Phase of Moon, Juxtaposition of Planets?

Phase of Moon, Juxtaposition of Planets?

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Ever have a day when everything you touch turns to mud?

For one thing it is raining. Tropical Storm Priscilla hovers off the coast in a direct line up and over the mountains to the west. Not far in a straight line but not even airplanes fly ruler straight; certainly not proverbial crows.

Nevertheless, storm brings clouds bring rain. Rain is a good thing. Rain is precious. I like rain. It’s just that I’d made outdoor garden plans for today. Be flexible, right?

Shifted gears. Now I’m dying.

I wear cotton clothing. Capris non-descript ‘natural’. A rainbow of traditional-style blouses. Problem is, that pesky ol’ sun bleaches everything white while it hangs on the line to dry. Periodically, I mix vats of dye and revive my blouses. Coffee or tea work well to restore tint to pants.

I fill a small pot with a little water, plunk in the dry cube of pressed dye, turquoise blue, which I bought in a farmacia in San Marcos, and set the pan over the burner to simmer.

Carol (from Minnesota) filled my mind with distraction. She arrived at the Rancho the first week of October, ill. She had attached herself to a virus while visiting relatives in Tuscon. Carol has breathing problems on an ordinary day. Despite being sick, she flew here to stay in her casita while her partner John flew to Nepal to climb a mountain.

Ill. Such a little word. Carol couldn’t breathe, couldn’t eat, couldn’t move, go away, I just need to sleep. Everybody hovered around her, being nurse, doctor, advisor, pest. Everybody but me; I have no nursing skills. Ask my children who spend thousands in therapy.

We were worried. We didn’t want Carol to die. She is our friend. We didn’t want Carol to die on our watch. Self-preservation. Hey, we’re human.

Distracted, I left my casa to go see Carol, left the pot with dye beginning to burble happily toward a simmer, propane merrily flaming.

When I returned home, more than a few minutes later, my pot had runneth over, runneth dry, filling the air with a stench of over-heated metal.

My first thoughts were neither kind nor gentle. You dummy. How could you walk off . . . Oh, no . .. 

It’s the beginning of the end, senility has set in. This is the first sign. You are doomed, woman. This week a cooking pot. Next week you’ll need a minder. Oh, no, what to do!

While scrubbing a tumorous blue mess that somewhat resembled a blob of dried goo from one of those aliens-are-landing movies of the ‘50s, I remembered that in 1987 I melted down two tea kettles. Same thing. Distractions. Forgive yourself, sweet woman, just distraction. Not senility. And I refuse to investigate this any further.

Many hours later, I pulled my pale blouse from its bath of turquoise, a splotchy mess. Today I failed to dye. Some days dye works a charm. Other times, not so. Maybe I should only dye beneath the light of a full moon. Will dye work better if I add eye of newt?

Clouds hover low to the ground, spitting a drizzle, gray as the day.

For my own edification, I compiled a list of my disasters of the day. I burned my cooking pot. Ruined a batch of dye. Ruined a blouse. Got bopped in the head by an avocado from my own tree. Watched Machete Jaws, my favorite resident iguana, chomp an entire pot of nasturtiums, leaves and flowers, payment for my sins. I chipped a molar eating shrimp. And fought off a case of pre-senility jitters.

Seeking solace, I ate my last bite of chocolate-caramel popcorn.

On a perkier note, I hear a whoosh. The yellow-head blackbirds have returned, rustling overhead like a whirlwind, making me smile.

Undeterred by a few rain showers, the Festival is in full swing. Today is the Blessing of the Corn. One street is blocked off for food vendors, all kinds of foods, traditional as well as pizza and burgers, but featuring dishes made with corn.

Carnival rides and games for children line the street another direction. Another street is blocked with vendors selling every possible item, from toys to furniture, clothing, traditional and modern, a ten-day street fair .

 Church bells and fireworks punctuate the silence, reminding me that tomorrow I go to town to participate in the celebrations.

If moon and planets hold us in their sway, doubtful as that seems to me, so be it. Some days, however, the best thing for me to do is hole up in the corner chair with a good book and a steaming cup of tea.

Maybe that is what the moon had in mind.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

October 24, 2019

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October, Sweet October

October, Sweet October

                                

October is the sweetest month, well, unless one is up to one’s hocks in snow, and not the first snow of the year at that! Betrayed by September, that generally docile month.

October, sing raptures of October. Hay is stacked, grain is harvested, garden largess fills rows of jewel-toned jars in the cellar. Yearlings crowd trailers on the way to market. Bank account is fat.

Whoa—don’t forget to sing flip side of that nostalgic song while meandering the autumnal path. Snow, gray skies, wind, winterize the house, the vehicles. Watch the flocks of red-wing blackbirds and geese wend southward and wonder if they have more sense than you.

Become aware the butterflies and hummingbirds have disappeared. Stock up on flashlights, emergency candles and an alternate source of heat should the power go out. Drag boxes of winter clothing from the attic, clothing to make the most skeletal person resemble the Pillsbury Dough Boy. Hunker down, sweetheart, it is a long road to spring.

Change the record to play something south of the border, down Mexico way. Autumn, my favorite season, makes its appearance here too, differently than up north. Here, rather than a ‘going away’, there is a ‘coming back’. Flocks of yellow-headed blackbirds darken the sky, swooping and sweeping in synchronization. Butterflies we haven’t seen in months return, harvesting sweet from flower to flower. A rainbow mix of birds return to nest.

Mornings are cooler, afternoons warm and comforting. The summer rains abate though last night’s storm gives lie to this statement after a long week of dry. Winds, hail and rain pounded my casita. Thunder shook the foundations, lightning worked magic for three hours, then receded to the background for the night, distant flashes like a candle flicker.

My bottlebrush tree, after a rain-drenched rest for summer, burst into bloom overnight. Hummingbirds are so profuse it looks like the tree is in motion.

But, most importantly, for this little town of Etzatlan, October means Festival. Officially, or traditionally, Festival is a ten-day celebration, this year from the 18^th through the 28^th. In actuality, there is something happening almost every day of the month.

Festival activities are steeped in religious tradition. Parades of all sorts (I especially like the tractor parade, or the corn parade, or the horses) end at the Cathedral for a blessing, gratitude for harvests, for life. Various statues from the Church lead most parades. Children from all the schools, all ages, have their own day for marching, singing, dancing and riding in pick-up truck floats. Bands and floats, dancers in indigenous regalia, all are included.

Earlier in the month, a procession of thousands of pilgrims march the Virgin of Guadalupe from Etzatlan to San Juanito where a feast awaits for the entire city and visitors. Streets are decorated with colorfully dyed wood-chips. Dancers and bands lead the procession. Prayers combine into a continuous song, miles long.

Another prominent event, spread over ten days before Festival, is the hosting of the Crucifix from the Cathedral at the homes of ten families from ten different Colonias. The street is blocked off, and curtains hung to make a tent. Each family provides flowers and candles in abundance. Chairs are placed for those who come to pray, to sit a while, to visit. The procession from Cathedral to Colonia is solemn and joyful. Family sit vigil an entire day and night.

This year Leo, whose family has hosted the event for years, invited me to come sit a while. I felt honored, grateful that Leo knew I would be respectful.  I sat for an hour, met other of Leo’s family, hugged those I knew, simply sat. When I left, I felt emptied out and washed clean.

Another pre-festival event is the hanging of the crocheted doilies, an all-year project. Often at the plaza or the Mercado, one observes men and women with a lap of plastic twine, crocheting large floral designs into octagons which will be connected to overhang entire streets. This year the city aims for a page in the Guinness World Records.

Watching the men hang the yards and yards of heavy doilies is an adventure in itself, with plenty of breath-taking moments as men hang out from electrical poles, hand over hand along the line to uncoil an overlap, or a foot slips from a ladder rung leaving the foot’s owner dangling precariously. Drama in the making and the completed effect is magical.

When did fireworks became part of every holiday, every birth, every death, every reason and no reason?  Especially in October, one wakes to booms before the sun rises, goes to sleep with booms until midnight.  Nightfall often brings spectacular displays as fountains of colors explode against the black sky.

I’m impressed at how seamlessly this little community, devout peoples, combine indigenous with traditional Catholic beliefs in every celebration. All events are family oriented. I believe the underlying strength, that which feeds and upholds all the people, is gratitude.

Hang out in the plaza. Here comes the parade of dancing horses. Buy an ice-cream. See the sunlight dapple the street as rays filter through the overhead doilies. Watch that group of boys run and jump through the struts below the makeshift stage, set up for traditional dance groups this evening. Serenaded by a trio of elderly musicians, good voices and a full mouth of teeth among them.

Makes you smile, doesn’t it? The feeling of gratitude is almost palpable

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

October 17, 2019

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Micro Slice of a Simple Life in Paradise

            Micro Slice of a Simple Life in Paradise

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When one lives in a tiny community, little things can tend to balloon into huge importance.

When I say “small community”, I don’t mean a place numbered in four digits, where you might recognize a couple thousand through ordinary daily contact: that young man with the pony tail works at the glass repair shop, the woman with red hair and big glasses clerks at the IGA and that over-dressed couple walks around the park every day with their dog, Riley. A place where you might know two hundred people fairly well and count fifty as friends.

Nope. I’m talking a community with a warm-body count averaging twenty or fewer on a daily basis. Oh, yes, one gets to know every person, quite well.

Flip side, my neighbors also get to know me! I try to keep this in mind.

The natural progression to this “getting-to-know” business goes like this. Oh, what wonderful nice neighbors. Except him. And she’s a total witch, know what I mean? One by one, warts and horns sprout.

My method of dealing with “getting to know you, getting to know all about you”, is to (yuck) ask myself, what is it within me that I react so strongly? When I put the focus on my own flaws, yours don’t seem so glaring. Mostly.

Eventually, tolerance, acceptance, respect and affection take over and I even forgive myself (sort of) for my critical, judgmental nature. Horns and warts are still there, but so are scars and wounds and nowadays, I find you kind of cute.  I think this is normal small-town neighborly stuff.

What worries me to distraction is that I have seemingly detected, nay, suffered “a sea-change into something rich and strange”* in my attitude toward critter life, especially those two banes of my existence, squirrels and iguanas.

 After harvesting my miniature corn field, I immediately replanted my last yellow kernels for a second crop. Three days later two-inch green spikes poked above the dirt. On the fourth day, the green spikes disappeared, leaving holes dug and paw prints.

I shrugged. A rather mild reaction.

In the afternoon, I spotted this same squirrel, her jaws locked onto an avocado, dragging the green globe across the patio to a “secure” area where she no doubt feasted. “Aw, isn’t she cute.”

This is the squirrel at whom I’ve cursed, pitched objects (missed), and chased with a broom.

Same story with iguanas although I cannot call them cute. I watch them gulp hibiscus flowers with aplomb and barely disguised affection. They need to eat too. Iguanas are my neighbors. Or maybe, it is that they let me be their neighbor.

I’m worried. I’m afraid this shift in my perspective is not normal.

Let me explain that I think a little critical judgment is necessary in everyday life. As is a bit of anger, wrath, and every other emotion, in moderation, mind you, in moderation. I might be accused of rationalization, but I think a full range of emotions keeps me healthier.

I worry when I suddenly display gushing affection for my former enemies. Iguanas and squirrels, I’m talking about. It is not healthy. Squirrel, who natters at me and teases me with impunity, I understand. She is cute. Definitely a rodent, but cute. Iguanas? Not so much.

See the big one atop the brick wall by my patio? Cute? I don’t think so. I have serious talks with him. 

He never bats an eyelid. If he spoke to me, and why not, he might say, “Who was here first, Gringa? Who owns the garden? Who owns the hibiscus? Who owns the tree? Who owns the corn?

Oh, yes. I knew that. I had forgotten. Even the animals know my faults and flaunt them in my face. And, even in my garden of Paradise, iguanas eat hibiscus flowers.

*”The Tempest”, William Shakespeare

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

October 10, 2019

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What you gonna do when the lights go out?

What you gonna do when the lights go out?

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Stand on the curb of any street in any town in Mexico and look up.  No, not that high. Those are just the ubiquitous buzzards, turkey vultures, also fondly, tongue in cheek, called the Mexican Eagle.

Yes, lower down, that’s what I want to show you, the leftover-spaghetti-mess of wires criss-crossing overhead, connecting each habitacion to power, cable, satellite, internet and phone services.

When I lived in an apartment on a busy street In Mazatlan, for entertainment, I watched the men from CFE (electricity) or Telmex or Megacable climb a pole across the street and add another wire, string it across to its destination, and Voila, another connection made without removing any unused wires. Why not reuse a former wire? Not for me to know.

On some streets, the overhead wires resemble strange art installations. I imagine creatures in an UFO trying to decipher a message written in unknown tongue.

Here in our tiny colonia on the rancho, it’s no different. From poles at the entrance, at dirt-street intersections, overhead from house to house, spaghetti. I try to ignore the implications. The wires carry what they are designed to carry, so why worry.

History. I’m told at one time not that long ago, all the houses here (seventeen, not all inhabited at present), were hooked up to one electric meter. The residents figured out a system to pay the monthly bill. Rumor has it that bill-paying time generated a clutch of arguments, disagreements and on occasion, fisticuffs.

Which eventually led to separate meters for each residence. One spaghetti, two spaghetti, and whenever a casita gets a new resident, three spaghetti, four!

No shock or surprise to me when I returned from a two-week holiday in Mazatlan, and the power went out. Let me modify that. MY power went out. Only mine.

An interruption of electrical power is a nuisance. But one copes.

Called Josue to rescue me. He fiddled around and replaced a little black rectangular thingy inside the larger gray box. Said he’d not seen one of those burn out before and let me know there might be a problem that caused this problem, but for now, I had electricity again, and as soon as he had time, he’d run a check on my wires.

Twenty four hours later, my lights went out again. This was not a CFE problem. This was a personal problem.  

My thoughts veered to the strange. A mere three weeks ago I launched myself into space and put out my head lights—crash!—on a marble tile floor. Did I, in a past life, put out someone else’s lights? Is the Great Wizard-person of Life trying to get me to examine my conscience? Have I a problem that needs illumination? (Undoubtedly!)

While I’m being weird, Josue examined the wires, beginning at the source, and found the seat of my problem, a hot seat, so to speak. Out at the main breaker, where a wire, a ground and a wire, go into the big meter, one of the wires had burned to a crisp.

Josue explained. When those men from the past, Joe and Charlie and Ernie and Harry and Tom, once they’d cooled down from inept fisticuffs, after all, they were all in their 70s and 80s and it was not a pretty sight, decided to install individual meters, they went on the cheap. Why use copper wire and brass fittings when aluminum is a mere fraction of the cost?

Meanwhile, Josue and Leo ran a homemade rig from the power source next door to my electrical box and stole power for me so I’d have lights overnight and could keep my refrigerator running. I’ve seen worse solutions put into action.

Josue bought proper wire and parts and within a few hours had restored my service, complete with copper and brass in appropriate places. He fixed me up without adding to the overhead strings of noodles.

You might wonder about, you know, Code? I suggest you don’t ask. I might have to fight you.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

October 3, 2019

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Sometimes A Silly Notion

Sometimes A Silly Notion

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After two weeks at a beach resort in Mazatlan, I wanna go home!

Not that I don’t love it here. I do. I do. What is not to love? Fantastic balcony view. Comfortable room. Staff who treat me as though I am special. A city I know well. I sleep to the rhythmic seasong of surf pounding the seawall.

But . . . Oh, that trickster little word . . . But. I must make a decision. Nothing momentous. This is a small thing. Nothing to do with the fate of nations.

An unfortunate aspect of my psyche is that when a choice is important, I see my way clearly (in my own mind) and snap, decision made, for better or (often enough) for worse! Marriage? Cross-country move? Buy or sell house?  New job? I know my mind.

Give me something small to niggle on and I can make it last, complete with sleep deprivation, for weeks. In the past hour I have 1. Decided to return to Etzatlan with my friends. 2. To stay in Mazatlan another week, hoping for my residency paperwork to be completed. 3. To return in three weeks with Missouri Jim. 4. To take the bus to Mazatlan the minute I hear my card is ready, overnight and bus back. Whew. Wears me out thinking about it.

Stay now? Return later? I look at each option financially, logistically, physically, and as logically as I am capable.

Truth is, there is no wrong or right decision. Each decision has consequences, some well-hidden, over which we have no control or foreknowledge. No good. No bad.

No judgement. Take this scenario. I came to Mazatlan for beach time with friends. That’s good, right?

Three days along and I fall, land on my f’ord bumper, crack my head and batter my body? Oh, that’s bad, right?

If I’d never fallen, I would never have thought to buy the Cadillac of a marine-blue 4-wheel walker, which enables me to walk while battered but also is correcting my lurching hobble to a more balanced gait. So, hey, good thing I came to Mazatlan, fell and got a new walker, right.

Ha! Neither good nor bad. No judgement. Simply consequences.  Layers of consequences. Some more comfortable than others.

While I mulled choices of chocolate or vanilla, Hurricane Lorena made her presence known, earlier than expected.  Coconut palms bent northward into the wind. A beach umbrella flew past my head. 

This is not a Mary Poppins moment.

Skip the ice cream. I’m off to my room.

When the moment came, the winds and rains from the storm over, I decided to make the drive home with my friends. I made the decision based solely on my heart. I wanted to touch the walls of my own home. I wanted an avocado from my own garden, a papaya from my own tree, a sleep in my own bed.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

September 26, 2019

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Grass is greener, both sides of the fence!

                        Grass is greener, both sides of the fence!

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One day last week Leo asked, “Had breakfast yet?”

I grabbed my bag and we headed to the gordita place. I’m certain there are a hundred gordita places in Etzatlan. This one is on the man street; that’s what I call it. Block after block of repair shops, tire and tool stores, that kind of thing. Man stuff, man street.

These aren’t stores like we are used to seeing. Might be five or six to a block, open fronts, no signage. Might be more workers than tools.

I sat in a plastic chair, at a battered red metal Coca Cola table, waiting for my gordita. Across the street, a dozen men hung out around the moto (motorcycle) repair shop. Judging by the number of motor bikes in front, my guess is some are for sale.

The tortilleria next door had a fair number of customers in and out, each taking time to chat before leaving with a kilo or two fresh tortillas in hand.

Crosswise is a farm seed store. A spotted white roof dog is asleep on the upper corner. The other lot has a dozen big trucks parked in and around, in various stages of repair and waiting for parts.

Constant traffic streams past; walkers, school children in uniform, a young man picking up trash. A truck delivering bags of cement, the propane truck, a garbage truck, a lawn and garden truck, another stacked with homemade bricks. An ordinary day.

“I miss this,” I told Leo over plates of assorted gorditas. “I miss the constant street activity, watching people, feeling like I’m part of it all. I had that in Mazatlan.”

Leo, who is an old man in a young body, said, “Sondrita, sometimes you lonely. I see you.”

Well, that was last week.

This week I am in Mazatlan, not at my old stomping grounds, but a hoot and a holler south. I’m staying at a resort with friends. Altogether there are nine of us. Plus, I get to see other friends. Hard to be lonely with this group!

We love Mazatlan. Kathy and I hit the ground running, seeing old friends, knocking items from our Mazatlan “to do” lists.

Ironically, last week, I wrote about finding friends in the Obits. This week I nearly got to write my own. That is a terrifying thing.

I left my studio unit to meet Kathy and Richard in the lobby to catch the shuttle to the Marina for dinner. I am wobbly enough without sea water on the elevator floor to add to my woes. My wet shoe sole slid out from under me. I didn’t fall; I soared and hit the marble tile head first.

Kathy said I had the biggest goose egg she’s ever seen. I thought my head split open and there was nothing funny about it.

Within minutes, trained staff, a lifeguard from the beach and the hotel doctor were caring for me. When they could move me, they transported me to Kathy and Richard’s rooms where I was incarcerated for the night, under Richard’s good care. He is a retired GP.

I’m so very lucky. No broken bones, no concussion, no permanent damage, not even to ego. Details are fuzzy and may they ever remain so!

Colorful. That is me in shades of purple and blue. And black. Black from above my brow to mid-cheek. I’ve the best fright mask for Halloween. May it please not remain that long!

Blind-folded, we poke our hand inside a bag of life and pull out our day. From now on, whatever I reach, I’m calling perfect. It might be gorditas and the street scene. It might be my balcony over-looking the beach. Might be my back yard.

As usual, I’ve caught myself pining for grass on both sides of the fence. Do I never learn?

Meanwhile, I shall work on a new definition for “Golden Girl” as purple, my main skin color of the day, segues into gruesome gold. It is an annoyance, not a disaster!

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

September 19, 2019

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Dear Havre Daily News

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            I have turned into my father and I don’t like it. When I lived in Washington, I used to almost dread Dad’s phone calls because they too frequently meant that somebody we knew, in the family or in the neighborhood, had died.

            Every day I open the Havre Daily Homepage, ostensibly to see what is going on in my old neighborhood. But a not-so-teeny part of me can’t wait to scan down to the obituaries. I am always relieved when there are no names I recognize.

            Just this week, out of seemingly nowhere, an old school friend popped into my head. Where did he come from? I hadn’t given him a thought in many years.

So what do I discover today in the Obits? His mother had died. Not only that, my old friend was gone too. When did he die? How? And how subtle are the connections among us to which we give no thought?

I mourn my old friend. He was fun. I mourn his mother. I considered asking you, HDN, to drop the Obituary section from your paper. But, then, what would I do?

At odd moments over the next few days, my old friend from high school intruded on my thoughts. It seemed like the thoughts were conversations; he’d come to visit and we caught up on old times, talked about in-between then and now. In a strange way, he comforted me.

Your article asking that Havreites be on the lookout for the greater short-horned lizard intrigued me. That lizard in the photo looked very familiar to me. I looked out the window onto my patio. Yep. There the little bugger is, slithering across the concrete. I have a hard time believing these critters could be in short supply in any habitant, not the way they carry on.

Just in case I am mistaken in identifying this particular lizard, being competent in foraging through the wilds of Wikipedia, I looked. Yes, they inhabit the earth all the way down into central Mexico, which is us. There are a great variety of looks and features but the one pictured in the Havre Daily looks exactly like the one over there, see, behind that aloe plant.

             Apart from the obituaries which bring me unwanted news and grief, I appreciate our local newspapers. Larkspurs or lizards, our local news is where we live, where giant tractors harvest bumper crops, wildfires harvest other acres. High School sports, doings at City Hall, a new business opening. Jamie Ford gives a talk at the library. Pam moves her rock crop to make space for horses.

Local news is where we peg memories that never fade. Doesn’t matter if my body is in Mexico, a piece of me lives on the Hi-Line and always will.  

My daughter just phoned, wanted to talk before she read about me in the HDN Obits!

Sondra Ashton            

Looking out my back door     

September 12, 2019  

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