The Value of Darning Socks

            The Value of Darning Socks

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Late in the day I read a profound passage in a Swedish mystery novel. The daughter asked her father why life seems so much harder in these modern times. His answer was that we no longer darn socks.

This makes perfect sense, of course, food for thought for times to come.

My grandmother put needle and thread in my hands before I started school. Two things I learned quite young. I embroidered pillowcases with floral borders and I darned my own stockings. Grandma did not have an extra darning egg to give me, so I used a light bulb. I remember being quite proud when finally allowed to darn my Dad’s socks.

The father character in my Henning Mankell novel explained to his daughter that the changes in society began small. Instead of darning a sock when our big toenail worries a hole, we throw the pair away and buy new. In a bundle of six or twelve.

I’m taking the father’s idea and running with it, expanding upon it a bit. Because what he says contains a truckload of truth. Who in our day replaces buttons on shirts? Mends bicycle tires? Repairs a broken shovel handle?

First we throw away the small, inconsequential everyday things. A simple pair of stockings. What a concept. One might have new socks several times a year, not just at the beginning of the school year—or at Christmas. Socks are relatively cheap, right?

At one time that footwear you just discarded had a real use value. Value and cost are not necessarily synonymous. Somewhere along the years, socks lost value. “It’s just socks. Buy new.”

We took giant steps with that concept and not overnight either. A radio used to have pride of place in the living room, an actual piece of furniture. Friends and neighbors gathered round on Friday night to listen to symphonies, to comedy, to news of the world. Then along came transistors.

In a nutshell, that’s my take on the way of our world. We make things flimsier. We make things stronger, more versatile. We make them miniature. We make them with built-in obsolescence. Change is beneficial. I’ve no argument. Change is also detrimental. A paradox.

I like living in a small farm village in Mexico where it seems I’ve reverted back in time sixty or seventy years. But any of the modern conveniences I wish to have are available. When something breaks, we still fix it. Most everything has value.

In most cities, probably most cities in the world, one can pick through the back alley on garbage pickup day and find items unbroken, unblemished, still usable. One wonders, why was this perfectly good whichywonker thrown away? Last year’s model? Different color preferred? A small blemish on the corner? Why?

Reasonable or unreasonable, the trash in the alley, good or broken, no longer has perceived value.

Alley trash is one thing. But when we cease to value people, when we throw away those we don’t want to see, (same list as above), then we are in dire straits; we are in real trouble.

When I don’t value you, I don’t value me. A sense of despair guides decisions. The world shrugs.

That was cheerful, wasn’t it? I’m not saying if we all get out the darning needles and patch those holey socks the world will get better. But it might.

Think about what we throw away. Think about who we throw away.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

February 27, 2020

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Taking back my life, like killing snakes.

Taking back my life, like killing snakes.

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I am soooo bad. The ‘like killing snakes’ part is hard for me. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been told, “Slow down. You are going at that job (whatever it is) like killing snakes.” Uh, huh. More than one person. Is that a tried and true Montana phrase? I on’t know.

Miguel, my physical therapist, tells me the same thing in different words. He says, “No rapido, no rapido!” or “Lento, lento!” “Despacio!”Or “Suave, suave.” Those are the words he says. What I hear is “Slow down. You are going at that like killing snakes.”

I can’t help it. I am excited. Now that I am finally allowed to do things, am capable, I want to do it all. Life doesn’t work that way, of course. And I do know that. When I get in a hurry or overdo, I pay. 

I pay with discomfort.

Discomfort is not the same thing as pain. Pain is what I lived with for too many years prior to surgery.  

Discomfort is what I experience when I decide, after two hours of exercise, to clean my entire house in one day, dust, sweep, mop, change linens, rearrange my desk and my dishes cupboard.

Discomfort does not require a pain pill. Discomfort reminds me that I could have divided the chores into several days, lento, lento, slowly, slowly. One snake at a time, you might say.

Why do I say ‘I am bad’? It is such a small thing but it looms large to me. Over the last several months, Leo, my garden helper, has taken over many of my home chores. The cleaning.  Emptying household garbage. Hanging laundry. Plus, or in addition to the totality of garden work. Some of which I used to do.

I did not give up my duties overnight. First gardening became too difficult. Then the housework and grocery shopping, until I was invalided into the corner with a book. After surgery, Leo became one of my caretakers.

Unfortunately for Leo, he was down the entire past week plus two weekends with a flu. I took advantage, picked up my former household chores.

I spent a good many hours assessing my garden. Tools are missing. The bodega is cluttered with items which could/should be stored back in what I call the tunnel, a covered area between the bodega and my outer brick wall. I’m ready to make some changes, to take back my life, my home, my garden.  

I made a list of changes and chores. A touchy list. Leo is a sensitive soul. I have relied on him for ‘everything’ for many months.

Leo is back to work, first day. He is not up to full strength. So I picked two simple things from my list, determined to introduce changes slowly. He is sensitive, remember. I don’t want him to hear, “I don’t need you.” But I know what I say is not always what one hears.

Unfortunately, I am a blurter. Like killing snakes, remember. I meant to say, “Just water my potted plants today, por favor,—the ones around the house. I don’t want you to get over-tired, to do too much or you can relapse.” “Oh, and I cannot find some of my garden tools, my pruner and a couple diggers. They should be in the bodega.”

One blurt led to another. “Don’t use the blower. I can sweep the patio now! (I dislike the blower, which only rearranges dust.) That led me to mention weeds in the channels in the concrete, weeds that will uproot concrete if not removed. In my defense, Leo asked about the empty pot next to the hot tub. The Swedish Ivy got the white smut disease, up and died overnight. I pulled it out but need help sterilizing the pot. Which led to . . . . Well, you get the picture.

Leo is probably crying his heart out to Josue next door. “What I do? Why she no like me anymore? She is take away my work.”

Okay. That is my imagination; always looking for the worst. Reality is generally kinder. Maybe the joke is on me and Leo is relieved, celebrating, feels a rock lifted from his shoulders!

I did not unload my entire three page list. I will divide my list into forty-two weeks. I will pick and choose with care. One snake at a time. I will stitch my lips shut.

In truth, I cannot pick up all my former chores immediately. But, boy howdy, here I come.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

February 20, 2020

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Turtle Introspections

Turtle Introspections

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One day Bonnie said to me, “Sondra, you are a turtle. When in a group you tuck your head inside your shell, listen and watch.” Ever since then I cannot look in the mirror without seeing my turtle.

In a moment of turtle introspection, I realized a turning point has changed the direction of my life. I generally don’t see my turning points until I can look backward. Some positive, others not so much.

In my freshman English 101 class at what was then the College of Great Falls, I was an adult student with an eight-month baby girl. I felt dumb as a post hole, having graduated high school in Harlem, now surrounded by brilliant sophisticated youth from the two Great Falls high schools, students with definite advantages.

Many adult students attended CGF, mostly men from the Air Base. But my inspiration was a woman, eighty-eight years old, attending my same freshman English class. I clearly see that my higher education was a stepping stone, not a turning point. But I’ll bet it was a turning point for this admirable woman.

I didn’t know enough, was too young, to ask her the questions I would ask today. I sat at the same round wooden table with her in the SUB between classes, sipping tea and pretending to study. One day a man in his thirties asked her why she was starting College this late in her life. “Why not?” she answered. Undaunted, he continued. “But do you realize how old you will be when you graduate?” 

And for the first time I heard the classic answer, “How old will I be if I don’t?” Turtles live a long life.

Turning points seem like the seasons. Sometimes a season changes imperceptibly. Or like today, I woke up from winter yesterday into spring today. 

My lime trees are full of white blossoms, the mango and avocado heavy with seed shoots, the pomegranate loaded with blossoms and baby fruit. A green bird with yellow belly and distinctive black and white helmet head perches on my clothesline pole. Lavender and jade and the purple flowered bush perfume the air. Emerald hummingbirds flash like blinking Christmas lights in the bottlebrush.

Surely, we may have more cold days but spring is undeniably here. And with the arrival of spring, I have arrived at a turning point in my life.

I am not sure that means there will be a perceptible difference, looking at me from the outside inward.

I’ll probably still wonder if I combed my hair this morning. But from within, outward, I know with everything in all my knowingness, I’ve turned a corner.

Most of my turning points have been subtle. Not marriage or deaths or births or geographic moves. If my life goes on the same as before, with same actions, that is not a turning point but merely a leaving one room and entering another, sometimes hoping geography will make a difference.

One turning point long ago, at CGF, was when my English teacher, after reading a story I wrote, asked me, “Have you thought about writing poetry?” I turned the story into a poem and never looked back.

Or when a friend said, “You need to spend at least a month alone and get your head together.” 

Terrified me. It was years before I acted upon his advice, but those words created a turning point, regardless, never forgotten. Slow, like a turtle, but I got there!

For me, change has seldom been precipitated by a large event, I’m talking inner change, a life-attitude change. More likely the cause has been a whisper, a fleeting image, a subtle nudge.

So why do I feel so confident this is a turning point? I suppose I sound crazy. But I stand differently on my two feet, taller, more confident. I breathe more deeply. The green is greener to my eyes. I’m no longer in black and white Kansas but my personal tornado has plunked me in the middle of Technicolor Oz.

Those are outward signs. Inside, I feel like I’ve been scrubbed clean, ready for a new chapter. Right—I do sound crazy.  

For a while, I have been letting life happen to me, a passive bystander. Now I feel dissatisfied. 

Rumblings. Anger. Ready to move forward. This turtle has her head up, feet plodding along, ready to do some serious introspecting.  

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

February 13, 2020

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Musings, Observations, and Outright Guesses

Musings, Observations, and Outright Guesses

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I could have said ‘outright lies’ but I have no blessed idea how I am going to fill this page so ‘guesses’ seemed the more appropriate word.

Most weeks I know exactly what I want to say. It never comes out the way I think it will, but I have a definite idea to start. ‘I can’t wait to talk about that.’ Or, ‘I want to tell them this little story.’

This has been a strangely blank week. Maybe it is the gray skies, make me feel like I followed my son Ben home to Poulsbo, Washington; gray, grim, unrelenting wet.

“Where is the sunshine?” I ask as if it is my God-given right to expect sun every morning by 11:00 just because it is the usual way of the day unfolding here in my magical bit of Mexico.

There has not been enough sun to outline the clouds; dark and dreary and low and heavy hangs the ceiling, solid. Every day rain is forecast. Every day I think of Chicken Little and look for the sky to fall.

Then it did—fall—in fulsome wet steady streams, all night, all day, all night, relentless and unruly. Forecast today, ‘partly sunny’. Sol made a cameo appearance about 4:15 just prior to the wind gathering out of seemingly nowhere, bringing more rain. Rained all night, again.

Ten days of grim and gray, for me, translates to heated teakettles of water, sponge baths and hair-shampoos in the kitchen sink. I have a solar water heater and about the fifth gray day, water is best described as tepid. It is a minor inconvenience at most. Only happens once, rarely twice a year.

Worst are the feelings of vague ennui and low-level depression. Boredom? How can that be? I’m never bored, despite the fact I generally spend a good portion of each day outside. When gray generates cold. I huddle in my chair, lap blanket cover my legs, book in hand, sitting in the waft of warm air generated by my tiny tower heater. 

At least the rain brought a satisfaction of action—at last—something is happening.

But all along, every day I have activity, so why the lassitude? The lethargy?

My son flew back home. I had three weeks of his full-time care and coddling plus hot, vicious two-handed pinochle in which he trounced me. I loved every minute of it. It was time for him to go home.

Sadly. 

I can care for myself with a minimum of help from neighbors, most of whom visit daily. They come with stories, with hugs, with soup, casseroles, bone broth and cookies. Cousin Nancie who lives to bake brought a huge piece of white cake with coconut frosting. Hard to stay down in the dumps with such attention.

Miguel is my physical therapist, a kind young man who gives me treatments which make each cell seem to open like a flower and breathe. Then he ruins the effects with orders for daily exercises. But I do them, diligently. Pain is negligible.

My balance is incredible, comparatively speaking, as is my walking. How could one walk well lurching along like Chester in “Gunsmoke”, half a block behind, hollering, Mister Dillon! Mister Dillon! Five years of misery that could have been avoided had I know my leg was fixable.

Jerry and Lola are here from Idaho. Jerry and I are Harlem High classmates. This is my friends’ third visit with me here in Etzatlan. They are staying at the restored Hacienda El Carmen not far from my home. Today eight of us, me and my neighbors, Jerry and Lola, met at the Hacienda for a lovely lunch and three hour visit. I saw my friends from Oconahua. Kathy from Victoria phoned. I do not lack company.

I worry about my daughter who is overworked and overwrought. I fear for her health, but will she listen to her mother? No! She is too much like her mother.

I worry about my friend in Oregon who has a malady that is not fixable. I do not want her to bear the pain and to gradually lose functions. She is too vital.

I worry about another friend in Washington, worry that he has given up, is making do, is feeling real despair, not this shadow of despair I flirt with, knowing tomorrow the sun will shine.

It will. It is forecast and it will happen. Manana. Which might be tomorrow. Or possibly the next day.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

February 6, 2020

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The Wiley Side-hill Gougers

The Wiley Side-hill Gougers

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My first husband was quite the—uh—storyteller. Some of you knew Harvey and can verify my statement. Some of his stories even had elements of truth. Others were pure fabrication, even when they sounded verifiable.

I was eighteen when we married. A naïve eighteen. This was back in the day when the farthest mosy people ventured from home was the county seat for official business. Worldly, I was not.

I was well-read. However, the majority of books available to me in our little library in Harlem were Victorian literature. Sir Walter Scott was one of my favorite heroes. I tended toward a romantic and believing nature.

One fine autumn day Harvey and I were riding horseback in former buffalo country, checking cattle on a grazing lease out toward the mountains. That is when Harvey told me the story of the side-hill gougers.

“See those paths circling the hills?” he asked.

“Well, sure, can’t miss them. Those are not deer trails. What caused them?” I often fell with complete gullibility into his stories, much like Alice down the rabbit hole.

“Hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago, side-hill gougers roamed the land. Strange animals, hairy, with legs shorter on one side than the other, so they walked more comfortably around the hills never following a straight path . . . “

I am simply too embarrassed to finish the story he told me. Surely you get the idea. Hook, line and sinker, I swallowed. And this is only one his fabrications, with which he must surely have enjoyed fooling me with ease.

These past five years I have considered myself to be one of his mythical side-hill gougers, one leg shorter than the other, picking my way carefully over the terrain, trying to gauge where I can walk more easily, circling when possible.

I am an incredibly fortunate woman. Saturday I saw my orthopedic specialist who gave me a goodly report. He’d told me plainly I’d have not the ordinary surgery and that it would be very hard on my body. Those words were meaningless to me until I’d experienced the aftermath. Now, a full month later, I get to start physical therapy.

For the sixth time in my eventful life, I get to teach myself how to walk. Seventh. I forgot the baby years. That may not sound lucky to you, but whether fate, karma, destiny or whatever, I know how blessed I am.

I had the kind of anesthetic that allowed me to be aware when Dr. Francisco picked up my leg and pulled it to proper length. “How much did you stretch it?” “Ten centimeters,” his answer.

Do you realize that is just under two inches? Do you question that for those years, I truly was a side-hill gouger? Do you see how fortunate I know myself to be? Every day I raise my feet together to make sure they are still the same length.

Do you believe gullibility might be a genetic trait? When I told my friend Jane that Dr. F. said to me, “I can fix it,” she laughed and said, “This is Mexico. Every man will tell you he can fix it, whatever ‘it’ is.”

Gullible or not, I am fixed and ready to begin the arduous task of strengthening almost non-existent muscles in order to walk. I am hardly ready to charge like a buffalo, but I need never again be the rare, elusive, pre-historic side-hill gouger.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

January 30, 2020

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