposite me.

            I laughed. I enjoy the antics of these birds. They seem to go about their lives with a ‘come what may’ attitude.

            With that laugh, I got it. In the very back closet of my mind, high on a shelf, I had formed a puzzlement of wonder at my unusual behavior. Why did I, in that spur-of-the-moment decision, jump on a bus to Mazatlan, for no discernable reason? I got it.

            I’m no adherent of geographic solutions to problems. Changing locations seldom solves any sticky situation. But, different surroundings, different people, different atmosphere, can jog one into a different perspective.

            Let’s face it. My perspective, my thinking patterns, had gotten dull and stale as last week’s moldy bread slathered with a helping of self-pity and topped with the “if onlys”, a sure slide into depression had I eaten the whole sandwich.   

            My trip had been a nice break. With the sound of the surf pounding the sand still in my ears, coming home felt like moving backwards from high summer into early spring, wearing a new pair of clean glasses making colors and lines sharper, more vivid.  

            Since the rains began mid-June, we’ve had rain in Etzatlan nearly every day. Real rain. Rain to fill the city wells, which had dropped to the level of a bucket or two away from restrictions and water rationing. Sunshine days. Thunder rules the nights.

            Corn and cane crops are shooting up well past the elephant’s knees. The agave fields are a brighter blue than I’ve ever seen in this dry country.

My own garden does me proud, a salad buffet for the iguanas, except for the roses. Jewel-toned beetles, blue-green in the sunlight, munch the soggy rose petals as fast as they open and the leaves look coated with rust. Ortho and pruning shears to the rescue. I’ll soon have a bed of naked rose stalks. They’ll revive.  

I have a pot of beans simmering on the stove and a loaf of fresh-baked bread on the counter. Papaya for dessert. And I’ll slide into my hot tub for a soak before bed.

Instead of despair, I see hope. In place of work, I see fun projects. I’m surrounded by all manner of creatures that talk to me when I make the effort to listen.

I’ll tell you, it is good to pay attention to those silly crows. They know how to live.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

July 19, 2010

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I’m Not There; I’m Here

            I’m Not There; I’m Here

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            I like to mix my metaphors. Images impossible evolve. In partnership with Jim, I bought a pig-in-a-poke, a hot tub that wasn’t working.

            Between Jim’s persistence (stubbornness) and Josue’s electrical knowledge, said pig works like a hot-diggity-dog. To me, it’s a gift of finest sensibilities. Never look a gift horse in the mouth. Our horse on pig’s trotters didn’t have a full set of teeth; no matter, easily (cheaply) resolved.

            With tub fully functioning, precipitating daily dips, I discovered it best to wait until the sun went down to indulge. The UV index here hits the extreme zone daily. Which led me to want/need an umbrella. Explored options via internet. Said umbrella that would work properly cost five times the cost of the tub. Sheesh.

            Leo and I put our heads together and chewed our brains. Several restaurants in town have open courtyards with an overhead canopy of mesh-material. Might that work?

            Three days later Leo installed my sombra canopy. It’s perfect. Total cost of $55.00. And it shades my two south windows, thus keeping my casita cooler. I indulged in shady afternoon dips (as opposed to burning sun splashes).

            Purely on a whim, the other day I boarded the posh autobus from Zapopan and ran away to Mazatlan. Even now, I’m not sure my motivation to leave perfection, a working tub, a new shade, garden growing like Jack’s magic beans, sunshine days, rainy nights, for a country of high humidity and scorching temperatures.

            Because I could? Because I love Mazatlan? Because . . .

            This trip already had an ominous beginning. I’m almost afraid to leave my hotel room. Almost superstitious.

            Ominous. Our bus was delayed by four unusual security stops along the highway.

            Then I arrived to a packed lobby, thousand-thousand persons, all checking in. My name made the bottom of the list. Two hours later, hot, tired, shaky and crabby, I entered my room and collapsed. Threw open the windows and turned off the air-icer.

            Crawled in bed at 6:30. Pitiful, I admit. Phone rang in the middle of the night. Woke me from dead sleep. “Please close your windows. It is storming.”

            Indeed. Spectacular lightning over the ocean. The wind had whipped my curtains out the window, flapping in a wild attempt to sail the seas to China.

            I complied and collapsed back into bed. All I could think was I’d have to replace shredded curtains. I was too tired to inspect them. That would take, what, two minutes? No, I chose half-sleep worry.

            Once fully awake, in the morning light, I inspected for damage. Curtains were intact. I delivered a small propina for the night manager, in gratitude for the middle-of-the-night wake up. Cheaper than new curtains.

            Then I sold my morning soul to a time-share presenter in exchange for a week of internet which would have cost me the equivalent of three months service at home. Sheesh. I managed to squiggle through without too much slime.

            This was not my ideal holiday. I headed to my room to recuperate.

            Only to find that the elevators in the lobby were all out of order. There are four elevators to the Tower. And one set of stairs. I had chosen to stay in the fancy place.

            As I contemplated trudging eighteen flights of stairs with a cane, a maid descended to the lobby. She opened the elevator door. Several of us rushed past her onto the elevator and ascended, gratefully. Am I the only one seeing a pattern?

            I had my friend Carlos drive me to Callecita for carnitas de atun, a favorite meal in a favorite place in Old Town. On the way back we mussed, by minutes, a huge slab of window-wall glass that fell from a second story bank building onto a white SUV. If I were superstitious . . .

            In my room, I worked a system of open windows, curtains to the walls, chairs in corners, with low risk for storm damage. In bed early. Dreamed of soaking in my tub.

            No further mishaps. As I said, I’m not superstitious. I’m not.

            Thunder rumbles the skies. Rain has come, has gone, will come again. It’s a good day to hang out under a palapa on the beach, contemplate the seas, book nearby, stay out of elevators and off the streets.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

July 12, 2018

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