Fighting Fear of Boredom

 

    Fighting Fear of Boredom

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Often I say that I am never bored. It’s true. Always I find plenty to do, things that I enjoy and want to do. Fortunately, I grew up learning to like whatever I am doing. I give credit to the good Sisters at St. Joseph’s. Even today I take pleasure in plunging my hands into warm dishwater or ironing creases into my cotton pants.

I’m not pure or perfect. I dislike touching sandpaper and a lot of things in my home would be better detailed had I not skipped a crucial step in a process of smoothing. I manage to rationalize ways to avoid a good number of my dislikes.

My new house, to which I will move, is finished. Before I move, two things need to happen. The patio roof needs to be built to protect my patio furniture from mountain UV rays, severe year round, not to mention sun and rain. And, my little section of yard must be fenced, to keep Lola, my pooch of various pedigree, from stress.

The owners of my new casita rescue dogs. Lola is quite happy, alone, protecting me and her own little kingdom, behind a wall. Or a wrought iron fence. The fence will keep Lola in and the other dogs out, although only a couple at a time are allowed in the common area. 

Consequently, it will be at least another month before I can finish my move. I’ve packed and moved every single thing that can be pre-moved and am living with my Buddha bowl, metaphorically. It’s not that bad, but every other day I realize I should have kept this or that or the other thing.

I’ve run out of things to do, to pack, to paint, to renovate, pre-move. At the beginning of the month, did you hear the calendar page turn and look out to see the leaves on the Fresno trees turn golden overnight? Did you hear me wailing, “October will go down in my personal history as the only month in which I was ever bored.”?

In my family, we do not do boredom. Thank you, Sister Mary John B. Thank you, Grandma.

Ask my children. They will tell you. Once and once only, each of them said, “Mom, I am bored.’” I swiveled my head and squatted down to their level, and gently said, “Oh, good. Here is a list of things with which I need you to help me.”

My kids might tell this story a little differently. They swear that my brown eyes turned flashing red and green, that my teeth grew into fangs, my fingers into claws and I exuded the stench of a fiery pit, as I gave them orders fit for road workers from a Louisiana prison in the 1800s, complete with snaps of a bull whip. Don’t you believe it. They made up their story. Pure fantasy. Fangs and claws, indeed.

When I was a child, boredom was not yet a popular concept. My words were, “I don’t have anything to do.” My Grandma was matter of fact. “Good. Start with washing and oiling and polishing the base boards.” In our 1920’s farm house, every room had base boards, about six inches high.

Interestingly, although I still did all the jobs Grandma gave me to do, I never again ran out of things to do on my own. Nor did my own children ever more than once suffer from ubiquitous boredom.

Along about the first part of October, I began fearing boredom. To counteract the fear, I gave myself a job. Washing windows. My house has more windows than walls. I live outside while inside. There are eleven large arched sets of windows to wash. Typically, this can take several days.

And it did. I eked out window washing three days. Along with other chores and opportunities which seemed to magically pop up. Here it is the 10^th of October, and my fear of boredom is unfounded. Thus far.

Each evening, like the good Shoemaker in the Fairy Tale, I lay out my job for tomorrow, hoping the elves will come and finish the job for me. The elves have not arrived yet, but I live in hope. And, so far, I’m not bored.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

October 10, 2024

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic

 

            Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I am writing this, talking about this hard subject, for you, for that one person out there who needs to hear that you are not alone.

This is a topic nobody wants to talk about. Me, included. Let’s sweep it under the rug and pretend that lump isn’t real.

I’ve lost my son. Again. Last time I lost him, the County Sheriff picked him up in a ditch, beat up with broken bones, a backpack containing heroin and other contraband. Landed in jail. The County had a special program, unique, and he volunteered for it, wanted to get clean. It was a great program, combining individual and group counseling, work, AA and NA meetings, physical help, and more.

Once he left jail, the program continued with counseling, a safe house, a job, meetings, a rigorous routine.

From there this man, my son, managed to put together several years of sobriety. It wasn’t easy for him. He didn’t go back to his prestigious IT job. Bit by bit, we, family and friends, saw him getting better.

Then a couple years ago, we began to see troubling signs. Stories that didn’t quite make sense. But we wanted them to be true, right, so we made allowances. He quit going to meetings. He pushed away friends. A year and a half ago he quit talking with me. I had been questioning some of his decisions, those few I knew about, long distance. When he quit talking, I knew he was using.

Why am I writing about this now? Well, I just heard from a relative, some ugly details of my son’s life. Broke my heart all over again. Oh, yes, I knew he was using. But in the last couple years, I’d managed to compartmentalize the pain. Living 2500 miles away helps.

Two years ago his situation was bad. Now it is beyond ugly and desperate. One knows it is desperate when one hopes and prays that one’s son lands back in jail rather than die in a ditch. That may sound brutal. I don’t know if he will claw his way out of the pit he’s dug for himself. He can, if he asks for help. If.

My understanding is that to those who are vulnerable to it, heroin is like the ultimate bliss. My son, himself, told me that he never forgets, that nothing ever measures up to what he feels on the drug, that it sings a continual siren song.

There is help. For the User. For the Family. If my son had continued to surround himself with friends who didn’t use, had stayed in the job with people in recovery who valued him and supported him, continued with his counselors, gone to meetings, reached out to others who needed his story, had continued contact with his family . . .

This could have been a different story, right?

One of the ways I take care of myself, while crying and allowing myself to feel the pain, to feel it more deeply perhaps, is to throw myself into work.  Physical work is balm, for me.

I will take care of myself. I will not allow his addiction to crush me. I know that I didn’t cause it, I cannot cure it, and I cannot control it. 

So that is why I set about rearranging deck chairs on my own Titanic. I’m between homes at present, closing down my life in my little casa in Etzatlan, moving to another small casa up the road in Oconahua.

My house was a jumbled mess but I had figured to live in the mess a few more weeks. Then when my son was brought back before me in techni-color detail, I began doing what I know to do. Physical work. I decided to make these last few weeks in this house as comfortable as possible.

I rearranged the furniture, the clothing and food items, some of which I had stashed in boxes, the few patio items I had not moved. I worked until my legs, my back, my arms hurt. Compared to the pain in my heart, physical pain was a comfort. One day of hard labor and I felt better. The heart hurt will never entirely go away. I’ve learned how to live with it. (Counseling, sharing, friends, my Higher Power, see above.)

I will not stop loving my son. He’s my 47-year-old baby. I will not allow him to tear apart my life. It’s hard. It hurts. Heroin is a Destroyer. We do not have to let it destroy us and our family. I’m not giving up. Nobody, but nobody, has to go down with the ship.

Whoever needs to hear this: You are not alone. I hear you. I care. I love you.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

October 3, 2024

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Changes? What changes?

 

            Changes? What changes?

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

My morning readings include a short poem by Rumi as translated by Coleman Barks. One morning this past week, I read:

Who makes these changes?

I shoot an arrow right.

It lands left.

I ride after a deer

And find myself chased by a hog.

I plot to get what I want

And end up in prison.

I dig pits to trap others

And fall in.

I should be suspicious

Of what I want.

 

And that pretty much says it. My life in a nutshell.

Rumi has not become my daily horoscope. Some days his words mean nothing to me. Some days he is incomprehensible, like reading mud in my path.

As I’ve become older, some days I actually am able to think, let’s just see what happens, rather than wanting this way or that way and plotting to get it. Wanting, along with wanting to know the outcome ahead of time, is a pit so familiar to me that I’ve hung pictures on the walls and made the pit cosy.

It’s been a Rumi week for me. Another day the poet reminded me that it is good to take time before making decisions. Ha! Another trap I know intimately. He tells me to sniff like a dog. Throw a dog something to eat and he sniffs to see if he wants it. Me, I tend to face-plant into my wants. Rumi says to me, sniff, take three days, then decide. Three days! Is that not forever?

Another day the poet counseled constant slow movement, like a small creek that does not stagnate. Slowly, slowly, one step at a time. Ah.

That day I replied, “I think I will. Slowly. Step. Step. Step. Slowly. No decisions. No wants. Just wait to see what unfolds in front of me.”

 

Maybe Rumi is my Daily Horoscope.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my backdoor

September 26, 2024

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Might be this, might be that.

 

Might be this, might be that.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

It was a dark and sleepless night.

 

It was a dark and sleepless night.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Wrong Season

 

Wrong Season

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

In Praise of My Not-so-nice Grandma

 

In Praise of My Not-so-nice Grandma

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________