Beginnings, Mysteries and a Mixed Bag of Nonsense

 

                                Beginnings, Mysteries and a Mixed Bag of Nonsense

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Bob T, a long-time friend from my past, used to compare life to a battery. In order for it to work, life must have both positive and negative poles. I, of course, wanted only the positive, the easy, the serene. Ha! Wantin’ ain’t gettin’.

On my patio I have a vine that I potted some three years ago, a vine, but more branch than leaf. I don’t know why I’ve kept it; it is not a bit pretty, but rangy and the leaves fall off leaving naked brown stems. In the cold of this morning, that ugly step-sister plant had borne two beautiful blue trumpet flowers.

My son is on the mend following weeks of Covid and seizures. My daughter is down with Covid and pneumonia. My heart is wrung dry.

When I was seven my Dad bought the book “Heidi” for me. Going through e-book offerings, I thought, why not? I love children’s literature and like to read books from my past. How did my Dad know that “Heidi” would be perfect for a seven-year old girl? It was a different world when I was seven.

Most years when the annual number changes, it takes me a month to write the correct year-date. Not this year.

I’ve been in Denial and it is more than a River in Egypt with frequent flood waters which spread pestilence and strange diseases along with rocking Baby Moses in the bulrushes.

My particular present form of denial has been concerning winter in Etzatlan. Until the lettuce leaves wilted, I pretended. “Nights are cold but I hope it doesn’t frost.” In actuality, we had frost several nights before this undeNileable Big Freeze. The weather dart board ahead looks grim. A real winter, for here.

But, hey, no competition. No comparison between our winter and a Montana winter. I sigh for insulation, double glazed windows and central heating. Where did I put my other sweater?

In a prescient moment mid-December, my daughter bought me a new ceramic heater, a cutie, in shape and look similar to a mottled, bronze flower vase. She shipped it to Jim, who drove here from Missouri. Today he, with my heater, arrived.

I already had Ralph, a tall, dark and stately column I bought a couple winters ago. Ralph worked hard but I still bundled up like the Good Year Blimp to get warm.  

Running on low, this little gal puts out more heat than Ralph on high. I named her Glow-ria. I keep the two well separated. I see them eye-balling one another, both in heat. For the first time in two weeks I feel warm from the inside.

My cousin Nancie is returning to her home in Sedro Woolley, Washington. I dearly love Nancie and I’m glad she is going back. I sense it is safer for her, with Pat, up on their mountaintop, away from the world. She had envisioned hours of intimate cousinly story-telling, lunch in restaurants, sight-seeing, the usual tourist holiday. It’s not to be.

 Sitting at my computer, I saw my reflection in the window behind the screen. Without thought, the next minute I stood at the bathroom mirror, scissors in hand and chopped what needed chopping for too many weeks.

In order to do this, it is handy to have a certain amount of “it doesn’t matter” in one’s character. At any rate, I no longer have a fringe covering my eyeballs. There is no possible way that, without spaghetti arms, I can make both sides even and who knows what the back looks like, but “it doesn’t matter”.

For the next three days “it doesn’t matter” will be my mantra as I grab scissors trying to even out the mess. A shorn sheep comes to mind. Or an escapee from a 1950’s asylum.

I’m so thankful for my friends, for people with whom I can share triumphs, the boring and the terrifying. In my note to Michelle today I apologized for being so negative. She wrote back that she alternates between being a bag of mush and a pillar of steel. Yes.

My very adult children handle things so differently. Ben thinks, “Don’t tell Mom. She’ll just worry.” Dee knows to keep in touch regularly, no matter how sick she is. One thing I’ve learned about myself through this is that a specific worry is less troubling than a blanket worry. We all fear the unknown.

Thank you, my friends, for letting me blather on, for letting me share the good, the bad and the ugly. I could not handle the unknown in these troubling times without you. You keep my battery charged.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

January 7, 2021

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

When every day is Sunday

 

When every day is Sunday

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

This week between Christmas and New Year’s Day is a strange time, a time when every day feels like Sunday.

This morning I made a big mistake. I checked the temperature. At 10:00 it was 42! That means in the coldest hour of the early morning, it was near freezing. How can that be? It didn’t feel that cold when I walked out to my bodega. I wasn’t cold until I looked at the thermometer on the outer wall.

 My ceramic heater is swiveling back and forth, the setting on Hi. I’m not sure if that is a temperature or a greeting. Hi. Hi. Hi.

My little brick house, planted in the midst of my garden paradise, is built of one layer of brick on brick on brick, no insulation or even stucco to sway the seasons into a fantasy of warmth. When I say I live outdoors, that is truth in several layers.

I have no problem with maintaining fresh air exchange. My windows are so loosely settled into the brick, Santa Claus slipped through the edges along with the wind.

Around 10:30 I scoot outside to sit in the sun, a sun willing to bake me warm, no matter what the thermometer reports. I drape a scarf loosely over my head and shoulders to keep from burning to a crisp. I’m there just to warm my bones. Hey, it is a delicate balance.

I go inside to finish a chore, to sweep the floors, to make a meal. What can I bake today? The oven helps heat the house. Lemon cookies? Banana cake? Apple pie?

I’ve noticed a strange phenomenon during this pandemic. Not that it is caused by the pandemic, just that I never noticed it before. My clothes seem to be shrinking. Probably from hanging in the direct sun. Let’s face it. They just don’t make clothes like the good ol’ days. What?

The warmth pulls me back out the door as though I’m attached to the sun by a long rope. I deadhead the daisies. I stop to admire the two red lilies, sole survivors of the plague which wiped out all my amaryllis, all my bulb plants two years past.

I move to another corner of the yard and partridge doves gather, unconcerned, near my feet. Kiskadees fly from tree to tree while gold finches, or small birds that look like a gold finches to my untrained eye, dominate the flowering bushes. Wherever a flower blooms, there is a hummingbird. They’re not shy.

What is this in-between time? What is this strange lethargy that has me locked in its thrall? I have projects lined up. In my limbo of laziness, I leave them, rejected, ignored, abandoned, though temporarily.

What I am really avoiding is the battle being fought in the background of my mind. Of the few of us who are here this winter, my coronavirus safety rules are the strictest. I think about these things in the dark night. Not often. But they make my list.

Here I am the only single person. Everybody else, like animals on Noah’s Ark, go two by two. Negotiating one’s way through a pandemic is definitely easier with two. Well, I think so.

With the Covid upsurge, I’m contemplating a strict January lockdown.

One part of me says, no more patio visits, careful as we are. The other part of my mind rebels.

I love visiting my friends and it hurts to have a mere few minutes conversation through bars of the wrought iron gate while others are gathering on the patio, sharing food, music and celebrating the season.

The really ugly part of this decision-making quandary is that at heart, I am a people pleaser. I want to sit on the patio, yours or mine, and gab for hours. I want you to like me. I don’t like for you to raise your brow in judgement.

In my imagination I see the various bubbles mingle. The bubbles of a couple who have no boundaries. The bubbles of others who have restrictions with exceptions. Each bubble holding, overlapping, mingling more people.

I know me well. I know how my mind works. The minute I say, okay, I will let down this boundary because she is my cousin, or let down that restriction because I really like them and know they are careful or fudge this rule a little here because I know they mean well. Then my mind, in a fit of what’s-the-use, will throw up its hands and say, “Might as well party.”

So I’ll attach a mental padlock to my gate. For now. For January. I hate this. It is hard.

Christmas is behind me. New Year’s Eve is here. I’m not recapping my year. I’ve no insightful predictions for the future. I make no resolutions.

What’s to complain? Every day is Sunday.  

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

December 31, 2020

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Merry Christmas

 

 Merry Christmas

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The phone rings. I grab my mask with one hand and the phone with the other. “Merry Christmas.”

My new habit. Masking has become automatic. Before I leave the house I grab a mask, even if I’m going to the clothesline, expecting to see not one other person. I go masked. Just in case.

I’m locked and loaded. In the holsters on the belt around my waist, a spray bottle of disinfectant rides on one hip and extra masks, gloves and a tape measure for distance (Okay, the tape measure is a joke.) and hand sanitizer on the other.

Overkill? Now that is an interesting word. So, yes, I’d say the Coronavirus Covid 19 is in serious overkill. Is there a one of us not affected?

In my other lives, before I came to Mexico and eased into my quiet solitude, I was active in many groups. I have friends in all walks of life. Friends who have had mild cases and recovered. I have friends who’ve died from the virus.

One neighbor here has a nephew hospitalized over a month. Another, her brother-in-law hovers near death. Another, his close friend died yesterday. One friend whose sister died. All from this novel virus.

My son has been several days in the hospital, again, this time with brain seizures from the virus. I just heard this morning he is home again, but rough around the edges. What does that mean? I don’t know. Will he recover? Will he be disabled? I don’t know.

I’m terrified. I’m angry. Just saying, in case you think I am a mild-mannered Clark Kent sort.

‘Tis the Season, peace, good will to all. I’m having a hard time being jolly.

Despite my helplessness, despite my inability to fly north, kiss my son’s owies and make them go away, I have hope. I know Ben is getting the best of doctor care.

In the grand scheme of life, this is not about me. I am one little bitty cog in the works, yet connected to an entire world of other cogs, all of us feeling fear and hope, love and rage, loss and love. Love. Yes, I said love twice because I don’t want to lose sight of love.

The world is in a sorrowful place. Again. Not for the first time. Not for the last. Just again.

We feel weary. We feel worn. Helpless, yes, sometimes we feel hopeless. Tomorrow is Christmas Day. I wanted to write something warm and fuzzy today for you. Every column I write is from my heart, even when my heart is hurting.

Despite differences, we humans seem to be able to come together, to connect, to help each other, to grieve together, to rejoice together. Together. To love. Most importantly, to love. Merry Christmas.

HDN: Looking Out My Backdoor

December 24, 2020

Sondra Ashton

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Oblivious Me

 

Oblivious Me

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I am a marked woman. Last week I announced to my little world that I am studying Spanish, obviously a language tagged as subversive. When next I arrive in Havre, I’m likely to be met on the train by armed Border Patrol, cuffed, and dragged into the slammer.

Oh, woe is me. I followed the Havre news story (also in the international news, by the way) about the two young women apprehended for speaking Spanish in the convenience store. I know that Spanish-speaking women are dangerous. I should have thought.

Oh, man, the story of my life. “I should have thought.” Not me. I’m oblivious. I blurt out whatever is on my mind.

It’s too late now. The die is cast. I’ve crossed the Rubicon. So I’ll continue forward, see where this path leads. Might be cold baloney sandwiches for breakfast, lunch and dinner in the iron bar hotel?

When I say “too late”, in the night I wake up from dreams with Spanish phrases in my head. I’m determined. I may never speak fluent Spanish but my Spanglish gets better every day.

My latest language hang-up is “me gusta” which means “I like”. This phrase is common, one I already knew. Yesterday I discovered there is “a mi me gusta” which also means “I like”. I learned this version is sometimes used for extra emphasis and sometimes “just because”.

What’s that mean? “Just because”? How am I supposed to know the difference? I’m serious. I want to know why.

And that—the need to know why—is a big determinate to my lack of language skills. I want to know why. And there is no why. Different languages developed in different times and places. There may be no why or reason or logical relationship between languages. Relax and accept. Easy to say. Relajar y aceptar.

The answer to most of my problems my whole life long: relax and accept.

Meanwhile, the sun is shining and my latest project is my “Mask Factory”.

One of the things I most like about being in Mexico is that nothing is thrown away. When an items is broken, it is either fixed or a different use if found for it. Like in olden days.

Recently I gathered a bunch of scraps from a basket in my bodega. Tore apart a couple pillow covers I no longer use. Sat with my seam ripper and dismantled a couple blouses that were faded, but fine when used for lining. Bought several meters of quarter-inch elastic.

Just like that, I had a production line set up for my one-woman mask factory. My face masks are very simple in construction, easily sewn together, washable and durable. I began making masks for myself with nary a thought for others.

“Hey, Sondrita, nice mask. Where’d you get it?”

“Ah, would you like a couple?”

That’s how it all began. Then I said to self, “Christmas is a coming soon. No tengo los regalos este ano para mis amigos.” I don’t have gifts to give but I can make masks and share the work of my hands.

I don’t consider the masks to be real Christmas gifts. After all, they are made with scraps and used materials. I’m glad to share something so useful and easy for me to make. 

My friends and I now have the best dressed faces in Etzatlan, in English, in Spanish, in Spanglish.

Sondra Ashton

Looking out my back door

December 17, 2020

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Rain in Spain—Go Away!

 

            The Rain in Spain—Go Away!

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I’m a Sun Bunny. Sun worshipper. Sun seeker.

For the past week if or when a tiny patch of sun parts the clouds, I rush out to sit, face raised toward the bounteous warmth, contented.

Don’t for a minute think I’m “sun-bathing”. I’m basking in full winter gear, head and hands the only uncovered parts of me. This is winter, even here. It is cold. I live in a house with no heat source.

I suspect it is difficult to grow up on a Montana farm and think baring one’s slathered body to the full sun is anything other than insanity.

It is hard to believe that I seek out, search out rain during the rainy season. Of course, the days during that time also include hours of sunshine. This past summer, the rain was elusive, many days non-existent.

But Rain arrived this week, like an unwanted relative you have no choice but to take into your home and tolerate, teeth gritted.  

It is difficult for me to stay long under the shadow of doom and gloom, so I’ve turned some of these extra in-the-house hours with my little ceramic heater into accelerated study. Of Spanish.

 I’ve lived in Mexico a few years. I get by. I make myself understood in most situations. I know a lot of words. My trouble comes with putting those words together. I don’t have a quick ear. The words in my head often don’t come out my mouth with the right inflection.

In conversation, by the time I get your words translated, the moment for my reply has passed onto somewhere else and left me in the mud, or in the dust, depending on the season.

The real reason I am not fluent in Spanish is fear. This goes back to childhood when my perception was that I was expected to listen to instructions and follow flawlessly. I grew up afraid of making a stupid mistake.

Today I know that mistakes are essential, are my best teachers. I plunge into all manner of things knowing I will have failures along the way. Flubbing up is easy.

Except language. My stumbling block. I am aided and abetted in my hesitation because I am surrounded by people who speak English. They enable me to speak lazy Spanish or Spanglish.

I speak basic needs quite well. I speak excellent food. Money, fairly well. If I get really stuck, I hold out a handful of money and let the seller pick through to take what he needs. I’ve never been stiffed.

Guilt can be my best friend. So a couple months ago, Guilt spoke to me, rather harshly, enough lazing around. You are being ridiculous. You have time galore. Back to the blackboard, so to speak.

My online class, abandoned long ago, had not kicked me out, refused admittance, given me an “F” for Failure. It took me right back under wing.  

For the last couple months I’ve whizzed along, learning new words, common idioms, verb forms. Ugh. Verb forms. Pronunciation. Knowing some words may never blithely trip off my tongue.

But I’m doing it. Slowly, what stumped me begins to make sense. My ear is getting better at hearing. I translate more quickly. Some things I answer without thought. I’ve even picked up a couple swear words from the guys.  

However, the other day between rain showers, when Leo was pruning my Plumbago, I donned my mask and went out to ask him about a particular verb infinitive that had me pulling out my gray hairs.  

Remember, Leo is young enough to be my grandson. But I’m brave. I ask. It has something to do with addressing people in formal and informal manner and I just couldn’t wrap my mind around the why and how.

And Leo gives me The Look. You know, The Look. His eyes get big and round. His eyebrows raise. His lips twitch. But Leo is a kind man. He is a good teacher. Leo explains in baby steps, answers my question. Of course it is simple. Then we both laugh.

Making mistakes, not understanding, is a good thing. Knocks me down a peg or two when I get too full of myself.

The rain will stop. Won’t it? I’ll be back outside, chasing the winter sun, pulling my chair along behind me, basking with my book. Won’t I?

Meanwhile, back to studying Spanish with verve if not with verbs.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

December 10, 2020

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

From Big Sky to Big Earth

 

From Big Sky to Big Earth

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Perception is all. I love the Big Sky Country. I like to picture it this way: I stand and slowly turn a whole circle. When I look downward, I see the earth. When I look outward and upward, the sky is a gigantic bowl, covering and visibly encompassing, caressing the earth.

I love this new country of mine, the Big Earth Country. That’s the wonderful thing about love. There is always room for more. Here I stand and turn a circle and all around me is the earthy world, the fields and trees and mountains in every direction. To find sky, I must tilt my head upward. Ah, yes, sky.  Here, in Jalisco, the earth is the bowl holding up the inverted teacup of sky.

Moving into December with a full moon means the nightlight is as bright as daylight in the Pacific Northwest in winter.

For days around the full moon, I see a different world. After daylight comes a short hour of almost dark. The moon towers above the trees like a giant kite, dragging behind a tail of the in-between, not dark, not full day. This shaded-light-night lasts until sun-up bursts full on.

Now that I’ve waxed poetic, let’s move on to other considerations of love. This month the full moon drops November with the leftover turkey and introduces December.

Ah, December, the month of wretched excess. December, the month of guilt.

Have you written your annual Christmas letter, mailed that stack of Christmas cards shedding glitter all over the desktop onto the rug? No? Well, me neither. In fact, by the time I remembered cards, yesterday, I realized if I mailed cards today they would get to you in February, possibly.

As for a Christmas letter, maybe I’ll write one next week to send via ghost mail.

Did you slide your magic plastic and buy the children and/or grandchildren gifts that you wanted when you were that age? Gifts you would have wanted, had they been invented? Gifts that make a stack higher than the tree.

Tis the season for giving. How often we hear that phrase. How quickly we mentally translate that to “tis the season for buying”.

I suspect this year the giving/buying season will undergo adjustments by all of us.

Enough with my Bah Humbug! I got to feeling so Christmas-y that I decorated my tree already, well before Christmas week.

Here at the rancho we traditionally gather several times for shared meals. Not this year. Plates of baked goodies make the rounds. Not this year.

For me, this is a year to reconnect with friends I’ve neglected.

People email me, “Are you still alive?” And it is a real concern.

For me, this is a lingering time of deep solitude. But it is not a time to disconnect from loved ones.

My friend Karen said it best, “I will never again take a hug for granted.”

My Christmas tree is sparse, a new lime tree I planted in my postage-stamp sized front lawn. I chose to decorate my lime so all who pass by may see it and grin.

Charlie Brown lives—and loves.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

December 3, 2020

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

In my garden of earthly delights

 

            In my garden of earthly delights

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

My world is circumscribed by the boundaries of the gringo part of the rancho. I walk the lanes.

This morning when I arrived at my turn-around spot out by the entrance to the highway, I stopped to marvel. I saw, heading toward Ahualulco, a man on a three-wheel motorcycle, a custom job, wearing a modified helmet to resemble something from WWI, you know, Snoopy and the Red Baron.

The bike itself was black with silver trim. The front end, like an alligator snout, and I’m not familiar with biker terms, but I’d call it a “low-rider”, with high handlebars, high enough to make the driver reach upward to steer. The rear end, the part with two wheels, was made from the back of an ancient Volkswagon Beetle.

I know it sounds corny, but I had to shout my delight.

The next time I reached the turn-around, a young couple passed riding an ordinary Italian motorcycle, going toward town. I smiled and waved. “What a crazy woman,” the driver must have thought, but he looked back and chin waved.  

Even though I am bound to Rancho Esperanza by the rampaging pandemic coronavirus, I am aware of activities in my outer community.

Every community can be identified by its odors.  Of course, smells are dependent on seasons. This morning when I awoke, I thought I smelled cane fields burning. Now, six hours later, spirals of black ash fall onto my patio.

Cane harvest-time has arrived early this year, by at least two weeks. Leo told me that a week ago he saw engineers from the processing factory in Tala walking the fields, collecting stalks to take to the laboratory to test for sugar content. Our early harvest is a result of a dry, dry year.

In town, this is the day all the bands in Etzatlan gather in the Plaza to play in honor of Our Lady. In turn, the musicians receive special blessings for making music. This year is different though. The bands march in and play, are blessed, and leave. No parades. No marching horses. No crowds of people, dancing in the street. No vendors hawking wares.

It is still warm here in this high valley but every day I drag my chair to a different spot chasing the shade. The sun seems to hug the horizon all the way from up to down, close to a twelve hour spread between light and dark. This is our winter light, low angles from now until February.

A small flock of yellow-heads, blackbirds, flew over, the first I’ve seen. Last year we saw hardly any. In former years, flocks blackened the sky with a prolonged loud whooooosh. I’m glad to see the small flock, hopefully a forerunner of more to come, flocks rejuvenated, the lost brought back into the fold.

Our gardener Leo brought me the last mandarinas and the first figs from Julie’s garden. Julie is in Minnesota, like many of us, awaiting a vaccine before travel.

My nose tells me the baked beans are ready to take out of the oven. I baked fresh bread this morning.

My son called to get directions to make sopa seca de fideo so I know he truly is recovering.

My grandson raised a 35 pound turkey. How will they shove it in the oven!

It is enough cause for Thanksgiving.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

November 26, 2020

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________