Merry Christmas in January

            Merry Christmas in January

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Dear Lee and Roy,

Imagine my surprise when Leo handed me mail this morning. He climbs the stairs at the Mercado every Monday morning to check my mail box. I suspect the real reason Leo checks mail every Monday morning is his secret penchant for deep-fried stuffed gorditas the Senora makes, just down the hall from the Correo office. Stuffed with cheese and jalapenos. Dripping grease.

I came as close to dance as I am capable when I held the envelope, Christmas card size, in my hand. I saw your name label at the top left corner. I carefully peeled open the seal, pulled out the glittery Christmas wishes. And whooped.

The Christmas card you sent me is beautiful, the only real card I received this year, so I treasure it doubly. Immediately I was transported back to Christmas Day. An imaginary Christmas Day, I admit. I‘ve never been to your home.

Nevertheless, I imagined the smell of roasting turkey coming from the kitchen, a pumpkin pie and an apple pie cooling on the counter, out of the reach of the shaggy dog, yours or one that belongs to your son. Do you have children?

I imagined your family sitting around the living room, a daughter popping into the kitchen from time to time, lifting lids of various pots and pans on the stovetop. The living room floor a-clutter with gift wrap, perhaps grandchildren playing Monopoly in the corner, wishing they were playing computer games instead, but respecting the day for you.

I can see your Christmas tree, decorated with ornaments saved from more than one generation, lights flashing and tinsel swaying when the cat decide to bat the bottom branches. For a few moments I traveled to your home.

When Leo handed me my mail, I was sitting in my blue rocking chair, basking in the sun on my little corner backyard patio beneath the jacaranda tree, watching the hummingbirds  flitting back and forth with feed for the babies in the nest above my head. I don’t know which kind of hummingbird it is, perhaps a Brown violet-ear. There are five pages of hummingbirds in my Birds of Mexico and Central America. It’s a puzzle to match beaks and feet.  

An Amaryllis is in bloom today. Five have bloomed, out of the four-hundred from last year. The first one bloomed Christmas Day, flowered and promptly fell over dead. None of my bulb plants survived the corn borer plague. Farming, phooey. This beauty is doomed to die too.

I planted Geraniums in my largest Amaryllis bed. The others lie fallow for now. Nothing seems to bother geraniums, neither ants nor iguanas nor corn worms. I am just superstitious enough to want to bite my tongue.

Tanagers are playing in my bottlebrush tree. A cuckoo fluttered through the jacaranda, the kind with orangey feathers and a long tail with black and white markings.

And I discovered the little green and yellow bird with the high nasal voice that I hear every morning is a Euphonia, aptly named. I am not good at identity; I don’t have binoculars, necessary for the details, but I love my garden full of flowers and birds.

I imagine you looking out your window, watching Chickadees pecking in the snowy yard, flocking in your Caragana hedge. Flickers seem not to bother about weather. We both have Flickers though yours are larger. Your flowers are in winter sleep, but daffodils and tulips will emerge in the first warm days of spring. I miss that. But I don’t miss the snow and ice.

Thank you for this gift, a renewal of Christmas out of season. I see that your card is postmarked December 7. Mail between our countries sometimes runs slowly. Must be the cold start.  

Give our mutual friend Jane a hug for me. I can imagine you all meeting for tomato soup at the 4-B’s, coffee cups steaming, maybe eyeballing the pie case.

Thank you for making my day special.

Sondra Jean Ashton

APDO Postal #3

46500 Etzatlan, Jalisco, Mexico

Keep those cards and letters coming, folks.

Sondra Jean Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

January 24, 2019

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