The Last (Wo)Man Standing

 

The Last (Wo)Man Standing

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The last three years I have lost too many friends, good and true.

There is an expression that’s been making the rounds. “Today is a good day to die.” Where did that nonsense come from? The Lakota? The Greeks? Personally, I blame Hollywood, easy to blame, a nonentity, an imaginary force with a lot to answer for in the Grand Scheme of things. That’s what I think.

If I am to lay blame, I guess I blame all of us who dance to the Hollywood Tune like lemmings running to the sea, “Come on baby, let’s do the twist”.

I say, “Today is not a good day to die.” I miss my friends. There are few of us left with like experiences. When I count the few, it makes for very lonely feelings. My lost friends show up in my dreams. Then I wake up and remember.

Yes, I am awake and I am glad to be alive this day. Not that I felt like I was going to die. I feel healthier than I’ve felt in the past ten years, truth to tell.

However. Funny, there is often a “however”. Here’s mine. However, I had a typical woman-scare last week, one I share with many women. Made an appointment to see a gynecologist. While I had no thoughts of dying, I had thoughts of invasive procedures, of surgery, of long recovery. Okay, I was scared off my tree limb.

In the olden days, when I was younger, I would have gone through this whole scary thing by myself and told my friends all about it later, after it was over, whatever “it” was. Not today. I immediately wrote to all my friends, those of my generation as well as those much younger. I gave details for which you will thank me that I spared you. I would have told you as well but this whole process took very little time.

My good news, now that I’ve seen the specialist, answered ten million personal questions and had an exam, is that I don’t have to have an invasive procedure of any kind. I don’t have to have surgery. For relief, I need to do simple exercises. The rest of my life.

I woke up this morning. Today is a good day to live. I did my exercises. Today is a gift.

One of my young friends says that to her, any day after one reaches fifty years is a gift. It wasn’t that long ago in real time that fifty years was an old-age goal.

Am I afraid to die? Well, I don’t know. I haven’t experienced that yet so how would I know? I am afraid of surgery. I’ve been under the knife seven times. That’s seven times too many. My body is a mechanical mess, thanks to a car wreck when I was a mere twenty-three years. Otherwise, I feel pretty dang fine.

I’m glad to have this shivery winter day. Today may be a good day to die. I’ve no guarantee.

On awakening I realized the past few days I had felt like I was on hold. None of my normal activities appealed. Oh, wait. It was my own finger of fear that had hit the pause button.

But this one thing I know—today is a good day to live.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

January 9, 2025

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Calendar and Curmudgeon

Calendar and Curmudgeon

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My friends roll their eyes and tell me they think I am nuts. I don’t argue. Every year I draw out a calendar by hand, a page for each month, an empty box for each day, in which I can note in cryptic form those things which I wish to remember, such as CBD80 (Crin’s birthday-80) or Lola-rabies or annual water bill due.

When I draw my new pages, I review the old, plug in necessary annual items and leave blank the other boxes to be filled in as each day passes. My year-end review is bittersweet. I note the day we went up to La Mesa. I note the day Al died. The day I moved my bed and stove and dog into my new casita.

And so it goes. Ah, yes, that was a good book that came in June. Oh, do I ever recall the day my rotary clothesline finally arrived. Mundane, yes. Some days stay blank. But most days bring up memories.

I grew up on a farm with the kind of calendar, free from the Farmer’s Coop or State Farm, each page with a pocket into which one stuffed monthly bills, also with space on each day to write important notices. Few of my notices are important. My calendar marks time.

My friends have all their information on their I-phones. I watch them scroll through hundreds of apps. I prefer my piece of paper in its stand next to my computer. We each use what works for us.

Usually I dread Calendar Day, in which I gather pencil, papers and ruler, ready to draw lines, horizontal and vertical. I generally look for distractions, ways to procrastinate prior to and during the process. Some years my calendar-making stretches over two or three days. This year I found it sweet, done Christmas afternoon, a gift of memories.

One year my cousin Nancie brought me a beautiful calendar, big blank boxes for each date, just the trick. You must realize that Nancie does love a good bargain. I used that calendar three days before I realized it was for the two years previous. The laugh was on me and I never told Nancie.

Today I am marking in the first blank boxes of my new year, hoping for the sweet to continue.  

The Curmudgeon I speak of is me. I’ve crashed bang against the wall. Surely, I am simply tired from months of packing, purging, making decisions, changing purposes of various furnishings, making the actual move, unpacking, more purging, more decisions, more painting, more building, more, more, more of seemingly everything!

I’m almost to the end of work, almost done, almost. Unless, I have one more storage cabinet built for my bedroom. Unless I re-arrange my under-stairway storage—which I suspect will be necessary before the rainy season.

This entire grouping of holiday days has been filled with friends visiting, pot-lucking, dinners, picnics, nearly every single day. Fun, yes, and I love it. But, whew!

Never have I been so popular. Certainly, I saw my friends frequently at the rancho, five minutes here, ten minutes there, sometimes an hour over cups of tea. I’m still the same me, not prettier nor richer nor more powerful. Older. Yes. Older.

Ah, the alure of change. My new setting. No longer a neighbor next door, now I’m the hostess. I’ll best be the hostess with the moistest while it lasts. Soon I’ll be old-hat again, rumpled and crumpled and comfortable.

Today, however, I am a curmudgeon and turn away all comers.

Happy New Year.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

January 2 in the New Year

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Make good times. Make good memories.

 

Make good times. Make good memories.

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Whatever your beliefs, whatever your inclinations for this wintery holiday season, I wish you only the best. Make good times. Make good memories. Make good. With love from my heart to your hearts.

While these few weeks living in my new home have been mostly about creating that home to be my sanctuary, I have taken some time out to make memories by exploring the land around here.

I’ve been to the Ocomo, the archeological digs in Oconahua, several times in the past years. In looking back, I realize that I had viewed the country and the town through the eyes of a tourist. Now I’m a resident and see every street differently, noticing details tourist miss.

The photo, taken by Michelle, is of Ana and me with Dude drooling over our shoulders, exploring the foothills of Oconahua.

This is my “Christmas Card” to you.

 

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

December 26, 2024

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The trumpet vines, the grasses, and the frothy pines

 

               The trumpet vines, the grasses, and the frothy pines

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One of my friends asked me how I felt when I came back to the Rancho and my old home sat there empty of any aspect of myself.

That’s a hard question to answer. For one thing, I’ve been so busy, focused on creating my new home, that I have little space in my head for my old home.

Until I find a buyer, my old home is still my home. Maybe all the ties are not cut. The good memories and all the love that place has given me will never be erased. I hope a new owner someday will feel the same. I’d still be there if the largeness of the place had not become too difficult for me to maintain.

I like it that I’m so close to my friends at the Rancho and we can easily visit.

I like exploring my new surroundings, meeting people in my new town, my neighborhood perched way out on the edge, half-way up the mountain.

I like my yard filled with new bushes and plants I’ve not before seen. Take the yellow trumpet vine. I looked it up, found it, the yellow Angel Trumpet. It is more a shrub than a vine with huge, footlong, yellow trumpets hanging, bugle downward, serenading the earth.

One of my favorites, a mystery tree to me, has a pale green fragile-skinned trunk onto which it looks like a thousand-thousand sea shells have been glued. Right now it is not so pretty, mostly leafless, but in bloom has large pink flowers with a peppery scent.

The other day Ana and Michelle and I climbed into the ATV and explored the neighborhood, the adjacent tiny town of San Rafael, a huge eucalyptus grove, and then continued down into the foothills skirting the mountains. I felt great, getting out and exploring the countryside, learning new terrain.

This country reminds me of the Bear Paw Mountains, only lusher. It’s the same kind of country, the mountains and gullies similar but thick with bushes, trees, flowers, and grasses. Oh, the beautiful grasses, tall overhead, tasseled, and so many varieties. I have gathered grasses for bouquets, they are that stunning.

I must tell you about the pines, the frothy pines. When I first moved to Mexico, one of my early acquaintances was the coastal pines. They are obviously pine trees. One can easily see that. But the pine needles don’t look like needles, they look, well, fluffy, frothy.

I don’t know if the pine grove we landed underneath has the same species of pine as on the coast. They look alike. Three of my friends grabbed me the other day for lunch out at the Laguna Colorado. Prior to the pandemic, this was a favorite place for several of us to go eat. Good food. Great views overlooking the laguna, the water birds, the hills and mountains beyond.

The place has grown up. When first introduced to us, the first years, there was one eatery. Then two. And now another has sprung up, all venues with good food. We went to the third, which might become my favorite, situated in an older, well-established grove of huge frothy pines. The seating is open air beneath the ceiling of pines, with lines strung from trunk to trunk, each line crowded with hanging planters, some trunks wreathed around with flowers. Oh, the orchids, the unbelievable orchids, growing wild. Who could not like that!

So my friend, to attempt to better answer your question, I don’t feel any sense of loss, but, more of a sense of what I have gained. My domicile is smaller. My life does not feel smaller. In ways for which I have no words, my life feels bigger.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

December 19, 2024

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The Sudden Social Life of a Recluse

 

               The Sudden Social Life of a Recluse

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“They” let me out at night. What a revelation! It was the night of the Christmas Parade in the Plaza at Oconahua. The “they” who let me out is that part of myself which has kept me a recluse these past years.  Note that I had not been out after dark in five or six years.

I had taken on the self-imposed role of recluse due to pain, surgery, the pandemic, habit. With a good life in my own back yard, I felt no need to spice it up with outside entertainment. My mind does it all: comedy, drama, horror, past, present, future. No limits to where my mind might go.

Now I live in Oconahua and have had a regular spate of visitors through my door. One friend said, “We see you more now than when you lived around the corner.”

My friends, Ana and Michelle, decorated their ATV with Christmas lights and flashy fun, filled it with bags of candy, in preparation for the Christmas parade. They invited me to join them. At night. In December.

“Okay,” I said. “Dump me in the Plaza to watch the parade. Throw me candy.”

I’ve lived in Mexico a while. I know that a parade that lines up at 6:30 to start at 7:00, won’t get rolling until 8:00. I know that sitting in the Plaza will be enjoyable for me, no matter the hour.

I mentioned my plans to John and Carol. “We’ll join you. Sounds like fun.”

“Dress warmly,” I said. We had a delightful time in the Plaza, people watching, talking with passers-by, munching goodies, seeing children running and playing and laughing.

We never saw one mean or disturbing incident. Just pure play. This is a small town. If one child acted out, an adult nearby would tap that small person on the shoulder, lift a brow, and that would be the end of necessity for discipline.

Beautifully decorated floats, er, floated up the main street and around the plaza, all aglitter with lights, music and every possible Christmas icon, most of them foreign to Mexico, imported by way of movies and television.

After the parade, the lighting of the Christmas tree and overhead decorative lights in and around the Plaza,  topped the evening with “oohs and aahs”.

A good time was had by all. That was Sunday.

When I arrived home, I found an invitation to a December-birthdays gathering at Lani’s house. Kathy said she’d come get me and carry me home, please accept. I accepted. Lani makes a grand pineapple upside-down cake. In our small group there are five or six December birthdays. I’ll go to celebrate my father’s, same day as Lani’s.

Previously, John and Carol and I had arranged to go to lunch one day at El Parral in San Marcos, the next small town west. We’d not been there for a few years. They serve traditional meals, homemade on the premises.  Food was as wonderful as we’d remembered. That morning came close to being a communications disaster.

Ana called me earlier that day to say we could get haircuts in San Marcos. She and I arranged to meet in the San Marcos Plaza after my meal with John and Carol. We even set up Plan A and Plan B, experience having trained us to expect the unexpected.

Ana and Michelle had finished their business early. Michelle called John while we were eating our last bites. Not knowing about Ana’s and my Plans A and B, they arranged C. I was still operating on A, which was, meet at the Plaza. Add to this mess, a text glitch which was supposed to show us where the hair cutter was located, text sent from a new cell phone which still hadn’t learned to obey instructions.

Unaware of this contingency plan, delicious meal finished, I decided to walk the few blocks to the Plaza. John and Carol intercepted me just before I turned toward the Plaza. In another fifteen minutes of confusion with numerous phone calls, driving, seeking and searching, I decided to forego the haircut, and we’d all meet at the Oxxo at the entrance to town where I’d change cars for home.

I guess that might have been Plan G or H. It worked. I changed cars. We all went home.

Just think, I might still be at the Plaza in San Marcos, turned to stone, my hair grown to my feet. Tourists would ask, “Who’s this?”

“Don’t know. It just showed up one day. Senora Whatshername comes with scissors and cuts her hair once a month. Plaza birds use the clippings in their nests.” Children would leave flowers and trinkets at my feet.

The next big happening is a trip to the new Ikea in Guadalajara next week, four of us. What could possibly go wrong!

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

December 12, 2024       

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Making Home

 

        Making Home

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In the third week in my new casa just up the road a ways from my old casa, I am making home. In ways this is like baking a cake. It is not a one-step process. It is not a box mix. The moving van (non-existent) does not pull up, put boxes in marked rooms, and roll on down the highway while I make the bed and go to sleep.

Oh, if only it were so simple. Bit by bit though, this cake batter of a home is coming together.  While there is still a lot to do, let’s call this a complicated cake, it is coming together in ways that blend efficiency, ease of use with beauty and comfort. Keep adding ingredients and mixing well and the batter eventually pops into the oven and becomes cake. Home.

Yesterday John and Carol, snowbirds from Minnesota and friends who also have a casa in Gringolandia, which is what we in Oconahua call the little enclave of residents at the Rancho, came to visit, to see my new home.

I watched the looks of wonder on Carol’s face as she took my tour, kept exclaiming, “Oh, Sondra. Oh, Sondra. This is so nice. This is so perfect for you.”

Before John and Carol left, she whispered, “Now I won’t worry about you any more.”

I don’t know what she was expecting but I my imagination of Carol’s imagination knocked on the door of a tiny hovel, one room with bed, bath and stove. The end.

Leaving the cake in the metaphorical oven, let’s segue to Goldilocks and know that the home I make is just right. Just big enough. Just beautiful enough. Just roomy enough. And, bonus, I still live a goodly portion of my day outdoors on my just-right patio surrounded with just-enough plants.

To borrow from days of Radio yore with Paul Harvey, so what’s the rest of the story? Because we know, there is more to this than everything is “just right”, right?

No internet. No phone.

That’s not all bad. Think about it. Three weeks with no news, no horrors, no news, no sales pitches, no news. Not all bad.

But, oh, the inconvenience. The lost touches with friends and family. We are so used to instant access. I am so used to instant access. I want my Telmex and I want it now!

I don’t get what I want when I want it. Instead, I get the clipity-clop as men on horseback ride past on my narrow street. I get the daily sound of the water truck delivering drinking water. I get dogs barking and chickens clucking and my neighbor across the way practicing his trombone and neighborhood children laughing.

Guess what? I want my Telmex and I want it now!

Sondra Ashton

Havre Daily News

December

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This year I’m the turkey!

 

This year I’m the turkey!

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I am living in my new home in Oconahua these few days, surrounded with decisions, mind changes, piles and stacks of books, dishes, food, turning in circles, where to put, what to do, which next. For this I am Thankful.

I’m not brilliant, but I’m not stupid. When I get crowded into this corner, I know what to do. I go outside to my patio shady spot and sit and watch the hummingbirds, birds I cannot identify, ever-present vultures overhead, let the breeze clear my head. For this I am Thankful.

This is an unusually warm autumn for us, 55F in the mornings and 85F the afternoon high. I don’t mean to gloat, much, but for this I am Thankful.

I don’t have internet yet, so once a day I go to my neighbor’s casa where my laptop has resided on their red wooden breakfast table, read, respond, delete emails as necessary. For this I am Thankful.

Little by little, yet more quickly than I had imagined, shade cloth hangs over a sunny area, bamboo pots are moved into place, my clothesline, lovely umbrella clothesline is lashed to a fence post embedded in concrete, the last loads of all that I own delivered via Leo’s father’s cuppa-truck. For all these little delights I am Thankful.

After a first icy shower, Michelle came over with her ladder, knew what to do having experienced the same, installed a different showerhead and “Voila!” Hot water to scald my skin. For this I am Thankful.

My doggy Lola gets to play with Paco and Monkey every day out in the common area (Monkey is her sister. We live next door to the folks who let me adopt Lola.) For this she is Thankful. As am I.

In the evening I climb the stairway to roof to watch the sunset, the panorama of mountains, fields of shocked corn, the eucalyptus grove to the west just beyond the arroyo, neighbor’s rooftops. For this I am Thankful.

Everyday a new experience. Guests arrive in the guise of joy, despair, hope, disappointment, wonder, wet doggy tongues, laughter, friendship. I welcome them, teachers, each to show me some new facet of self. For this I am (albeit sometimes reluctantly) Thankful.

In my new home, despite some-going-in-turkey circles, I’ve created enough order to feel at home, to cook my meals, to sleep peacefully at night. For this I am Thankful. 

Thanksgiving Day I will have dinner with Ana and Michelle and Crin and Leo. I will bring fresh bread rolls and not-so-traditional mango pie. Michelle managed to find a turkey. Dinner will be a mix of cultural delights and stories and filled plates quickly emptied and love. For this I am Thankful.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

Thanksgiving, 2024

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