Might be this, might be that.

 

Might be this, might be that.

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The longer I live, the less certain I am about anything. In fact, when I detect certainty in my thinking, I immediately stop and investigate to find the flaw.

You’ve all met Leo. He works in my yard a couple half-days a week. Leo is much more than a garden worker. I’ve come to depend on Leo for all manner of help. He is a gentle man, educated, generous, and has a brilliant sense of humor. Over time, he’s come to seem a grandson to me. He trusts me enough to tell me when he thinks I am wrong and that’s a huge compliment.

I’m the only one of us who lives here on the rancho without a partner and the only one since the pandemic who lives here constantly year round. That may have served to cement our friendship. Leo shows up most mornings to ask if I need anything. He’s my taxi driver, shopper, legal advisor, all-around helper. He has a big heart. Sometimes I call him Mother Leo.

We were sitting on my patio, me telling a story from when I lived in Mazatlan. Suddenly Leo leaned forward and said, “Sondra, you have . . . “ and here he used an expression, a masculine anatomical term, which I thought was pure Montana but perhaps is pure Mexican and crossed the border north centuries past. After all, Mexico has written history centuries longer than Montana’s.

The expression means courage so I’ll use that word. “Sondra, you have big courage. You are alone. You are old. (The young man is brutally truthful.) When you need to make a change, you just make it. You moved to Mazatlan. Then to Etzatlan. And now you are going to move to Oconahua. Alone. You have big, huge courage.”

I know a compliment when I see one so, taking no offense, I said, “Thank you.” Graciously.

However, my mind was quietly thinking otherwise. My mind spit out words such as flighty, loose cannon, loco-loco.

It’s true though. When a situation becomes untenable for various reasons, I’ve learned to make a change. If opportunity beckons elsewhere, I’ve learned to make a change.

Every decision carries its own consequences. For me, that has nothing to do with right or wrong. I could go. I could stay. I could move one step left. Or right.

That sounds so smug and smarmy. It actually took six years of terror, being afraid to do anything, not “allowed” any decisions, to give me the strength to break free. Every move or change since has been relatively easy, easy only in comparison to the years I call “Chicago Time”.

Leo went on to say about himself, “Me, I’m a big chicken. I’m scared to change. Friends tell me I need to break away from here, to get a job to use my education and skills. I’m chicken. I’d love to work in one of the big resorts on the Gulf Coast. I’d be good at helping people, at managing a crew. I would like that work. But my family is important to me. I don’t want to leave family.”

Immediately, I felt guilt. I’m one of the people who’d said, “Go, move, do something for yourself.”

In that moment, I saw that I had been wrong to urge change for Leo. I don’t know what is best for this young man.

“Leo,” I said, “You know what is best for you. You are the only one who knows what is best. If living here, helping us, being here for each of us, for your family, your friends, feeds your soul, who are we to say that’s not enough? You have no idea the value you give us. We don’t express our appreciation as often as we think it. If your circumstances change, if the time comes for you to make a big change, you will know. That is also courage.”

I’ve often thought that in different times or circumstances, Leo would have been a priest. He ministers quietly, without fanfare, to us, to his family, his neighbors. If you want to see the consequences of his ministry, just take a short trip into town with him. Everybody knows Leo. Leo gives of himself, no matter where he is. That is who he is.

Fool? Wise? Chicken? Courageous? By whose definition? Might be this. Might be that.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

September 19, 2024

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It was a dark and sleepless night.

 

It was a dark and sleepless night.

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It was a dark and sleepless night, not a storm cloud in sight.

I did the usual when I don’t sleep. I gazed out the window. Turned from my right side to my left side. Threw back the blanket. Turned from my left side to my right side. Pulled up the blanket and tucked it around me, a cocoon. Too many times.

Sensible people, I am told, get up and do something. Binge on Netflix. Scrub the toilet. Read until their eyeballs fall out. Work an entire book of Sudoku. Drink a bottle of Old Grandad. Do something.

Not me. I lie in bed, very awake, and let my mind entertain me.

My mind thinks it knows everything. It doesn’t. It also thinks it is invincible. It thinks when I die it will go on living. We, me and my mind, have had conversations about this kind of stuff.  

We listened to road traffic. Car. Truck. Car. Big truck with jake brakes. There are a few haulers who like to race up to the first tope (speed bump) and slam the brakes. Evidently that satisfies something in their psyche. I wouldn’t know. I’m not a trucker.

In Etzatlan, I live a block off the highway, just off the edge of town limits.

In Oconahua, I will live on the far side of town, no highway in sight, on a cobble street going up the mountain to nowhere, among the last houses, no traffic. Please, soon.

I listen to the night birds, the tree frogs, to something that might be a kind of cricket.

My mind wants to visit the past. We argue. It wants to visit dark times I want to forget. I want to visit more pleasant memories. Why are the good times harder to hold onto, harder to dredge up the details?

In this tug of war, I roll over and toss off the blanket. Whoosh, a ripe avocado falls from the tree outside my bedroom window, through a crumple of thick leaves making a bumpity racket on the way to a hard landing on the ground.

I hear my dog on night patrol, whiffling along, checking out the disturbance. Dogs eat avocados.

My mind always wants to do a body scan, check for dire diseases. It will find them. I try to stomp that activity down before it gains momentum. An unnoticeable daytime twinge can and will, if fed and pampered, erupt into nighttime pain that only morphine will cure. I know. My mind tells me so.

Roll over, pull up the blanket. Just as my mind slows, almost restful, along comes a bobcat with its distinctive skunky reek. The bobcat sniffed around the tree and passed on to other hunting grounds.

Such was my night. I’ve learned to not fight it, to relax into it, whether this peculiar restlessness brings sleep eventually or not.

Want to hear something strange? I could have come up with any number of real things to worry about to keep me awake.

Real stuff, like health of family and friends, lack of money, questioning right or wrong of past decisions, writing script for if this or if that happens.

The possibility of Mt. Tequila erupting despite lack of activity for centuries, a rogue tsunami crossing a range of mountains and drowning all of us. Mass abduction of our community by aliens. You know, real stuff.

No, I stuck with the mundane, traffic noises, bouncing avocados and a roaming bobcat.

On a sleepless night, there is no understanding the quirks and quarks of my mind.

In the morning, I found on the ground, an avocado for the kitchen along with three seeds, licked clean.

On that sleepless night, it seemed, the whole season turned. I went to bed in summer. Didn’t sleep. Got out of bed in the newly turned fall.

The wind was blowing. Not a Montana wind. But wind enough to bend palm leaves and wave the stretched-out branches of the jacaranda. A cooler wind. A wind that chased the daily 99% humidity down to 50%. Oh, blessed wind.

The air smelled like spices, autumn air.

In the sky white puffs scudded along the blue like pleasure boats in a bay. Not a gray rain cloud in sight. Yesterday was summer. Today is autumn. Tonight I will sleep like a rock.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

September 12, 2024

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Wrong Season

 

Wrong Season

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We all get them. This has been our turn. A week fraught with “one thing after another”. The kind of week where the little disasters loom large in shadows of big fears.

My friend Ana in Oconahua had been having stomach pains for a long time, much longer than anybody knew when she finally admitted them and went for tests. Bango—into the hospital she landed, gall bladder surgery. She left minus a body part, with rocks in hand.

She is recovering nicely from the surgery but suffering from the medication. Ana has severe allergies, which is why she was able to ignore the gall bladder pains for so long. She thought the pain her own fault for eating what she shouldn’t eat. Among the long list of allergies, Ana’s body does not tolerate medication but she must use an antibiotic for an intestinal inflammation, no choice. Hence, she is both relieved and miserable, but on the road to recovery.

She lost 20 pounds. I told her, not to worry or go searching. I found them.

Seriously, and actually, Ana is a little bitty woman but once she can eat again, surely her body will adjust.

My daughter, Dee Dee, was hit with acute vertigo. Unlike her mother, she tends to not speak in superlatives, yet she reports that half the town has West Nile and the other half has Norovirus. Her symptoms are along the West Nile variety.

I urged her to get a blood test. She stumbled into the ER, since all the clinics were closed, and stumbled right back out. Standing room only in the waiting area. Had Dee Dee stayed, surely she would have left with a multitude of other ailments.

My daughter is in bed, staying hydrated, pretty much immobilized, hoping to outlast and stabilize her whirling world.

Lesser problems abound. Broken water pumps, leaking roofs, equipment malfunctions, a broken lawn mower, a weed-whacker quit whacking. Every wheel-barrow on the Rancho had flat tires, I kid you not. Frustrations, all.

At my house, Leo broke the handle on my favorite shovel. Not that I’m the one usually using the shovel. This is a short shovel with a good spade. The rod is topped with a cup-shaped plastic handle. The plastic handle broke. Split open like a rotten tomato.

Don’t tell me plastic doesn’t rot. It may not break down into dust but I deal with rotten plastic constantly. I move a bucket of chilis and the lip of the bucket comes away in my hand. Happens regularly.

In frustration, after deciding to have a blacksmith fashion a new metal handle for my shovel, I buried the blade in a pot of bamboo and said to Leo, “There. Maybe it will grow a new handle. Everything else grows.”

Leo seriously contemplated the shovel a good half a minute, shook his head, and said, “No.”

“What do you mean, ‘No’?”

“Wrong season,” Leo replied.

Not to be outdone in the Sympathy Stakes, I am here to announce I have cancer in my left forefinger. You might look at my finger and say, “Looks like a patch of little bumps here on the first joint, oh, and here at the base.”

“Yes,” I say. “Tumors.”

You might reply, “Look like spider bites.”

In return, I might say, “They are driving me nuts. I’m sure they are tumors. They itch, they hurt, I can hardly use that finger. Cancer. What if I have to have my finger amputated?”

You could at least pat me on the shoulder and say, “Poor baby. Here. Put some Bag Balm on it. Cures everything.”

Sondra Ashton

HDN:  Looking out my back door

September rainy week

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In Praise of My Not-so-nice Grandma

 

In Praise of My Not-so-nice Grandma

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Grandma raised me. When I was born, my Dad was overseas fighting in The War. My Mom had what we today call mental health issues.

For all know, from stories told me by that side of the family, she might have been Mad as the Proverbial Hatter. Uncles and Aunts rescued me often and I’m sure they were glad to hand me and Mom over to Dad when he returned.

My Dad was a Farmer. He loved farming. He loved my Mom. Mom loved Dad. Mom did not love farming. I was three when my sister was born. By the time I was four and my little sister, who, by the way, was in braces for feet problems, Dad knew he could not keep us safe. Mom was taken to the State Hospital and was there until de-institutionalization in the70s.

Years later, when Mom was dying, a doctor reviewing her file at the Hospital, told my Aunt and me that a big part of Mom’s problem was post-natal depression and today (early 80s), she would have been treated much differently.

All my Aunts and Uncles had young children. I don’t imagine they were fighting over who got raise us. Rightly so. Dad wanted to keep us with him. As a child, I did entertain fantasies of living with one or another of my numerous relatives.

After having brought up seven of her own, Grandma came to our house to raise me and my sister, Judy. Grandma didn’t like me. In defense of this woman who had a child-free life in Indiana and came to the wind-swept valley in Montana, I understand.

Grandma doted on Judy who  was a neglected baby. Grandma thought I had gotten all the loving.

Not so. Having somewhat raised myself, I might have been a brat. I don’t know. The way Grandma handled it was to lavish Judy with love and to teach me the rudiments of Everything Housekeeping until I was deemed old enough to handle the household on my own. Then Grandma boarded the train back home to Indiana.

That might sound like Judy got the best deal and the young me would have agreed. The older me, long years ago figured that perhaps I got the better deal.

Cooking put me onto this train of thought. Tracy sent me a recipe for a simple Middle-Eastern dish consisting of lentils, rice and caramelized onions. This is not a dish my Grandma would have made. If I could set a plateful in front of her, she would not eat it.

Grandma taught me basic farm-style cooking. Meat, potatoes, vegetables. Pie or cake with dinner because that’s how we ate. Grandma would never have gone out to the herb pots to grab handfuls of aromatic leaves for seasoning. Seasonings came from McNess.

At Grandma’s side I made slaw, pickles, butter and jams. Anything you would find on a farm dinner table, she taught me to make. Canning, preserving, rendering lard, preparing meats and veggies for the freezer, I did it. I did laundry, cleaned house, made soap. I learned to sew, to embroider, to crochet.

Judy, always younger, never lifted a finger. We talked about this years later.

That sounds fierce, but it wasn’t. I found spare time to poke my nose into numerous books, some of them forbidden.

The best thing Grandma did, a side-effect perhaps of her training me up in the way I should go, was teach me to solve problems, to think things out for myself.

For example, consider this dish I’m cooking, which smells delicious, by the way. Tracy’s recipe serves six people. I ignored the recipe, the ingredients are simple, so I pared it down for myself.

I think of my mean Grandma often. I think of her fondly. Near the end of her life, she told me why she treated my neglected sister and me (maybe much loved), differently. She told me she was wrong. I hugged her, very aware of the sacrifices she had made for us.

I’m not so sure she was wrong so much as out of balance in how she raised us. She did a huge thing to give up ten years of her life to raise another family. She gave me gifts I use daily.

I love you, Grandma. By the way, this dish I just cooked is scrumptious.

Caramelize thrice the onions than you think you will need. Use an equal amount of lentils and rice. Pre-cook lentils so the lentils and rice will finish at the same time. I dumped lentils and rice into chicken broth, seasoned with salt, pepper, cumin and garam masala. Stirred in the caramelized onions the last five minutes. I ate mine with a dollop of sour cream. Yogurt would be good. Or a tomato-cucumber salad. Or hard-boiled egg to make pretty. Enjoy.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

End of August, too soon

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Tricycle, Tricycle, Tricycle!

 

Tricycle, Tricycle, Tricycle! 

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I want to ride my tri-cy-cle. I want to ride my trike!

Queen, I shall sing you all day.

Do you remember your first wheels?  Mine was a tricycle, all metal, sparkly red. I remember the size, the shape, the feel of leaning over the chrome handlebars, skinny legs pushing the rubber-clad pedals with all my might, wind in my face, tooling down the lane between the house and the barn.

My friend Janet bought an electric tricycle and she is excited. Her excitement is infectious. I caught a case of trike fever.

I have not had an automobile since moving to Mexico. Public transportation is so good here, even in our small town. Then I got used to depending on my helper, Leo, to take me shopping, to conduct any business, to see a doctor or go for an ice cream. Whatever my needs, it was simple to arrange transportation with Leo and he eased any language problem I might have. That last part is a plus and a minus. Made me language-lazy.

I’ll be moving to a small village, v e r y small. I can still get a taxi or the autobus and I have friends there who will gladly take me out and about. No wheels, no worry.

Inspired by Janet, I did the thing we all do now. I went online and looked at electric trikes for seniors. Ah, the array! The variety! The options!

It didn’t take me any time at all to figure I want one with big fat tires and good suspension to bounce over the cobblestones. And a comfy seat with a back and arm rails. A basket in front for when I lean over the handlebars and pedal on down the street to the closest panaderia for an empanada. Add a basket in back for Lola to ride along, nose sniffing the air, ears on point.

Also, it became immediately apparent I want a more expensive one with add-ons so I will have to save a good while before I get a trike.

There are bike shops in town, many bike shops. I have not checked out what they can do for me.  Or in Ahualulco, which is very much a bicycle town and when you maneuver a vehicle through the narrow streets, you understand why so many people ride bikes.  Or, or, imagine going to the huge bike shops in Guadalajara to feast my eyes on the best of the best. I’m all aflutter with possibility.

Michelle gave me some pointers for what to look for in performance. She’s had three electric bikes and loved them, but her bicycle days are over, she says.

I said, “Picture this. Let’s say we all get a tricycle. Here we go, all in a row, you and Ana and Rick and myself, each on our own trike, wearing leather vests, do-rags around our heads, each with a dog in the back basket. We would be a gang. Everybody would be scared of us.”

Michelle seemed to think we would generate more laughter than fear.

That’s okay too. I’m just dreaming the dream.

I want to ride my tricycle. I want to ride it where I like.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

August 22, 2024

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The Year of the Hibiscus

 

The Year of the Hibiscus

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Here we are, smack in the middle of August, wondering how we got here already. Yes? As a friend said, “What do you mean, August? It’s only June.”

Yes. June. I mean, August! The days move along too quickly on their progression through the equinox. You can feel the difference in the air, can’t you? It might be subtle but it is there. The air has a different scent, a different brush against your skin. A different energy.

Summer is still with us. The signs of the season turning are here. For me, when I see the signs, my mind skips autumn and turns to winter. It is one of my failings. I love autumn and dread winter, even here in this sub-tropical land where mornings can be quite chill.

The three-month-long heat dome messed up a lot of expectations. My Haas avocado tree died. My fig tree was set back, struggling. She’s a baby tree. While standing next to her in the garden, I ate the only fig she gave. Oh, glorious fig.

My mango tree started with an early growth spurt, went into delayed reaction to extreme heat for a month-long hiatus. Now, a month late, two month’s later, I’m finished with harvest. My ever-generous papaya is doing the best she can.

All my garden pots are cleaned up and resting. I won’t plant veggies, tempting as it will be, until after I’m settled in my new home, probably near winter. So I say today.

I mourned my Magnolia. She went into severe decline, leaves burned away. Rains brought revival; the lady is still damaged, not very pretty, but she is giving us her first aromatic flowers. If I were to take you on a garden tour, many plants, bushes, trees would tell you a similar story.

Our daily rains, oh, blessed daily rains, no longer visit with regularity. The rainy season is not gone and done, just slower, lesser, erratic.

Through every change, through every season, the blooming hibiscus, well, blooms.

When I first moved here, eight-and-a-half years ago, I planted hibiscus around the perimeter of my yard. Like the bougainvillea, hibiscus takes seasonal changes in stride and flowers through it all.

I planted all colors. I planted many varieties. I’ve flowers of red, yellow, orange, white, salmon, pink, solid colors and mixed colors. Some are the familiar standard hibiscus you see in every yard. Some are exotic, doubles and ruffles. One has three colors on one bush. One has variegated leaves. One has tiny leaves but big ruffled flowers. 

One, back when it first opened a flower, made me ask my garden helper, Leo, “What flower is this?” “Hibiscus,” he answered. “No.” “Yes, look at it closely. See how it sticks out its tongue.” “Oh. It is a hibiscus.”

This year my hibiscus trees or bushes, are more glorious than ever. Lusher, fuller, more flowery.

If ever I doubt life, all I have to do is look out my windows or walk around my yard. Hibiscus, my ever-blooming hibiscus, assures me that life wants to live. Life wants to live fully, to thrive, to flower in profusion.

Seems to me to be a lot of parallels to our human lives in a garden, maybe especially a garden under duress. Changes are not always welcome, often feared. We may want to hide, to shelter in a cool cave. Metaphorically, we may need to push down deeper roots or prune expectations, but we always have an option to try to grow through the changes. So says my hibiscus.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

August 15, 2024

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Honey, they’ve shrunk the house!

 

Honey, they’ve shrunk the house!

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When I moved to Etzatlan in Jalisco, Mexico, I said to myself, as well as to anyone who would listen, “I will live here until I die. This is my last best place.”

Unless I die in the next few weeks, I find that I have one more last best place to experience in this life.

It had been a month since I’d visited my new house in Oconahua, a casita tucked into a corner of property owned by Ana and Michelle. This morning Leo helped me load his car with a few things I could take over early along with a deep-dish mango pie I made yesterday.

Somehow, my very first impression could only be expressed as, “Honey, they’ve shrunk the house!”

I know my new place is smaller than my present small home. I know the patio is smaller. I know I won’t have a bodega in which to store extras. I know I won’t have the luxury of a yard. I know all this. I’m agreeable.

Little by little, I’ve been packing. Winter bedding. Winter sweaters. Dishes I can do without but want to keep. Keep—I am keeping the bare minimum. Bare. Minimum.

My constant questions to myself: Keep? Throw? Give away?

I am many things but a hoarder I am not. I moved here with what I could cram into a cargo van. And, yes, I have accumulated bits and pieces. I believe everything I own should be used. If I’m not using it, I want it to have a good home. Or, a different home.

Frequently, over the years, I’ve looked at my items with a critical eye. Often, the trash can is heavier for my effort. Keeping things because they might have a use someday may be a virtue. It is a virtue I don’t have.

On the other hand, if I had the space and the inclination, there are some lovelies I would find nice to collect. Collecting is not hoarding. Right?

Collections have no place in this chapter of my life. 

Back to my shrunken house. While diligently packing and purging over the past several weeks, in my imagination, I’ve configured my new space with those pieces of furniture which I will keep. I’ve filled the drawers and cupboards. In imagination, I’ve moved things around, here, no there, or maybe over against that wall. This cupboard in today’s kitchen, might live nicely in tomorrow’s bedroom. I can drive myself batty-watty with this mind game.

My new abode is beautiful. Windows and doors are works of art. The bathroom is lovely. Floor tile is being laid this week, or maybe next week. I’ve never moved into a pure space, new in every way. Unique doors made from century-old outside doors, can slide to separate the spaces. Rather dazzling, it is.

Standing inside the casita this morning, I realized that the only way I would really know what to keep and what to re-home, would be to wait and see. I have to wait until me and my stuff are all moved, all in one place. Placement will be trial and error or maybe, trial and trial is a better way to say it. Trial and trial again.

After the house tour, we gathered around my friends’ table and face-planted into mango pie, mangos from my last harvest from my own mango tree. Not to worry. Everyone has mango trees. In season, somebody will drive up the street past the house, announcing mangos for sale. All I will have to do is step out my door, stand on the stoop, and agree to a price.

This afternoon, my mantra is “Lead me not into temptation. Oh, lead me not into temptation.”

My inclination, the temptation I don’t need, is to unpack and repack everything I have packed, just so I can reassess, keep, purge, give away. I know that the blue glass pitcher is in one of the book boxes, because it fit the empty space. The dinner plates nestle in a bin between folds of winter bedding. And so it goes. All a-jumble.

So far, I’m white knuckling it, resisting the urge to empty boxes and bins and repack, still using my best guess as a gauge, and how futile would that be.

Instead of giving in to temptation, I am going to paint my little cupboard which holds my sewing supplies, both because it could use a fresh coat of paint and because it will look dandy fine in its new home, in my next last best place.

I will not repack. I will not repack. I will not, will not, will not.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

August, I can’t believe it is August 8!

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