Give Thanks in All Things

 

Give Thanks in All Things

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I remember the Thanksgiving when Ben first brought his girlfriend, Shea, to dinner. We had the traditional meal, turkey nicely browned, all the side dishes. I asked everyone to share some one thing they felt especially thankful for that day.

Years later my daughter-in-law, Shea, told me how my request had terrified her. None of her family talked about gratitude. Poor Shea. On top of being scared to share something personal, she had been scared to meet me. 

My children! Both of them told stories (?) that had their prospective spouses quivering when they met me. The reality is that I’m a total cream puff and prepared to like anybody my children like. In fact, most of their friends call me “Mom”.

I like to check in with what I am thankful for on special days. Thanksgiving. Christmas. Easter. My birthday. Okay, maybe not my birthday.

Special days. Friday, because the sun is shining. Tuesday, because a frog sat on my doorstep. Sunday because it rained, poured pounding rain. It never rains in November. Not since I’ve lived here. But it rained Sunday. And Monday.

Special days. National Kazoo Day. Poetry Week. Mother Goose Day. World Thinking Day—if only!

Let me declare this to be “World With Friends Day”.

This Thanksgiving I dedicate to you, my friends. I am grateful for each one of you. Some of you are long-time friends, some new friends, some acquaintances. Some of you I’ve not met in person but you know me very well; you know me through my stories.

Thank you for allowing me to share my life, my world, with you. Thank you for letting me share when I’m feeling down-right blue. Thank you for letting me share the days when the play of light is so beautiful it brings me to tears.

I’d like to invite you into my home today. Please, come on in. Let’s sit at the table. The bread is ready to take out of the oven. We’ll have a simple snack of warm bread slathered with butter. Mango jam. How about Mexican hot chocolate?

I’d like to know you better. Or we can sit in silence if you wish. It’s all good. Another slice?

Thank you for letting me share. You all come back now.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

Thanksgiving week

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Old Dog, New Tricks, Old Tricks

 

Old Dog, New Tricks, Old Tricks

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Michelle, knowing me to be, shall we say, frugal, loaned me a copy of a reprinted book entitled “The American Frugal Housewife”. The book, written by Lydia Child, was first published in 1833. Dedicated to Those Who Are Not Ashamed of Economy. In caps.

Mrs. Child wrote the lyrics, but was not well known, but wrote a song for children, “Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother’s house we go.” Anyone my generation knows that song. I’m sure you youngsters can find it on You Tube.

I’ve barely read past the introduction and already I’ve added a change to my routine. I’m almost afraid to finish the book.

Being frugal is not about being stingy. Stingy is such an ugly word. Stingy has a stink to it. Stingy is a clenched fist. Frugal is careful in order to be generous with self and with others.

Changing from a life surrounded by a lot of stuff, including three sets of china, paintings and lovely furniture and beauty everywhere, to a life of utter simplicity was easy for me.

When my circumstances changed, my way of life had to change. I’m not alone in these fraught times. A lot of people are finding they must make drastic changes. What I think, is that when one didn’t grow up with a lot of so-called advantages and/or when one grew up on a small farm where opulence was not a word, it is simply easier to make judicious changes.

We never had an indoor toilet or a tub in our house until I was a teen. We did have a pump at the kitchen sink for cold water. When I got married and moved to the ranch at Dodson, we didn’t have facilities or the pump. Running water meant I ran to the pump at the edge of the yard and ran it back to the house in buckets. I never thought it a hardship. We had good water.

I won’t and don’t romanticize any of the past. Please don’t make me go back to the days of the outdoor toilet. We did what we knew to do and what we had to do.

My motivation for the simple life is different today. Necessity plays a small part. The bigger part is choice. I choose to reduce my footprint. I choose to have enough but no more. I don’t live in hardship or harsh circumstances. I am surrounded by beauty, but not beauty with three sets of china dishware. The beauty around me changes every day and it is all mine as long as I choose to look at it.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t recommend my ways, which are not for everybody. We all must make our own choices. My choices add to my happiness but probably wouldn’t work for you.

Because, in part, of the way I grew up, I know how to make a lot of things for myself. I know how to make a little bit go a long way. Frugality is a piece of my particular pie.

I save bacon grease because used judiciously, it makes a fine seasoning. I save rags and scraps to make into things like pot holders, mug rugs, and pandemic masks. I cut strips from old clothing to tie leggy tomatoes to bamboo stakes. I make my own mayo and catsup. I grow herbs and some foods in my bucket garden. I love doing such mundane chores and it keeps me off the street.

One thing I had forgotten from my past, and Mrs. Child reminded me of my wasteful ways, has to do with washing dishes. Growing up, we always washed dishes in a dish pan. Every drop of water had multiple uses. Nothing went mindlessly down the sink. What sink?

I retrieved my red dish pan from the storage cupboard and set it in my large sink. Immediately I saw how much more water is needed to fill the sink to wash a few dishes than is needed in the dish pan. Shame on me.

The first time I emptied the dish pan into the bucket to carry the slop water outside, I noticed how the water was filled with tiny bits of food, nourishment for my plants. Yes, it makes a little extra work. Just this morning the artichoke said, Thank you.

I hope circumstances don’t make it so I have to use lime and ashes to make lye to make my own soap. But I know how. Scanning forward in Mrs. Child’s book, I see several remedies for lockjaw. I hope I never need those simple remedies.

Did you know that the first young leaves of the currant bush can be dried and hardly distinguished from green tea? Oh, the things I am learning.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

Week before Thanksgiving

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Time and Time Again

 

Time and Time Again

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Sunday, here in Mexico, we pushed time back an hour. Whew. Hard work, pushing. Guess what? It’s the Last Time. I don’t mean the End of Times. Or the end of time, as relative a concept as time happens to be.

The Mexican governing body voted to hang out in Standard Time, forever and ever, amen. I’m happy with that decision. I have no reason to complain. I don’t live by the clock. I don’t need to get up at zero-dark-thirty to go to work. Nevertheless, I’m happy to stay on one clock.

When the sun reaches a certain point of light, I awaken. Every morning. Even cloudy mornings, I open my eyeballs about the same time. Shower and dress and out the door to be greeted by my tail-wagging pooch, ready for her walk. When darkness covers my world, I retreat to bed with my Kindle.

Ha—when I lay it out there in black and white, sounds pretty boring. But it isn’t. Nothing about my life is boring to me and l live inside it so I should know.

Take this morning, after coffee, I cruised my yard and garden, picked a lime, two tomatoes, and a plump chili. I fingered three baby figlings on my new fig tree. Not ripe yet. I glared at the papaya, a male. It’s not his fault he can’t have babies. I’ve planted two more, hoping for a female. Young trees look so androgynous.

I don’t eat a lot of meat. Every two or three months I buy a half-kilo of bacon. So I fried up enough for an egg and toast plus leftovers for a tomato sandwich later in the day. May not be exciting to you but it makes me feel a right rich woman.

You want excitement? After breakfast, I reached for my outdoor broom to sweep the patio. Just as my fingers grabbed, I saw that a green thickness had wrapped around the handle. Instantly I executed a noisy back jump until eyes and brain coordinated and realized the gripper was nothing more than a twined vine from the star jasmine. Sure got my heart pumping.

Golly, November already. The ten plus days of the annual October Festival passed noisily. We do love our fireworks. Halloween hasn’t really caught on here but why should it when The Day of the Dead is so much more fun, yes, fun, and meaningful, a dress-up celebration with food and drink, music, flowers and favorite things to commemorate those who’ve gone.

Every day I consider whether I should change to my winter bedding and bring my electric heater into the house. Every day, thus far, I’ve resisted. I unpacked sweaters for morning wear. Afternoons I ditch the sweater as the ambient air reaches into the 80s. So far, so good.

One hour does make a difference. And with that one hour showing up in the morning when it is cooler, I feel the difference. In another week, I won’t notice it. Time does that. It takes. It gives.

The sun is acting strange. Seems rather sudden that now it moves around the day this-a-way and mere weeks ago it moved around that-a-way. I suppose it’s a time thing. Nothing stands still.

I’ve been worried about the birds. This time of year they usually are waking me up with their outlandish racket of conflicting birdsong; conflicting but wonderful to hear. And the mornings are quiet. Too quiet.

A flock, a crowd, a murmuration of yellow-head blackbirds just flew over, painting a mottled shadow in the sunlight, briefly marking their passage. Guess I just didn’t give our winter birds enough time.

This pandemic has given me gifts. One gift is time to be selfish; selfish in a good way, I hope. Being by myself so much, I’ve taken time to pay attention, to really pay attention to various aspects of my character I’d much rather dismiss and sweep back over into the corner where I found them hiding in the dirt.

Paying attention, carefully paying attention has led me to acceptance. When I don’t fight those uglier facets of my whole self, I listen more carefully to you. I become less critical of you. All from being selfish.

Self-assessment is dangerous. However, I’ll risk it. I’m feel like I am more of myself. I haven’t changed. That’s not what I mean. I’ve de-cluttered. I fill my life with fewer distractions. My needs are simple. I have few wants.

I’ve no idea how much time I have to be boring and selfish, but I have today, and I’ll take it.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

First week in November

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The Shifting Sands of What Matters

 

The Shifting Sands of What Matters

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This morning after I got dressed, I did something outside of my routine. I looked in the mirror. Hmmm, said I, to myself. Not bad. The layers match this morning. The socks don’t match the tops. Oh, well. They match each other. Mates. A pair. But if they didn’t, oh, well. No matter.

Socks matter on these old feet. Warm matters, especially in the cool morning.

I walked into the kitchen to fill the kettle with water for coffee. That bag of flour is still sitting on the island. What? Three days now. No matter. I’ll bake today. Maybe. The kitchen is clean. Clean matters. A bag of flour not put in its place, no matter.

My son’s birthday is today. He’s forty-five. He doesn’t want to be reminded. My daughter, now fifty-six, well, she and I share aging complaints. Now you know where that puts me.

When I walk, I walk slowly, placing each foot with deliberation, mindful of artificialities—knee on one side, hip on the other, to be precise. Not exactly a match. Not like my socks today.

I remember walking with a spring in my step. I’m not dead yet. But I’m rather amazed at myself, at how little I care. I’m walking. There are other things more important. Like savoring that steaming cup of morning coffee.

I walk with Lola, my street dog rescued by my friends, who after much deliberation, allowed me to adopt her. We match more than I care to admit. Mostly in attitude. Lola stops to sniff pathways others trod. I stop to admire the blossoms and the first white puffs on the cotton tree. Lola rolls, ecstatic, in the essence of dead frog. I cross over to admire the cow and calf in the area beyond our walls, next to the arroyo. I call to Pretty Boy, hello to the mule and exchange glances with the stud in the far pen. Lola gathers every history written in the dirt and grasses.

Everyone is younger. Of course. That’s been happening for a long while. Young men and women barely out of puberty run the world. I don’t mean with the reins of power. I mean making sure the machinery of life keeps chugging along. I wish they held the reins of power. Maybe . . . oh, well, useless speculation.

That’s the other thing. My minds loves wandering, wandering much like Lola, in the unmarked paths of useless speculation. Oh, what fun we have.

Language is lost. My language, I mean. I’m talking about simple things, like trying to explain “dial the phone” to my grandchild, who has no idea what that might mean. Phone sitting on a desk? Or hanging on the wall? Cords? You mean, like to charge the phone? You couldn’t carry it out of the house? What did you do if you were in a restaurant and got an important call?

I wonder how many calls are important. To my grandchildren, all calls are equal.

The street of language foreign runs both directions. A good deal of the time I’ve no idea what they say. I ask. They explain. I nod. Grands and Greats are so much older than I was at that age. So much more knowledgeable. I hope that is a good thing.

I put away the fruits and vegetables, the groceries Leo brought for me this morning. I tuck that errant bag of flour into the cupboard. I won’t bake today.

Today is for the garden. I’m fortunate. Most days I do what I want when I want. The giant marigolds are done flowering. I cut the last blossoms and put them in a vase on the patio table. I chop the 4-feet long stalks for compost.

The tomatoes are beginning to ripen. Beans are in blossom. One bucket of spinach is done. The other bucket is ready to eat. Lettuce is perfect. I plant more lettuce in the empty marigold buckets. I plant peas and tomatillos in other empty buckets. These things matter.

That old woman going into the house for her book, that’s me. I’m ready to sit on the patio and read. Done for the day. Like I said, I pretty much do what I want.  

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

End of October

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Sometimes we just gotta make do!

 

            Sometimes we just gotta make do!

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We get used to using particular products in our daily living so when those items are not available on store shelves, what is a person to do?

Ha! I have the answer. We make do!

 Generally I’m not too fussy and don’t get into a flap about bare shelves. And I don’t play the blame game. That’s futile. Pandemic? Climate disasters? Politics? Maybe they all play a part. But that doesn’t change my challenge, to live as simply and comfortably as possible with what’s on hand, right?

But my particular quandary at present might have you at least lift an eyebrow. Let me give you the back story.

I live in Jalisco, Mexico, in a small farming community. We are surrounded by fields of sugar cane, one of the chief agricultural products of Jalisco. There is a cane processing plant in Tala, a forty minute drive toward Guadalajara. They make molasses. For cattle feed.

For the past year or so, I’ve had a hankering to make ginger snaps. Ginger snaps require molasses. Search as I might and do, I find no molasses on the shelves of any tienda in Etzatlan or the big stores in Guadalajara.

When I walk the lanes, I often see huge tanker trucks on the highway carrying melazza, or molasses, for cattle feed. Some of that molasses is delivered to the corn processing plant in our town to make, you guessed it, yummy feed for animals.

In desperation, I’ve considered going to the plant with a jar and asking for a fill up. Further thought reminds me of open vats, rat and bird droppings, which scotches that brilliant idea.

However, shortly after moving to Mexico, I began using piloncillo cones in my cooking, especially in beans, soups, and some drinks. Piloncillo, made from cane, is not molasses.

In a vastly simplified explanation, sugar cane is boiled into juice which is reduced to a syrup which is poured into molds and dried to make piloncillos. Though not molasses, it has a slight molasses flavor and scent. Slight. Further processing of the cane syrup yields white sugar and the remaining liquid is molasses.

So why do Mexican cooks not use molasses. Best answer I get is a shrug, “It’s for animals.” Pity, that.

I asked Leo, my gardener who does a lot of my shopping, if he thought the health food store in town might just have molasses, maybe in an unmarked jar on a back shelf?

He said, “Try Amazon. They have everything. Better quality.”

Well, of course. Why didn’t I think of that! I tried to buy every single kind of molasses Amazon carried. I tried to buy the usual brands I’m familiar with, snooty brands I’ve never heard of because I’m not a special person, sizes of incredible complexity, prices that raised my eyebrows. The responses were two, across the board, two. One: that product is not available. Two: we don’t ship that product to Mexico. End of.

What if? What if I scrape the piloncillo cones on a grater and substitute piloncillo for molasses? I’m really, really hungry for ginger cookies. The worst that can happen is I have to throw away a batch of cookie dough. Right?

Deep breath. I give it a try.

The only thing I changed in the recipe was to substitute grated piloncillo, pressed into the measuring cup, for the same amount of molasses.                         

My ginger cookies sans molasses look like ginger cookies, the same crackly top, crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside. Interestingly, to me, they are not as sweet as the usual ginger cookie. They lack a bit of molasses flavor. I like them.

Leo (who thinks I should have a man), while munching a modified ginger cookie, suggested I order a man on Amazon, even though Amazon wouldn’t send me molasses. He insists, “They have everything. Better quality.”

On my Amazon site I specified, “Must be age appropriate, a good man with a kind heart.”

In reply I got, “Out of stock. This item cannot be shipped to Mexico.”

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

Three quarters into October

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Once Upon a Wonder

 

            Once Upon a Wonder

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Now and then I have these great ideas. Not that I do anything with them. Not that I even want to do anything with them. My time, well, that was a younger chapter in my life. Come and gone.

I’ll just throw this out there to see if you wish to do something with it. For free. Gratis. No charge. You are welcome.

My million-dollar idea of the day. Once upon a yesterday I had a friend who proclaimed we each had a million-dollar idea a day but never recognized it or dismissed the difficulty.

I agree that I have a million-dollar idea now and then, maybe not every day.

Here’s my thought. My great-grandchildren will be able to walk on water, possibly cross the oceans on foot. It’s not a big nor brash nor religious idea.

Actually, this is a small and thoughtless idea, given to us in small pieces, discarded by us when we got tired of the color or a different, more appealing, model appeared.

Tupperware, drinking straws, hair barrettes, snap-beads, water bottles, all jammed together to form what could be, with a little maneuvering, a footpath. Someone could organize tours. Walking tours are ever more popular. With the right marketing team, you could rake in the dough.

So, the pathway might jiggle a bit at times but that is part of the appeal. A hint of danger, oh, not real danger, you’d see to that by building stabilizers from recycled plastic, but ooh, the excitement. With proper management, one could provide walking trails, trails with various levels of difficulty, from beginner to master.

I suppose walkers might be wise to have open-ended destinations. One might aim for Spain and end in central Africa. Just a thought.

Of course, you would provide rest stops, hostels and hotels, depending on tour price, revolving restaurants, gift shops selling items easily discarded to become tromped into the pathway. Not everybody wants to fly off into outer space. Here’s an alternative for hikers.

Eventually, enterprising persons would build resort cities but that would not be in your lifetime. Probably. Once begun, growth is inevitable.

 I’ve spent my life making something from nothing so I know you can do this. You are much more intelligent, are clever and have more resources than me. I have hope.

I’m reminded of my favorite Uncle George. He lived a long, long life. He managed, a field at a time, to accumulate the largest farm in his county. My uncle had followed behind mules plowing fields. He was forward thinking, always looking for better ways to do the work.

The first time I visited my uncle in my adulthood, we were sitting out on the porch in the evening. “Where are the lightning bugs, Uncle George? What happened to all the butterflies I used to see? Where did all the Cardinals go?”

“Well,” my uncle replied after a lengthy pause. “We have a different way of farming now. It’s called ‘no-till’.” He left me to think on that.

His sons both died young but they increased the yield of corn and soy beans many-fold on those acres. Better living through chemistry.

Weed-killers. Chemical fertilizers. Plastics. Surely we can chip away at the negative impacts of our once-brilliant ideas.

The next day Uncle George took me out to his two-acre garden and showed me the new hand-push rototiller he’d designed and built from scrap iron.

Because my uncle built an easy-push rototiller from scrap, I have hope.

Because of your soon-to-be-new inter-oceanic walking trails, I have hope.

Because of my new compost pit, I have hope.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

October, second week

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Una Semana Muy Dificil

 

Una Semana Muy Dificil 

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The first week in October is always a difficult week for me. It marks the anniversary of the death of my baby. He’d been alive that morning. He died that night when he was born.

Still a girl myself, I’d been married only a year and a half. My family did the thing they did best. They hid away all the pain and hurt. I thought that is what everyone did. Stuffed the grief into a hole and covered it with concrete blocks. Or heavy weight of a sort.

Of course, over the years, the pain, still alive, periodically exploded through the concrete, generally in inappropriate ways, cutting and bruising anybody nearby, causing me even more grief.

Eventually, with professional help, I learned to look head-on at my hurts and deal with them in healthier ways, knowing they never go away.

Yes, this past week was difficult. Grief came calling. We had cups of tea and fresh bread. Examined the scars. Talked about things. I held my baby whom I never got to hold in my arms.

Painful, certainly, but I didn’t have to wallow in it. I looked for balance. There is always balance. Some days it is harder to find than other days, but it is there, waiting for me to see it.

I canned tomato/apple catsup. Neighbors would ask me how many jars I put up. Enough, I answered. I didn’t count them. I made one batch for give-away. I took around a jar for each neighbor.

Living here where every food is fresh daily, I’ve not much need for canning. But pickles, jams and a decent spicy catsup are not available in our little town. So I make my own and enjoy the making and the eating.

I sat on the patio a lot, reading, visiting neighbors, reading, just sitting, reading.

More than the usual number of bed-sheet butterflies wafted by. They comfort me, make me smile, always. That’s my name for them, not the scientific name, but when you see one, that’s what you’d call it too. They are huge, flap those big white wings like sheets on the line in the Montana wind.

I put away my sewing projects and dumped the pieces of a new puzzle onto the table. Crin gifted me this puzzle. She knows I like difficult jigsaws. When she told the cashier she was buying it for a good friend who loves puzzles, the cashier told her that maybe when I tried to work this one, I’d no longer be her friend. We laughed.

I’m still her friend, but holy smokies, I see the point. This mess is very monochromatic, a line drawing, crowded, not much to differentiate one section from another. I still have five missing edge pieces and I’ve fingered every piece numerous times. With luck I’ll finish by Christmas.

The government clinic in town has flu shots this week. Went and got my jab.

Leo drove me to Oconahua to visit Ana and Michelle. I had made some large hot pads for their barbeque table, took them some jars of tomato/apple catsup. Michelle always brews a cup of her special cappucchino for us. We tell more stories of ourselves, laugh, get angry at the same foolishness, laugh, gossip, laugh, trade garden secrets and laugh.

We’ve got a bobcat roaming the place. I don’t know if that affects to the balance or not. But the wild feline adds to the excitement. He or she marked territory out by my avocado tree the other night. I recommend you avoid bobcat urine if possible. Made me sick to my stomach.

Lola The Dog somehow had sense enough to stay hunkered in her Dog Mansion and never even whoofed. Snowball next door, a tiny morsel, is still alive and all Janet’s cats are still catting around.

Hurricane Orlene covered us with heavy clouds and never brought us a bit of rain. It’s hard to judge which side of the balance scale that sits on. Depends on perspective, I would say, but don’t most things?

Life surrounds me, life for the living woven with memories of those gone on. As Julian of Norwich said, “All shall be well. All manner of thing shall be well.”

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

October, first week

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