February is the longest month

 

February is the longest month

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Into every life some rain must fall. Okay. I understand. Go throw up and come back to let me explain.

Our particular metaphoric “rainfall”, the whole world over, no humans exempt, the great equalizer, is the Covid 19 coronavirus. Hang in there with me a minute. I get smarmier.

Behind every rain lurks a rainbow. Are you still with me? Do I hear the echo of an empty-room?

I’m serious. I’m not saying this is a universal truth or anything like that. But a lot of good things are happening too.

Whether being homebound is voluntary or a result of business closures, just feast your eyes on the positive aspects. Or grind your teeth if you must.

Take personal relationships for example. Time with family. For some, now that mom and dad are working from home, it means renewing a closeness with your rosy faced cherubs. Ah, surely that brings smiles to your faces. More time at home might mean revising previously relaxed discipline measures.

Perhaps you have time to renew, refresh, restore acquaintance with your spouse. Or not. I’ve heard that can go both ways.

And how many of you have recently talked with old friends long forgotten? Warms my heart just thinking about it.

As for me, I’ve developed new recipes while wondering why my clothes keep shrinking. I’ve revised, revamped and otherwise altered every item in my wardrobe. My wee casita has never been better organized.

 While you in Montana are fast in the icy grip of Groundhog Regulated Winter, we in Jalisco welcome vestiges of Spring. I don’t think we have groundhogs here.

I’ve begun planting my bucket garden. Peas and beans are lifting into the sunshine. Newborn green shoots push away rusty dusty jacaranda leaflets which shower down with the slightest whisper of air. I saw, first time, tiny white lizard eggs.

Anything upon which I cast my eye is in danger of being changed. Just yesterday I transformed a tablecloth into coverings for three pillows; pillows I made from a bag of feathers I’d saved. I did the feather part of the job on the patio. When Leo came to water plants he asked, “You killed a chicken?”

That’s small potatoes. I’ve got a Big Project underway.

When I moved here, the house had to be gutted to make it livable. New plumbing, wiring, cabinets and cupboards, all had to be built. That took the first year.

Things that didn’t got into the house got shoved into the bodega, along with garden tools and other manly stuff, most of which was my own “man” tools, just saying, in case you want to tromp on me for not being PC.

The bodega had shelves along each wall cobbled together with junk wood and I simply lived with it, unhandy though it was.

Along the back and one side of my bodega run two hallways which I call the “tunnels”. Lots of miscellaneous junk had been shoved into those spaces, helter-skelter. So I asked Josue and Leo to work a plan to put all the garden and “man” stuff into the tunnels, after they were emptied, painted white for light. Josue made new shelving and racks and hangers.

Today the tunnels are a miracle of organization, clean and orderly and amazingly roomy.

Today the bodega is empty, junk wood discarded, and my storage items binned and boxed for Phase Two. Josue will pressure wash the bodega, paint it, move the washer to the corner which means change plumbing, rewire the room for my convenience. When finished I will have plenty of neat and strong storage space, designed for my needs. Oh, and he will change the small “jail house” openings for real windows.

The bonus to all this rig-a-ma-role is that half the bodega space will be available for a guest bedroom. Brilliant, yes, I think so too. Do you have your passport yet?

While isolation is no fun and safety restrictions are, well, restrictive, still, good things come to us. Winter is for a season. Spring is around the corner, no matter where we live.

When we began the bodega project, pulling all the “man” stuff out of the bodega and emptying everything out of the tunnels, spread around the whole patio, I said, “What a mess. Wonder how long it will be messy. Not complaining. I can live with it.”

Leo said, “This is Mexico. It will be done manana.”

This particular “manana” of Phase One took a week. I’m waiting for my next “manana”.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

February 11, 2021

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Letters, we get letters, we get stacks and stacks of letters

 

            Letters, we get letters, we get stacks and stacks of letters

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My last two were heavy-with-grief. I received unprecedented response. And lots of questions. I’ll talk about that in a minute.

First, the good news. My son is back, truly the Prodigal Returned. He is returned to his life. He is grieving, hurting, yet doing the hard work of a multi-faceted recovery.

My daughter’s family has a plan, well, more an examination of possibilities and potentialities for when Sweet Jess, and she is a dear woman, slips and lands on the hard ice of addiction.

The thing is, I know that your family and every family is suffering. The Differences are only in the Details.  As for me and my family, we have hope; we have joy.

Friends and strangers sent me letters. Letters of support. Letters of sympathy. Letters sharing your stories. Letters with questions.

Such as the following question: How did you think of tying your week together through soap operas? This was my preceding thought: “How can I write about my week? Nobody will believe me. My life is like a soap opera. I know I’m not the only one. I’ll bet yours is too! We all are living a soap opera.”

Once the words “soap opera” flitted through my head, all I had to do is fill in the blanks. Obviously I missed my calling. I could have gotten several seasons, perhaps years, from two weeks of family misadventures. I could have been wealthy. I could have been in Hollywood. Coulda, woulda, shoulda.

Are your stories fiction? No, I could not have made them up. Every word is true, as honest as I can lay it out there.

Are you a secret soap-opera aficionada and we never knew it? Are you binging in isolation on old soaps from days of yore? No. And no. See next question.

How did you know about all those old daytime soaps? When I was young and during the times of convalescence from measles, mumps and chicken pox, I was allowed to lounge on the living room sofa and watch our tiny television in a dimmed room. I wasn’t allowed to read because that might hurt my eyes. Oh, the irony.

Tack on summer, the day off for Thanksgiving, Christmas vacation and Good Friday (we had few breaks back in the golden olden days) and I could follow the soap-operatic lack of plot and action from illness to holiday to illness. 

I especially remember the adverts. All those jingles which will never leave my head. “Ajax, the foaming cleanser . . .” “Hooray for Beef-a-roni, made with macaroni . . .” “Duz does everything!”

Along with soaps I watched bowling with the whispering soft commentator’s voice, golf, another whisper voice, and grim polio documentaries with background whooshing whispers from iron lungs. I never learned to swim. You have to be really old to “get” that connection.

Readers also sent advice. If we, me and my family, swallowed every vitamin, remedy, snake oil and supplement recommended, we would be invincible, would live forever and probably waft in holiness up into the clouds—if the weight of swallowing all that with water didn’t plunk us back down to ground. However, a long-time aficionado of several snake oils, I thank you.

But I’m making fun and that’s not nice. Every letter that came to me came from genuine caring. They arrived with stories, with prayers, with love, with advice, with solace. And I appreciate every one. Thank you.

Here in Central Mexico, our little town is suffering. The State of Jalisco is on severe lockdown, extended through to mid-February. Hospitals are full. Too many have died. Too many are sick. Those who previously ignored restrictions have become fervid believers.

The postal office and the bank are closed. Workers are out with the coronavirus. Elders such as myself are denied store entry. “Stay home, stay safe,” we are told.  City government offices are open only sporadically. Taxes and water bills, normally due in January, have been extended, both to prevent long lines and because employees are home sick.

Life and Death cycle onward. I woke this morning still breathing. I sat in the sunshine back yard beneath the jacaranda tree, which is shedding like a horse in April, and watched a pair of partridge doves, untidy birds, attempt nest building, untidy nest, in a clump of air plant. Untidy birds. The nest looked like an engineering disaster but I’ll soon hear baby peeps.

For a blast-from-the-past treat, watch Perry Como sing the “Letters” song on You Tube. I wonder if I can watch Mexican soap operas on my computer. I already get the ads.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

February 4, 2021

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As the World Turns The Edge of Night

 

As the World Turns The Edge of Night

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Nobody could have written a soap opera to equal the drama of these pandemic days. It’s not just me and my family. We are all part of the drama. Nobody would believe it. No soap would sponsor such a program.

Last week’s episode in the of my family drama left us hanging with my son struggling with seizures resulting from the Covid virus, on strong medication, and Oops—The Secret Storm we were not supposed to know—drinking. He was a mere month away from celebrating six years of sobriety.

Both he and his girlfriend, a woman he’d met in aftercare treatment, were struck down by the virus and the dummies began drinking. Which came first. Don’t know. Doesn’t matter.

I had not heard from Ben for several weeks so naturally I was worried. Fortunately friends and family quickly intervened. Ben finally reached out to me, admitted he’d drank and claimed three days sobriety at that time. We talked. We connected heart to heart. I did not barbeque the fatted calf. But I gave it an extra measure of grain.

In the dark of the night or early morning if you must be technical, the phone rang. It was Ben. “Mom, Kristen is dead.” “What? How can that be?” I’d just talked with them in the evening.

Ben said they’d gone to bed early; he woke in the night to snuggle and her body felt cold. He called 911 and began chest compressions. The medics said it looked like she’d had a heart attack in her sleep. She was only thirty-five.

We were both in shock. He talked. I listened. We cried. How? Why? The only thing I could think to say was, “Ben, you loved her for five years. Nobody can take that away from her or from you.”

The following day Ben and I talked several times. In the evening, he said, “Mom, Kristen’s mother died.” No—how can that be? Later talks revealed her mother had not died but her aunt who has the same name died that morning, news no less devastating.

Her parents had been on the way to Ben’s house to pick up Kristen’s dogs. They had detoured to the hospital in Gig Harbor where the aunt lay dying. I’m not making this up.

Further phone calls plus talks with Ben’s support team, which grows by the day, assures me that “Ben is still sober which is hard to determine in this mess.” He is beginning to cope, has begun grief counseling, has reached out to friends for help, is running out of room for tuna casseroles. 

Since then we’ve had many conversations and I’m giving the frisky fat calf rolled oats with molasses. I’ll let you know when we hold the fiesta for the prodigal son, after pandemic danger is past.

Let’s leave no stone unturned in my family drama.

The phone rings. I stare at it, afraid to answer, afraid of the daily serial.

It’s my daughter. I feel relief. “How’s your day?” Five seconds of silence. “Like that, huh,” I continue. “Tell me about it.”

My daughter is still weak and exhausted with on-going symptoms of the Covid virus she’s been dealing with for two months. “It’s your granddaughter,” she said.

“Ah.” In addition to dealing with family illness, with both Dee and Tyler ill, in the past two months the furnace blew up and Dee’s husband Chris has been quarantined in the basement because he works at the hospital.

Their eldest girl, twenty-seven, with a non-employed boyfriend and three stair-step babies, is an on-going worry.

Back when Dee Dee was working on an advanced degree in college, she held this baby girl in her arms six hours after birth, an emergency foster care baby she later adopted. The baby was diagnosed Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Dee worked hard with her child. 

When Dee and Chris married, Chris immediately adopted the young girl. They have been supportive with Jess through times thick and thin, above and beyond; you get the picture? Jess is a remarkable young woman when at her best. When off the rails, she is not so remarkable.

Jess is making choices which ultimately will endanger her babies. Dee, Chris and Tyler, now fifteen, held a family conference. The safety net is now transferred to the babies and the young adults may land in a snow bank. No more enabling, no more rescuing. The next several days will not be pretty.

These are the precious Days of Our Lives and like no other time in my life, I’m aware that we each have One Life to Live. In our Search for Tomorrow we certainly need The Guiding Light.

I don’t know about you, but if this daily drama with All My Children gets much worse, I’ll be headed for the General Hospital.   

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

January 28, 2021

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It’s a mess

 

                        It’s a mess

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When one thinks it can’t get worse, it can. And it does.

This coming February 20 would have been my son’s 6^th sobriety birthday.

I considered a thousand different ways of talking about this and each one led to, “Just vomit it out.”

In “Looking out my back door” I write about what is pertinent in my life. And I vowed to be honest with myself and honest with you.

My son, Ben, this man who is super intelligent with a computer mind, this man with such a big heart that a year ago, he gave up a month of his life to come to Mexico to care for me when I needed it, this man slipped off the rails. This man I love more than my own life.

I’m so angry that I could chew nails and spit tacks, each tack to nail his hide to the wall after I peal it off his body with a dull bread knife.

Nearly ten years ago my son decided to try out the world of mind-altering chemicals and lost his job, his wife, his home, his daughter, his family, his self-respect. His mind.

Of course eventually Ben landed in jail long enough and low enough to ask to enter an intensive in-jail treatment program. A year later he was out of jail, still in an intensive out-patient part of the same program for another year.

Over time he got a job, began paying debts, cleaning up his life, got a home, got a girlfriend, got his family back. Six years, six years clean and sober and now this. There is no explanation.

A couple months ago Ben landed in the ER with coronavirus, later followed by seizures. Then a brief reprieve, as far as I know. Then a few days ago, back in the ER with seizures again. The hospital sent him home. They do a blood test, first thing, you know. Which came first, the alcohol or the seizures?

And my heart is broken. The first night of realization I soaked my pillow with tears that leaked from my eyes through no volition on my part.

I’ve been here before. I know I cannot carry this burden alone. First I talked with my daughter and then with a couple very dear friends in Washington who are close to both me and to my son, who’ve been down this road with me. They will move forward with intervention, if possible.

Each morning I go outside to walk-the-lanes to air out my head. Along the way, I meet one neighbor and then another. I cannot hide my grief and despair. They ask, “How are you?” I cannot answer, “Fine.” “Fine” is perhaps the most frequent lie told. I tell my story.

One neighbor then shared his story about his wife’s nephew. Yes, I remember him, I said. He used to be around here all the time. Well, his mother is just waiting for him to overdose. I am not alone.

Another friend told me about his daughter’s fiancé, now gone, leaving a trail of tears. I am not alone.

Yet another told me about a sister’s husband, who also re-entered that dark world after a time of sobriety. I am not alone.

I doubt there is anybody not touched by this horrible disease of alcoholism-and-drug-addiction, all the same in how it affects the vulnerable person and his/her family. And to have it strike during the coronavirus plague, a double whammy, more than we can bear.

There is always a chance that early intervention will shake my son back onto his path. It’s up to him. Twenty-four hours of sobriety is better than the alternative.

I share this story with you because I cannot bear it alone. If my story helps even one person who also has a family member in a world of hurt, then it is worth me baring my soul.

We are not alone. And we do have help if we choose to use it. We might find help among our friends and neighbors, at church, at a group program, a treatment center just for us. This is a disease. There is no shame. A secret aired is a secret with no power to hurt us.

I keep in mind the Three Cs of Alanon: I (You) didn’t cause it. I (You) cannot control it. I (You) cannot cure it.

I am completely powerless over this dread disease. There is help for you and me just as there is for the addict/alcoholic. Even with my heart broken, with tears on my cheeks, I can find serenity in the midst of this chaos. I love my son with a never-ending love. And we are not alone.

Sondra Ashton

Looking Out My Backdoor

January 21, 2021