When I Grow
Up, What Will I Be
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In a note to a friend I mentioned
that I have lived my life in chunks. The years on the ranch. Years raising my
children. Years recovering furniture. Years in theatre. Years in city government. Those sorts of
chunks. Some chunks overlap. Some chunks I have tried to bury far from memory.
Others I treasure. All are part of what makes me, well, me.
I wonder what will define this
particular chunk of my life. Lord knows, it is different from all the others.
Looking back, I can find clues to
what led me to decisions I made. For example, when I needed work that would
enable me to be on hand to care for my children, I made a list of things I
liked to do; of skills that I had accumulated.
Actually, three girlfriends, each of
us floating in the same boat, got together one day. We brain-stormed to come up
with lists of interests and talents. Martha wanted to be a nurse. She said, “I
can clean toilets.” So Martha cleaned houses to put herself through nursing
school. Karla said, “I like yard sales and finding bargains.” She began
collecting items for the weekend flea market. These many years later, Karla
still makes her living at the flea market.
Two of the items that stood out on
my list were my sewing machine (I began sewing when I was eight) and tiny rooms
of furniture and accessories I created in shoe boxes with discarded paper,
paint, glue and junk, (also when I was eight, nine and ten). So recovering
furniture seemed an obvious choice to me. The clues were all in front of my
face.
It didn’t take a lot of training to add to the
skills I already had. For a good number of years I fed my family and paid the
bills with the work of my hands and my creativity.
Now I have entered a new and
outrageously different phase of life. For a variety of reasons and physical
necessity, I live a life of sloth and ease. I sold all my accumulated gear and made
a beeline south where I found a small apartment in Mazatlan on the coast of
Mexico.
Should today be my last day on
earth, I do not want “sloth” to be the defining word on my tombstone. I’m a
do-er. My chunks of life have all been defined by verbs. Suddenly I am a noun,
a be-er. At times, I am a most
uncomfortable noun, itching to “do”.
When I examine my simple life, I
don’t find much to put on my list. I mop each day. One could “eat off the
floor”, not out of personal fastidiousness, but in my struggle to keep all
crumbs away from critters: scorpions, cock roaches, centipedes and pesky little
ants. I’d hate if “she mops” defined me.
Many days I play a Mexican card game
I learned on the beach. I’m pretty good. We play for fun. Gambling has never
appealed to me as a viable vice. The few times I’ve gone to casinos with
friends, I’ve donated my designated twenty dollars “fun money” on the nickel
slots. During rehearsals for “The Queen of Bingo”, Billie and I went to bingo
nights at the Elks to get the real feel for the game. Neither of us ever won a
card. I still cringe when I think of a night, nearly fifty years ago, when a
group of friends played a particular type of poker and I lost my shirt, so to
speak. So that isn’t it.
And I read. That comes closest to
defining me. I’m a reader; you could say a promiscuous reader. I lose myself in
a book for a portion of each day. That is my pleasure, but I feel a compelling tug
to be out and about.
Something will come along to give me
do-purpose. But that little something has not shown up yet. Friends say, “Be
patient.”
I heaved a sigh (I’ve longed to
write those words.) and looked around. In the years I’ve made trips here, I’ve
bought every trinket and gadget sold on the beach. I have a copper pitcher,
wooden boxes, clay bowls, silver jewelry, ironwood dominoes, leather parrots, a
rusty iron pelican, woven rugs, blouses and serapes, hats and sunglasses. If I
gathered it all, I could occupy at least one good season as a beach vendor.
I’ve been told I look Mexican. My Spanglish is improving. “Beach Junque for
sale. Happy hour. Almost free. Ten pesos.”
Sondra
Ashton
HDN: Looking
out my back door
September
25, 2014
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