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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