Dear Havre Daily News

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            I have turned into my father and I don’t like it. When I lived in Washington, I used to almost dread Dad’s phone calls because they too frequently meant that somebody we knew, in the family or in the neighborhood, had died.

            Every day I open the Havre Daily Homepage, ostensibly to see what is going on in my old neighborhood. But a not-so-teeny part of me can’t wait to scan down to the obituaries. I am always relieved when there are no names I recognize.

            Just this week, out of seemingly nowhere, an old school friend popped into my head. Where did he come from? I hadn’t given him a thought in many years.

So what do I discover today in the Obits? His mother had died. Not only that, my old friend was gone too. When did he die? How? And how subtle are the connections among us to which we give no thought?

I mourn my old friend. He was fun. I mourn his mother. I considered asking you, HDN, to drop the Obituary section from your paper. But, then, what would I do?

At odd moments over the next few days, my old friend from high school intruded on my thoughts. It seemed like the thoughts were conversations; he’d come to visit and we caught up on old times, talked about in-between then and now. In a strange way, he comforted me.

Your article asking that Havreites be on the lookout for the greater short-horned lizard intrigued me. That lizard in the photo looked very familiar to me. I looked out the window onto my patio. Yep. There the little bugger is, slithering across the concrete. I have a hard time believing these critters could be in short supply in any habitant, not the way they carry on.

Just in case I am mistaken in identifying this particular lizard, being competent in foraging through the wilds of Wikipedia, I looked. Yes, they inhabit the earth all the way down into central Mexico, which is us. There are a great variety of looks and features but the one pictured in the Havre Daily looks exactly like the one over there, see, behind that aloe plant.

             Apart from the obituaries which bring me unwanted news and grief, I appreciate our local newspapers. Larkspurs or lizards, our local news is where we live, where giant tractors harvest bumper crops, wildfires harvest other acres. High School sports, doings at City Hall, a new business opening. Jamie Ford gives a talk at the library. Pam moves her rock crop to make space for horses.

Local news is where we peg memories that never fade. Doesn’t matter if my body is in Mexico, a piece of me lives on the Hi-Line and always will.  

My daughter just phoned, wanted to talk before she read about me in the HDN Obits!

Sondra Ashton            

Looking out my back door     

September 12, 2019  

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Sitting in My Corn Field

            Sitting in My Corn Field

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            Used to be if I had a serious deadline, I would work all day, work all night, work until the project was finished, ready to deliver.

            Ah, well, that was then. “Used to be” is like paint; it covers a multitude of sins.

            Nowadays, in what the “boys” here call “my wonderful retired life”, and it is, mostly, I parse out my day in bits and pieces. Perhaps like today, hang laundry, rest, generally with a book in hand, make the bed, rest, sweep floor, rest, work on project, rest. You get the idea.

            Presently, my favorite mid-morning rest stop is my corn field. Lest you get the wrong idea, I don’t have a “real” corn field. When Jim from Missouri was here in the spring, he gave me a packet of seed.  Not a serious packet such as a serious gardener would buy, but a small budget packet with a few seeds. “Take a chance,” he said.

            Since corn is a major crop in Jalisco, I said, “Not so much to chance.” Where field corn grows year round, sweet corn ought to flourish. I planted it just before the rainy season began. Which season seems to be over and gone a month and more too early. Grumble.

            My field is a converted patch of flower bed, about 2’ X 10’. I have a stand of twelve, each stand with two or three stalks, each stalk with burgeoning ears. I go out every morning to see if there are the dread corn worms. So far, so good.

            Actually, I don’t sit in the corn field. Mid-morning the west side of my casita is shaded. I have two rocking chairs, one for company, sitting on the back patio, surrounded by plants in pots. The corn is in the sun. Sun drenched corn on the stalk is a thing of beauty.

            Since this time of year I have no company, my mid-morn break is a perfect time for reflection, meditation if you will, contemplation or just plain day-dreaming.  

            Meditation, or what I call meditation, doesn’t look like much. Just me, rocking or sitting, looking like normal No candles or bells or incense. No cushions. I can no longer sit cross-legged, Buddha-style. When I get down on the ground, I’m a sight to behold getting myself upright.  

            I do not enter a state of bliss though at one time in my life, I thought that the goal; that if I were really good, I would be able to live in a state of bliss. Life didn’t work that way for me. When moments, hints, of bliss come, I treasure them, knowing they help balance the moments of anguish.

            No, bliss is never my aim. I give attention to the things around me, flowers, weeds, partridge doves, which really know how to play, the hummingbirds harvesting sweet from my patch of geraniums. From there, it is fairly easy to empty my mind of worry, stress or fears for the future.

            So I sit. Sometimes for just a few moments, sometimes a half hour or longer. This brief respite from daily cares is important to me. When I don’t give time to myself, I suffer, perhaps in little unnoticeable ways. But those little ways chip away at my well-being.

            So I sit. I gift myself with doing nothing. My favorite spot shifts with weather, time of day, placement of sun in the sky, mood or inclination. Some days you will find me, generally in a rocking chair, on my front patio. Or at the far corner of my back yard under the jacaranda tree.

            So I sit. Today I sit beside my corn field. Temperature is mid-seventies. Air, softly moving, brushes tree leaves to a flutter. A Black Swallowtail moves from hibiscus to geranium to that long-stalked purple flower. I smell beans simmering in the kitchen. Some days beans and homemade tortillas make the perfect meal. 

            My hip hurts. The lime tree has curly leaf. A young iguana (youngsters are green, adults are gray) traverses the top of the far brick wall, on the way to an appealing yellow hibiscus flower. My class reunion met without me. Life is far from perfect.

            But maybe this is bliss.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

September 5, 2019

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Missed my Calling

Missed my Calling

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                Today I bring you the banal, the mundane, my trite self-discovery in household hints.

Soap-pads Ohso Special. Also known as SOS or, in Espanol, “fibra metalica”.  Can you believe I could not find any of those soap-embedded, finely-shredded wirey scrub pads that I think of as SOS pads, no matter the brand? Not anywhere in town.

                I am a proponent of shopping locally. Though my town is small, I generally find whatever I need in a store right around the corner. Fruterias and aborrotes abound, that is, fruit and vegetable stands or grocery tiendas.

                As I said, we are a small town. Our tiendas are small but abundant, one on every block. Shelves are crowded. The item I search out might be behind other items, high on a shelf or behind the counter. One learns to inquire.

                Other stores are specialized. Like the spice lady or the herb man. Or my favorite cremeria. Or the egg lady who doesn’t have a store but sells eggs out her front door while chickens run loose in the back yard. Or the strawberry truck or the woman who scrapes and chops Nopale cactus in the Mercado.

                Often I shortcut the search process by asking Leo or Josue or Erica, “Where can I find a whichit?” If they don’t know, it might not exist. Then, and only then, I might put it on my list to bring from the States.

My last trip, I returned with a new deck of playing cards and leafy-lettuce seeds, which I can get here but didn’t know where until this very week. Other times I’ve brought pickling spices, jar lids and rings, and a particular shampoo.

                Oops, almost forgot the other resource—the Big City. When Leo asked me if I needed anything from Costco, I showed him my empty Ajax box for “fibra metalica” scrubbies. Maybe I’m sexist but when I sent a man to buy a special cleaning tool, I was not surprised he returned empty-handed.

                Back to my wished for soap-pads. I bought a box a couple years ago. Ajax brand, printed in Espanol. Contents, five pads which I used stingily and judiciously because I knew they were a rare item. 

                My drinking water comes in twenty liter jugs. In my kitchen area I have a Mexican-style water reservoir with a spigot on a stand. The jug sits upended on the reservoir. If one is in a hurry or careless with the spigot, water might drip onto the floor. Over time, a mineral deposit builds.

                I’ve used razor blades, vinegar, and CLR and they all work, sort of work, with generous application of elbow grease. Quite by accident, I used the last soap bubble of my last pad, swish, swipe, and wiped out the entire calcium deposit of the ceramic tile, Vila! Shine restored. 

                Most of us, well, some of us, Okay, “I” have a dirty little secret; an area I hate to clean and put off scrubbing but my procrastination leaves a grimy residue on my consciousness. Water in our area is laden with minerals. My shower tiles are despicable but nicely hidden. They only bother me. But bother me they do. Hence—my sudden need to find soap pads once I discovered how quickly and easily they work on tile.

                I threw my brain up on the rack and pulled and stretched until it yielded the secret of where in the world I might have purchased my Ajax pads. In Magdalena there is a fairly large, warehouse type bodega. I have not shopped there in the last couple years. The store carries things on the shelf which are hard to find in our town, things like yeast and soap pads.  

                I trotted around the corner to con Lani into a trip to Magdalena. She’s an easy touch and we had a good outing, each finding things we wanted, including my soap pads and more leafy lettuce seeds.

                When you come visit, I shall hand you sunglasses to don when I show you my sparkling shower tiles. I missed my calling. I should be in advertising. 

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

August 29, 2019

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The Quality of Light

The Quality of Light

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            My back yard pulls me out of the house. I take a book with me, as always, but cannot focus when surrounded by such magical glory.

This is the same yard, the same beauty, the same powerful stillness around me day after day after day. What makes it feel different today? I don’t know. Maybe something about the quality of light in August.

            Already the sun slants winter-wise across the sky. Perhaps it illuminates more detail, each edge of leaf, each bird wing, each petal of butterfly. Perhaps my flowering ginger, currently the most spectacularly beauty in my garden, the aroma of which mingles with jasmine and permeates the entire back yard, has put me under a spell.

            I have harvested my last mango. My next crop of papaya are large as footballs. The avocados are ripening. I have gorged myself on the first three luscious green globes. Two months from now, when the final fruit drops from the top of the tree, I will not care. Meanwhile I’ll supplement my diet with mangoes from the market until the season is over and done. I never tire of mango.

            My new neighbor arrived with her five cats. Within a few weeks she and Tom will be permanent residents of our little community. We visited last night just as the cooling rain began to fall. I discovered the “J” in J-Rae stands for Janet. Henceforth, she is Janet to me.

            I have not yet met the cats but will soon, after they get settled in and comfortable with new surroundings. 

When Janet left my place, Princess came bounding over to greet us. This pup followed some walkers and side-tracked into our community. She is the sweetest little thing and I fell in love with her.

Fortunately, Josue and Erica’s daughter Stephany adopted her. Otherwise temptation might have been too great for me to resist. Now I have the best of all worlds. A pup to greet me on one side and cats to love on the other side.

Just for fun I planted a small patch, about two by twelve feet, of sweet corn. It is in full tassel so with good luck and no invasive corn worms, I should have roasting ears soon. Our gardener, Leo, shakes his head at the small height of my corn compared to his corn.

Mexican corn is high as the Oklahoma elephant’s eye.  Along every street, vendors fire up braziers to roast the ears, overripe and colorful. Another temptation. If you value your teeth, you will beg deliverance from such evil. Field corn in all its guises, whether roasted ears, ground for tortillas, or fed to cattle is still field corn. Mexican people have the most beautiful white strong teeth. Bypasses my understanding. Maybe if I were raised eating such tough kernels, maybe.

Leo just came over. “Oh, Sondrita, we just don’t know. Today we stand up; tomorrow maybe no stand up.” His elderly uncle had died in the past hour. The funeral will be tomorrow. It is the Mexican way.

His news, a sobering reminder how important are the people in our lives. I thought about my friend Steve, just completing the first half of his chemo and radiation treatments for cancer in his throat. Of my friend with Parkinson’s. Of Jane’s friend who was severely injured in a wreck. Of Lee’s husband. Of my great-grandbaby’s mysterious recurring illness.

My own physical pain becomes negligible. I am acutely aware how incredible, how seemingly impossible, is this life I live, this life I somehow have fallen into or have been gifted.  

            Perhaps it is the quality of light.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

August 22, 2019

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Confessions of an Unknown Poet

            Times Were Simpler

We like to imagine

Times were simpler then.

We brag to grandchildren,

Honey, when I was your age

I walked a mile

To school every day,

Barefoot, through the snow,

Uphill both ways. They laugh.

We romanticize the past,

Ignore ugly parts, piece a mosaic

Of what we wish to keep.

If only we could turn back

The clock a hundred years . . .

Times were no different.

Wars, inequity, cruelty,

Hatred, disease . . . The same.

We were simpler then.

                        Confessions of an Unknown Poet

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            Poetry? Ewww. Not that awful incomprehensible stuff we were forced to read in high school and try to niggle-pickle a meaning! Not that!

            Not that, but what? My poetry is simple, accessible, gritty, honest, evocative and seldom rhymes. It is not loaded with Latin phrases nor multi-syllable obscure words. Okay, so a few are incomprehensible, even to me. But not painfully so.  I’ll stick my neck out and (gulp) say, there is something for everyone.

            All writing is autobiographical but my poems are not autobiography.  A story I heard, a birdsong, a butterfly wing, a broken tree; any might trigger an impulse to versify.

            I’m not a “real” writer. I don’t set aside scheduled hours to write daily, so many words, so many pages a day, locked in the bathroom, fingers hammering keys on a manual typewriter while my toddlers whimper and bang on the door. Those messy years, I wrote only during naptime.

            I write at my convenience. At my whim. Whims come and go, messy things they are too.

            My friend Charlotte said I wrote poetry in high school. I don’t remember. But in the ‘70s I began writing again. Ah, yes, the 70s, a prolific time for poetry. I bought writer’s magazines, mailed poems to “Little Lits,” very small publications, mostly quarterly, which paid in pennies per word, or, most likely, a “free” copy of the publication.

This will not make a lick of sense. Of every four poems I submitted, three were printed. I was so disappointed. I figured the mags must be a scam (they were not) because poems are extremely difficult to publish (all the articles said so) and I did not have an MFA nor any credentials as a poet. So much for that.

But I continued to sporadically write. While I lived in Washington, I had the opportunity to attend weekly writing sessions with other writers, to hone my skills, to give public readings. That made me feel complete. It was enough.

In this digital age, the world of publishing has changed.  But publishing still requires time, money and marketing (energy, travel, more money).

I know myself quite well. I have none of the necessities with which to publish and market my work nor the ego need to see my name in print.

Friends ask me why I don’t self-publish a collection of my best. Oh, sweet friend, I’d spend maybe $5,000 plus for a small stack of books which I would give away to a few friends while the remainder of my brilliant work would mildew in a corner of my bodega.

Others tell me, Amazon is the answer. Same difficulties. Costs a lot of money. And I’d be their best purchaser, buying books to give to my friends.

Nevertheless, while in Montana in June, my daughter Dee Dee helped me begin a poetry blog where you few brave souls can read my poems in secret; nobody will know. No messy books to be hidden, shoved beneath the mattress.

We started the blog with about forty selections. I will add to these from time to time. I won’t dump 300 in all at once. I promise.  It is not an easy site to follow. Neither of us were skillful enough to make the site exactly what we had envisioned. Only the latest posts show.  At the bottom of the page click on “older posts” to carry you back, again, and back, again.

So if you are a secret reader of the forbidden (What would your friends say if they knew?), in the bathroom or under the blankets with a flash light, a reader of that strange genre known as “Poetry”, please take a look at http://montanatumbleweedpoetry.blogspot.com.  Thanks.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

August 15, 2019     

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            Skywalker

I walked the sky last night,

Tangled my feet in treetops.

A pair of doves nested in my hair.

I sneezed and built a cloud cumulus

From which soared hidden dreams.

Leaves of other times

Obscured the way ahead.

Be still, I nodded my drum.

The quiet of questions unasked,

Hot and cold, fell like fog,

Into the fiery sunrise.

Strange Days and Strange Ways

            Strange Days and Strange Ways

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            Do you ever wonder if the big ol’ sun up there looks down and thinks, “Those are some mighty strange beings down on that little ball of mud, especially that one there, standing by the mango tree, looking up in the sky and trying to puzzle out the unfigurable”?

            (Not only can I anthropomorphize with the best, I’m good at making up words.)

            I can smell the moisture in the air. Morning is heavy with fog. The afternoon hot and sticky. The clouds split and gallop along the mountains on either side of our valley.

            Sultry and humid it is, but a gal has got to eat. As long a chicken breast is simmering in the oven, I’ll whip up a mango cheesecake, modifying a favorite recipe from a hippie cookbook, published back when the glaciers were receding, that is, the time before this time.

            This entertaining book is chock full of good recipes along with sensible ideas on how to live on little. I make a few substitutions and leave out such disgusting items as brewer’s yeast. Oh, I tried it. I’d rather eat fried worms.

Speaking of worms, what if we have it all backward? What if those which we call the lower life forms are, in reality, the higher life forms? Think about it. They came first. What gives me a right to think that a being with which I am incapable of communication, is a lower life form?

Communication? Heck, we are incapable of communication with one another.

What if Fido, the family pet, voluntarily sacrificed his true heart’s desire to hike the Appalachian Trail, in an attempt to prevent his “Master” from undertaking too many utter stupidities?

What if one loving service of the Jacaranda in my back yard is simply to try to keep me, his own human, on an even keel?

What if, since we seem to have evolved last in a long line, we are the lower life form and those which evolved first have continued to evolve into highest intelligence?

I’ve spent the week hovering over ironing board and sewing machine, creating garments to protect me from extreme ultraviolet rays and other indignities. Meanwhile, on beaches the world over, other creatures of my ilk, strip their clothing and sacrifice skin layers to the sun rays.

The iguanas on top of my brick wall, all in some phase of slithering out of old skin into new, neither reap nor sew. Which of us is more intelligent? Who is to say?

Speaking of ranking intelligence, I notice things. My iguanas, I say “my” as if I own them because they are in my yard, lounge on the wall yomping hibiscus flowers at will. Drives me nuts. I stomp around, shoo, fie, off with your heads. Iguanas do not bat an eyelid, but gaze at me with utter disdain. Continue yomping. Which of us is smarter?

Here’s another thought. (I’m full of them but I promise to stop before I blather out my take on lower intelligence, shopping malls and shooting galleries.)

What if the only differences among me and my iguana and an amoeba are the containers which define our edges? I have questions. No answers.

Does a rock have imagination? Does a leaf-cuter ant have philosophy? Is the ground squirrel biased? Is the moon in love with the Pacific Ocean? Who knows what the creatures get up to when nobody is looking.  

But, what do I know?

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

August 8, 2019

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The Color of Laughter

            The Color of Laughter

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            Yesterday my computer went strange on me, would not let me make any of my usual connections. So after trying everything I knew (not much) I phoned my son for help. Ben was at work, so said he’d call me to fix it when he got home. A few hours later, I thought to give it one more futile try.

            Obviously, the dang bugger heard me make the call to Ben, quaked in its reboots and fixed itself.

            My errant computer was a small glitch in my day. Even with the importance my computer has assumed in my foreign life, my world does not turn on whether it works or doesn’t work. That is what I try to tell myself.

            But once my service was restored, I giggled and privately celebrated and shared my good news with friends—via internet.

            It’s been a rugged week for me. I had one day I called in sick, so to speak. The rest of the time I felt mildly depressed beneath gray and weepy skies.

            I suppose life experiences form my philosophy or belief system. I like stories of those who have clear moments of epiphany.  For me, I think eye openers have been longer, drawn out processes, many of them.

            One certainly occurred when, during prolonged hospitalization from a car wreck, my doctor told me I might not live. He wasn’t one to mince words.

He also said I’d never walk. At any rate, since I was heavily drugged when he declared those ominous words, I didn’t believe him on either count and went on to have fifty years of walking without aids. So these past five years walking with a cane are no great burden.

Through all this, and more, I have come to know that I am insignificant. And that makes me smile. It is a great freedom, I think, to be of little account.

Because of this, and who is to argue, I find moments of pure joy in other small and insignificant things, such as finding computer service restored without great effort.

Or sitting on my patio watching lizards perform rites of fertility.

Or harvesting mangoes from my own backyard tree and making marmelada to share with my neighbors.

Or breathing deeply of the aroma of flowering ginger which I planted in the back southwest corner of my garden, this year mature enough to overwhelm all other scents. The white flowers are more beautiful than orchids. And hardier.

             Or when I found a real paper letter in my mailbox in the post office above the Mercado.

            Or when Lani and Ariel took me along to El Parrel in San Marcos for lunch, good friends, excellent food, lovely music and an introduction to natilla, beside which traditional flan pales in comparison.

And I know how to make natilla. So do you. Easy, courtesy of Mama Google. Use the recipe with vanilla bean and stick cinnamon.

            Or when Leo brought me a stalk of fingerling bananas when he noticed my empty fruit bowl.

            Or when Josue unloaded his shirt lumpy with Granada fruit for me to make aqua de Granada. Pomegranate by its Mexican name.  

            Or when the vibrant yellow bird, four times the size of a parakeet, landed for a moment on the edge of my patio roof, posed, poised and took off again. It’s a new bird to me, in this land of many yellow birds, the gorgeous vivid yellow of laughter.

            Or when English tea with sugar and milk cured my depression.

            Or when I awoke this morning to a bright blue sky with not a cloud in sight.

            But if I were rich and famous, if I were a real somebody, then I’d be telling you how important it is to have a good investment team, a McMansion on the Pacific, a plastic surgeon on retainer, and a private jet in my back yard.

            If I were rich and famous, I’d tell you to buy one hundred rare yellow birds.

            I’m satisfied with being a dust mote in the grand scheme. But then, what do I know?

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

August 1, 2019

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