Along for the ride

Along for the ride

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Now and then I am reminded how utterly unimportant I am. Sometimes a nudge from memory. Or a ‘knowing’ I’d forgotten.

Being alone as much as I am with only a couple flesh-and-blood people to talk with, face-to-face with appropriate two meter social distance, I have a tendency to be inward.

Self-centered is the better term. I begin to think my thoughts are important, that they matter. When people are around, I voice my thoughts and friends laugh at me, put me in my place. They save me from my own misdirection. That is a good thing.

Even though scattered throughout North America, these friends still stop me from getting too serious.

John called. I told him that my mind rips off on a tear and thinks it knows everything. It knows. The topic doesn’t matter. It knows. He laughed. He and I are similar that way, share the trait. We agreed that knowing all is soothing to the ego but not realistic. All points of view have validity, if only to the pointer.

Richard wrote, “You are living in a small Spanish-speaking town in central Mexico. For many Americans that is nuts.” See what I mean? My friends are great to put me in my place. I love them for that. Nuts. Of course. I am nuts.

My mind keeps me entertained with no outside intervention. Is that insanity? Billy Collins, poet, wrote, “Jumping through the hoop of myself.” I understand those words with various hoopy-loopy implications.

My friend Karen from Floweree wrote, “I think we are just along for the ride.”

That is surely true for me. Today’s ride is my garden. Every day I learn something. Several weeks ago I emptied flower pots and bought five-gallon buckets. Crin gave me seed. I planted corn. Perhaps Canadian sweet corn doesn’t like Mexican conditions. Perhaps I planted during the wrong moon phase, day of week, or juxtaposition of planets.

At any rate, the corn refused to mature. Remember, we are not talking a ‘real’ garden here, but experimental pots and buckets. Corn grew tall stalks, puny ears. Finally I twisted off a few ears with dark brown dry silk, a sure sign of ready-to-eat. What I uncovered were skinny, baby-teeth kernels, wormy throughout.

Leo hucked out all the corn and hauled it over to Samantha for horse fodder. That meant disturbing the beans planted in the same pots. I planted bush beans. Three kinds. The only beans that are acting normal are the lima beans. The pinto beans and white beans, prevalent in Jalisco; both threw out yards of runner, marrying anything within reach.

Unraveling the bean runners was like un-tangling yarn. I thought I might have to rip out the beans too and start over but after a sprinkle of rain and a night of rest, I think they will revive and survive.

Leo rearranged a strip of flower garden and planted more corn, this time in the good earth, no pots or buckets involved. We’ll wait and see.

My other buckets are thriving. I’m eating zucchini, cucumbers, and chard along with mangoes from my own tree. Even the root vegetables I eyeballed with despair a couple weeks ago look strong and healthy. It is all I can do to keep my fingers out of the dirt. Like a child, I want to dig down and see if there really is a turnip or parsnip or beet beneath all that greenery.

My cousin Nancie from Sedro Woolley, Washington, phoned Leo, who is well after his attack of stones. After checking Leo’s welfare, she asked, “How is Sondra? Is she happy?” Leo told her that I am just fine. “But is she happy?”

What is happy? I am surrounded by colorful beauty. Lettuce-loving iguanas, with whom I’ve sorta-kinda made peace, have retreated from my garden now that rains are here. Hibiscus is blooming unmolested. Everything possible is in flower. I enjoy the challenge of my bucket garden, even the failures.  

Across the highway and up the street toward town a couple blocks is an auto-parts store. When the old man who owns it is around, he starts the day playing the world’s most beautiful Latino music. At full volume. I love those days. I’m grateful for every small event. More often his son runs the store, and like me, has not a musical bone in his body.  

As Karen said, I am along for the ride. As self-centered as I might get, I know am not in the driver’s seat. Some of the road is bumpy. Every day is different. Every day is new. And I’m nuts anyway, so, yeah, Nancie, call me ‘happy’.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

July 16, 2020

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Got myself in trouble

 Got myself in trouble

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The week has been filled with emails sailing back and forth between myself and my friends in the States and in Canada. We each are settling into a way of living that might be our new norm for months, even longer.

It had been on my mind a long while, since I’m the only northerner on the rancho, to write a group letter lining out my own boundaries for safety curing this Covid pandemic. Sooner or later, people will come filtering back. Rather than address them one at a time, I thought this would be the better method, a way to make myself clear with everybody.

So after weeks of procrastination, I sat down and I did it. I requested that once they were able to cross the border, my friends quarantine themselves from my presence for two weeks minimum on arrival.

I informed them that until a vaccine was available to myself, I would not go caroming around the country with anyone: not for breakfast, not for dinner, not shopping, not exploring, not to the ocean, neither Atlantic or Pacific.

I asked that when coming my way for a patio visit, they ring the cowbell hanging on my small gate. I always hear it. I will come out and invite them inside the big gate. The ‘boys’ and I have devised a system whereby the small gate is mine and the big gate is for their use. It works.

When Benjamin delivers water jugs or David from Vivero Centro comes to spray or I drag a bin out to the garbage pickup men, I wear a mask. Everyone else has done likewise and I respect that they respect my safety. So, yes, I also required we all mask up. I will. I expect you to do likewise.

Once on the patio, I request social distance and no sharing of food and drinks. We may eat together but we each prepare and bring our own vittles.

Know what I forgot? I neglected to say, one family at a time, at least until we see how the system functions.  Oh, well. Still plenty of time to address that since nobody is here anyway.

I went on to say that so far Etzatlan has dodged the bullet, so to speak, and only because of extreme vigilance on the part of all peoples. (Do I sound like I’m beating a dead horse?)

Then, boy howdy, I held my breath until the answers began arriving. The majority responded with respect, with positive things to say, with agreement that they would want the same considerations.

One person did not respond and I already know he does not agree with me.

And one responded with outright anger. Which I figured was coming. I wrote back that I respect that her position and choices are different.

Then Kathy and Richard along with Crin, living separately together in the same house, from whom I got a lot of these good guidelines, including having hand sanitizer, soap and towels readily available for all comers, began browbeating me that I am not prepared enough.

They began laying out “what if” scenarios. What if I got sick? Do I have basic medicines? A thermometer? A way to contact the ambulance?

Next, they offered their freezers (my refrigerator freezer is pitifully small but more than adequate for my daily use). Kath and Crin’s premise is that if Leo and Josue were sick, how would I be able to get food and necessities to hold me for a month or two?

I’ve only recently become comfortable with shopping only for immediate use, the Mexican way. It took a long time for me to not stock up on food as though facing a Montana winter in the outback.

I made a two page list and sent Leo off on a shopping expedition to include every other tienda in town. Oops, add toothpaste, Leo. Oh, and I need to put money on my cell phone. And I forget mantequilla.

In addition, I ordered extras of certain fruits and veggies to prepare for the freezer, not a lot, but a little bit. I expect to be supplementing my larder with produce from my bucket garden soon. My mangoes are starting to ripen so I’ll be eating my own mangoes by next week.

So I haven’t exactly reverted to being a true prepper but I do feel better prepared for the worst possible scenario.

I told Leo that if I get sick and die I want him and Josue to divide up all the food in my house and in my bodega. Wish you could have seen his look of horror. 

Then I forbid him to get sick, in those words, with pointed wagging forefinger.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

July 2, 2020

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