I have nothing to say

 

            I have nothing to say

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Some weeks are like this. Nothing happens. My mind is either too restless to settle or too restful to notice.

My son Ben and his girlfriend Kristen are recovering from the Covid virus. That doesn’t mean I don’t worry. He told me only this much, “We are getting better but have no energy.” I am grateful for all your prayers and best wishes for my kids. Beyond that, I have nothing of importance to impart.

This week nothing more obnoxious than silverfish has invaded the intimate spaces of my wee casita. I can tell no stories of daring-do and danger.

It is autumn, in this, my Mexican home. The Fresno trees are shedding their clothes, getting naked for winter. What a silly backwards world.

Kiskadees and various varieties of finches and of tanagers have arrived and are building nests, competing for food and tree limbs with homebody birds which neither come nor go.

But that means nothing to you, huddled around your wood stove or shoveling drifts from your driveway or scraping ice from the windshield, gritting your teeth at my flaunting descriptions of paradisiacal delights.

I don’t blame you. Put the page down and go brew a cup of steaming coffee, a better use of your time.  

Charlotte tells me she imagines me in my “Secret Garden” and there is some truth to that. My yard is walled around and while not secret, only I am aware of hidden nooks and history. Only I notice the large-leafed climber I planted two years ago, the one which merely survived for a year and a half, is now lustily climbing the wall and soon will have spread into a gripping stronghold.

Only I know where the colorful glass hearts are hanging against the brick, entwined with tiny leafy vine I planted, again, years ago, to cover my new bare-brick wall.

Visitors ooh and aah but mainly see a sprawl of green with vivid paint-like blots of geranium and hibiscus flowers. Rightly so, for my visitors’ focus is on telling their stories. I listen.

If you are still with me, please, don’t bother. Truly, I’ve nothing to say.

I suppose I could mention my on-going supply of bucket tomatoes, more than I can eat, but I’ve already run that tired horse around the track too many times.  

Today the wind blows, not a storm wind, not a Montana wind. A mere eight or nine mph.

Today I shall be as a Fresno tree, and stand tall and full in my Secret Garden, lifting my arms for the wind to blow away the leaves, curled brown, papery dry and lifeless. 

See, I warned you. Today I have nothing to say.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

November 19, 2020

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The creature from the white lagoon

 

                The creature from the white lagoon

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My son and his fiancé are both sick with the dread coronavirus. I had not heard from him so I hounded him, knowing something was wrong. Ben managed to send me a two line email letting me know they were home in bed with a nurse coming regularly.

Aside from that, I know nothing except they are too ill to be in communication with me or with anybody else. I understand all they do is sleep. Sleep is good. Washington State has good health care and I hang onto that as a life line.

It’s been at least three weeks now. And I really don’t know when Ben and Kristen began to be ill. But Ben was sick on his birthday, unable to call. To say I am worried sick is the understatement of my year. By the way, “worried sick” is not a cliché. It is a reality.

Worry is a mother’s prerogative. In the last two weeks I’ve aged another ten years. By definition I am nothing but worry contained in a wrinkled bag of skin.

To stay healthy, I’ve barricaded myself within my garden walls. Now I’ve added a wellness check to my morning routine. I understand that symptoms of the coronavirus include inability to smell and taste. So when I wake in the morning, I open my mouth and huff. So far, each morning—ewwww—I’m assured that I am still relatively healthy.

While I keep occupied with a variety of daily activities, I suppose one could say that my mind is preoccupied without let up.

Still, life dishes out a measure of excitement. I live in Mexico, a country rife with creatures. Each morning I shake out my shoes, hoping if a scorpion has crawled inside, he will fall out of my shoe before I insert my foot. When I lay out my bathmat in front of the shower, I do so carefully, aware of the wide variety of spiders. I scan the shower before turning on the water, looking for cockroaches I hope not to see.

This afternoon while reading on the patio I felt the call of nature. I sashayed into the bathroom unzipping as I went, when I let out a blood-curdling scream. (“Blood-curdling” is not a cliché; it is a reality.)

I am not given to hysterics. Paralysis in the face of danger, yes, but not hysterics.

Head to tail, there was a two-foot long beast in my biffy. Sleek and black, half body, half tail, with big grasping iguana-style feet, my own personal loch mess monster.

I ran for the phone and called Leo, whom I thought was working at a neighbor’s. “Leo, where are you?”

“I’m in town. What’s wrong?”

“There’s a dragon in my toilet.”

“I’ll be right there.”

I went back to the bathroom to make sure I was not hallucinating. Two feet long and lounging like a tourist with an umbrella drink in a resort pool.   

Back to the living room, I propped open my screen door for Leo so he would not have to touch it to enter. Even in emergency I am careful about my coronavirus safety. Back to the bathroom to stand guard. What would I do if the creeper crawled out?

Leo came. Leo saw. Leo went next door for help.

Josue was in his shop welding. Soon both men returned. Josue, masked in welding gear and wearing huge welding gloves, with a long-handled grabber in one hand, assayed the situation.

Though I wasn’t willing to put my own life at risk, I couldn’t understand why one of the guys didn’t just reach in and grab it, until they informed me that the critter had big teeth and could bite hard.   

With armored gloves, Josue plucked the dragon creature out of the pond and carried it away.

The juvenile iguana had climbed down the open (now screened) top of the vent pipe for my sinks and toilet, crawled all the way into the septic tank where, given how skinny he was, he’d been trapped a while. Eventually the monster doubled back and found the outlet into the toilet. I don’t even want to know how the guys figured out that progression.  

Dragons being an endangered species, perhaps Josue let it go. Perhaps the creature came in attracted by my morning dragon breath. Perhaps I’ll not soon enter the bathroom in the dark of night without flicking the light switch.

Remember when we carried a lantern to the outhouse to check for rattlesnakes before entering? Remember chamber pots?

Ben, my son, please get well soon. Have I got a story to tell you!

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

November 12, 2020

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Those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end

 

            Those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end

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The Governor of Jalisco pushed the Emergency Button. Only food stores and pharmacies are open for business. The numbers for Covid infections and deaths have doubled what they were a couple weeks ago and are rising daily.

Like elsewhere, people were getting careless and complacent. Out here in the hinterlands, every day we hear of nearby deaths. Today, five in little San Marcos, just up the road. How is that possible?

I feel like Joe Btfsplk from the long gone comic strip, Li’l Abner. Not that I drag disaster in my wake but that I walk with a black cloud hovering heavily over my shoulders.

Trying to make the best of a horrific situation in which none of us are exempt, I carry on as normally as possible.

My kitchen is filled with steamy aromas of spices and vinegar. The local people don’t eat pickles so I can my own. Jars of bread-and-butter pickles with an added Mexican touch of red chilies, cool on the counter. Pop, pop, pop sounds announce successful seals.

My second bucket garden promises more lima beans, turnips, parsnips, and beets. Cabbage and peas are possible. Garlic is sprouting. In the house I’ve herbs drying, in hanging clusters, loosely in colanders and large bowls.

There is no “normal”, of course. Normal is an illusion, a dream story we tell ourselves.

Time like a river flows around us, changing continuously, bringing changes to us, to our environment. There is no making the river stand still, nor can we push it backwards. Rivers run dry and rivers flood. We cannot make the river run where we want it to run.

What can we do? We ride the river as best we can. At any rate, that is my solution.  All my worries climbed in my boat with me, I cannot deny them. Worries about my family and friends, especially those with health complications. Worries about money. Worries for my country. I’d drown those worries if I could.

Strange how with the lockdown, in the absence of ‘normal’ ever-present highway noise, the silence is loud. When we operate under ‘business as usual’, I don’t even hear the cars, background that fades into nothingness.

I finish my collage and begin scribbles of what I hope will become a picture of sorts, though it starts as a mushing together of colliding colors. Next to the table, a length of silk draped over a bench waits to tell me what it wants to become.

Outside my bedroom window the lantana bush, (planted by bats—I now have four; four lantana, not bats!) feeds two dozen robin-like thrushes. The birds are workers, harvesting berries that look similar to blackberries but certainly are not edible.  I tried. Pftuie.

My back yard has never been more beautiful as trees and flowers and bushes planted two and three and four years ago come to maturity. Even if I wanted, I could not stay away. Pruning shears in hand, I sit in my ocher-painted metal rocker and revel in the lushness.

In little ways, I fill my days. Little things I do. Little things I notice. Little things I give thanks for simply being.

History tells me there have always been times of disaster, of turmoil and upheaval on every front. Somehow, we keep going, stubborn people that we are.

There is no turning back for us, no return to former times. Life doesn’t work that way. Nor would we want it, if honest with ourselves. Every day brings changes. Some make me want to stuff my head in the sand. Some changes give me great joy. Pain. Disgust. Laughter. Fear. Anticipation. Like rocks in the river, each different, each simply there. If there be any true definition of normal, perhaps this is it.

As I sit in my rocker after pruning back the flowering ginger, finished flashing its beauty for the season, I notice a strangeness in the air, along with a foreboding of our winter. Strange in that cool air currents mingle with the warm currents, each separate, yet together.

Be safe. Be calm. Be kind with self and with one another. Peace be with you.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

November 5, 2020

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Aging Exponentially

 

            Aging Exponentially 

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A couple weeks ago I wrote Kathy, “I have aged ten years since I had surgery in January.” Today Kathy wrote me, “I’ve aged twenty years since this coronavirus pandemic.” Since Kathy is close to ten years younger, that makes us about even.

Fears, worries, lack of solutions, illnesses, deaths, feelings of isolation and helplessness—all take their toll, on our bodies, minds and spirits.

It was March before most of us realized the dangers which surround us. March when we began to hunker down and discover the benefits of solitude. Here it is the end of October and it looks like we are in for the long haul. No wonder visible aging accelerates day by day.

It helps neither my peace of mind nor the image I see in my mirror that my baby, my youngest, my son, had his forty-third birthday this week. I just felt forty-three more wrinkles latch onto my face.

Meanwhile, over at my little dining table, surrounded with children’s art supplies, I make a wind-back-the-clock discovery. I have two projects going, one a collage and the other a . . . uh . . . a creation, sorta, using crayons and water colors.

One thing that is liberating about using simple crayons and scrap paper is that I’m not wasting expensive oils and canvases in practice sessions destined for the trash can.

A more important liberation—no rules. I don’t have to color in the lines and if a fish appears in the treetops, who is to tell me it is wrong! After all, if the fish wants to be in the tree, who am I to tell it, “Shoo, go away.”

Last wintertime when I was bed-bound, another friend gave me a coloring book for adults and a set of colored pencils. I thumbed through the elaborate designs. Some deep instinct held me back. I couldn’t do it.

Sure, the pages were pretty and required a good sense of color combinations but also required one to stay within pre-set lines. I gave the book and pencils back, with awkward thanks.

As a meditative practice, I know the coloring book has value. It’s simply not mine, not for now.

When I am coloring with a grandchild, I might color a hippopotamus purple and my small companion thinks nothing of it. And if I add wings and boots to the hippo, we both giggle with glee.

Grandchildren are long ago and far away though I have three little great-grandchildren who would more than suffice if only visiting was safe. So I content myself with playing with my own little girl, an inside job. 

I dabble at my ‘art’. It’s not a job. There is no deadline. The table stays littered with scissors, paper scraps, crayons. Nobody is coming to dinner.

My snips and scribbles gave me an ‘ah ha’ moment through a buried memory. Back in Mrs. Brown’s first grade class I reigned the undisputed best with scissors, paste and crayons. While coloring a picture for a contest, the sky was blue, the grass green, tree trunks brown, none of my colors dared wriggle outside the lines.

I don’t recall every detail in the picture except a seemingly vast expanse of grass, which I filled in with horizontal care. Until the final three square inches, which I made strongly vertical.

I remember Mrs. Brown’s expression of horror, “Why did you do that?”

What could I have answered? I remained mute. Adults ask the vilest of unanswerable questions to six-year old children.

If I could time travel I would fill the sky with fishes, and plant a purple hippo with red mud boots and a flowered straw hat in that final plot of green grass. Just for fun.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

October 29, 2020

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