This week I started smoking again

 

                        This week I started smoking again

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I used to have a photo of my Dad in his crisp uniform, just back from Overseas. “Overseas” is a lost word, known to us older folks. Dad was in the Army Air Force in WWII. I was eight months old when he got home. In the picture, Dad held me in one arm, me in my cloth coat with matching winter pants. In his other hand he held a cigarette. I don’t know what happened to the photo.

My Dad had smoked since he was eight years old, rolling corn silk out behind the barn. He lived in the Ohio River Bottoms, where tobacco fields grew the main cash crop. He quickly graduated to the real stuff.

So I smoked from the time I was eight months until I left home to get married at eighteen. Dad quit smoking sometime in his early 50s. But those years I was home, he smoked. In the house. In the car. In the fields. Okay. For me it was second-hand smoke but smoke is smoke.

Smoking back then was what men did. By the culture and the class-system in which I was raised, men smoked and women did not smoke. That was then. And we never gave it a thought.

In my adult life, I was seldom around people who smoked. Cigarette smoke smelled disgusting to me. At the same time, a muted whiff triggered good memories. And I’ve never had a cigarette between my lips. Perhaps Dad cured me.

This week the State of Jalisco burned with five major wild fires as well as numerous smaller blazes. Our little Municipality of Etzatlan sat right in the middle.

Several of the smaller fires were only two or three miles away. One of the larger conflagrations was just outside Ahualulco, a fifteen minute drive on the highway, none further than an hour drive.

Add the normal nightly field burns for harvesting the sugar cane to the wild fires.

For three or four days the mountains over toward Magdalena disappeared totally. The mountains in my back yard, the backdrop for our town, muted into a fuzzy blur of blue. The sky turned brown.

Normally, I spend a good part of my day outdoors, even if I’m simply sitting on the patio or out under a tree, book in hand. So, yes, I knew the fires were close. I knew the fires filled the atmosphere with smoke. But I did what I normally do. For the first three days.

By nightfall, I was exhausted. What was wrong with me? Other than usual household chores, all I’d done all day was breathe.

My lungs are healthy. My lungs are clear, despite my smoke-smudged childhood. Seasonal allergies pass me by. Yet, sitting amidst wildfires, breathing, just breathing, wore me out. For the first time in my life, I now have a smidgeon of understanding of what people with compromised lungs go through just to breathe.

My son had fairly severe asthma as a child. He’s outgrown a lot of it but still must be careful and has medicines if needed. Ben said that when he was in the hospital with the Covid 19, he felt like he was underwater, drowning.

My daughter used to be an Emergency Red Cross Trauma Counselor Volunteer. She was on the first plane out of Seattle to New York when the Twin Towers went down. For two and a half months Dee Dee worked right alongside the police and fire personnel, down in the pits. Her lungs will never heal themselves.

Several close friends have severe allergies or asthma or other breathing concerns. I’ve never been dismissive of their problems but I certainly had no real understanding. Now I have more empathy.

This being one of the times I exhibited traits of a slow learner, I finally heard myself. “All I’d done was breathe.” The next day I kept the door and windows of my little casita closed. I stayed inside. I didn’t go outside to smoke.

Today one of the major fires and several smaller ones are out or under control. This year the underbrush and grasses are unusually thick. The atmosphere is dry. We’ve not had a rain since last summer. There will be more fires.

Wind brings smoke close. Then wind carries smoke away. I limit my time outside. My windows are closed. My house stays cool. And relatively smoke-free.

Today is my birthday. I’m old enough to smoke but that doesn’t mean I like it.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

April 8, 2021

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My World and Mathematics

 

            My World and Mathematics

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There is magic in my world.

If I do not see it, it doesn’t matter.

If I do see it, it doesn’t matter.

Every day is a song.

Yesterday’s music fell to earth, gone.

Today’s voice is in the wind, the sky.

You may listen. Or not hear.

This morning I awoke to Cathedral bells,

To bird song riding pale green sunrise.

The first sight out my window, a western tanager

Atop a cluster of new mango leaves, strange fruit.

One moment. One moment of attention.

I’m granted only moments. I’m too small

To take in the totality of what is offered.

Lavender in pots line my entry,

Lavender twitching with bees in love.

I stand beneath an umbrella of purple jacaranda,

Stand atop a carpet of purple blooms, dropped

From above. Listen. I hear a mountain creek

Rushing along its rocky path, chortling, alive.

Look. There is no creek, no water. Birds

Sing the tree in chorus of water song.

 

It is Holy Week. Whatever one’s beliefs, it is good to take time to reflect, to think about life and death and hope and grief and love. We are surrounded by these things in the very air we breathe but seldom stop to feel them deeply. Wait. That’s me. I don’t stop often enough.

I lost another friend this week. I search my photos to look at my freshest grandbaby.

This morning the air is hazy, first time since last summer. I can barely make out the outline of the mountains over toward Magdalena. The mountains in my back yard are blue like a child’s painting. Hazy and soft, like the air at the ocean.

Holy Week in Mexico is when everybody comes home. No matter where they live, no matter where they work, they pack the car with clothes, food and immediate family and come home. Or come home and pack the rest of the family into the car and go to the beach. Even more than Christmas, Holy Week is a time for Family.

I walk out to the highway, turn around, back and forth, back and forth, my morning trek. At the road I see cane trucks straining under illegal weight, or rattling back empty, headed for the fields. There are the usual delivery trucks, farm trucks, construction trucks. And family cars, loaded with coolers and luggage, even mattresses, atop the roof.

Life and death, each divided into the other, equals a circle. This is Higher Mathematics.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

April 1, 2021

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The future is dark, which is the best . . .

 

            The future is dark, which is the best . . .

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True Montanans fully understand Virginia Woolf’s expression that “The future is dark, which is the best thing the future can be, I think.”

We are trained from early times to know that sunny days won’t last, that rains likely fall when the hay is down in windrows, that ants infest every picnic. Not necessarily gloomy, but realistic. We are taught thusly.  

Here’s a different slant, okay. What I have come to believe, and Woolf’s quote fits perfectly, is that if we could see through the dark into the future, we’d instantly pick out the storms, the soggy hay and the ants. We’d miss all the good stuff, all the beauty, the migrating birds, the trees in bud and flowering lilacs that fill the air for blocks around with sweet perfume. Right? Montana human nature.

To put it bluntly, we have no illusions concerning creation. We know there are snakes in every garden. We look for them. We find them. But what of the beauty? What of the goodness?

I’m here to tell you now that I’m living in what is the closest I’ve come to find of an actual Garden of Paradise—that is, my own garden in the month of March. So mark your calendars for when we can safely travel again—March in Mexico at Sondra’s.

Why March? Why not? Winter has passed by. Every day begins and ends with sunshine. Mornings and evenings are cool. Temperatures climb into the 80s in the afternoons. There is just enough breeze to be refreshing. Nary a cloud.

Another thing we Montanans know how to do is milk the weather cow for the greatest yield.

There are no lilacs in my garden but jasmine infuses the air to the same effect. Trees lose leaves, sprout flowers, and drop flowers for new green.

A certain bush in my garden, a beauty with leaves green, red, yellow, orange and every blend thereof, for the first time I’ve ever seen, flaunts a yellow flower. I asked Leo, “This is an old bush. Have you ever seen it flower?” “No,” his astonished answer as we both marveled at the primary-yellow burst of color.

The bottle brush tree is alive with tanagers and hummingbirds. I’ve never seen so many baby hummingbirds. They seem to travel a route from lantana below to the red brushes above, up and down and up again.

The jacaranda, now an umbrella of purple/lavender flowers, hosts entire colonies of kiskadees, partridge doves, mourning doves, flickers and birds I see every year but cannot give names, along with birds I’ve never seen before, one a bright red male.

The rain birds came early this year. Every other sign indicates a summer of severe drought. What’s up? Will the cicadas sing down the rain this year? It is too early to predict! Check with me in May.  

So where are the snakes in my garden? March is Paradise, Paradise before the sneaky snake.

In April, mere days from now, gnats and no-see-ums will begin pestering us, aiming for eyes and nose and ears and mouths. Mosquitoes will follow in May, the black flies in June; all together through August.

If we’ve a lick of sense, we won’t let pests to come rob us of pleasures today. My bucket garden is planted. I’ll be eating green beans in about three weeks. I’ve garlic growing, first time. Zucchini and cukes are coming. Peas are blooming. I seed some buckets with grand experiments. Maybe grow, maybe not.

Every garden should have a miracle and mine is an amazing tomato. This tomato started life last spring on Ana’s compost pile. This plant fed me last summer and throughout the winter. A couple weeks ago, I said to Leo, “Huck out the tomato. I think it is finished.” Baby green globes clung to the vine but I figured if the plant was done, it was done.

Leo showed me otherwise. Instead of plucking the tomato vine into the garbage, he left it a few days and then showed me new flowers. “Why do you want to throw it away?”

I felt stunned. “What do you mean? Do tomatoes here grow fruit year after year?” He gave me that ‘you’re pathetic’ look and nodded his head. Have you ever heard such a thing?

I’ll eat tomatoes from last year’s plant for the year to come.

Sometimes I think I see the future and I am wrong. I almost ripped out my miracle tomato plant with my own hands. Look at the joy I would have missed.

Snakes may come and snakes may go in my Garden of Paradise. But my sweet tomato has given me more than fruit. I visit her every morning on my rounds to survey my kingdom. I almost missed the miracle.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

March 25, 2021

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The Constancy of Change

 

The Constancy of Change

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It’s a paradox. Constancy—firm, steadfast, permanent, consistent, un-changing. We can count on something with the property or nature of constancy. One thing we can count on is Change.

Saturday I double-masked my face, and with my bottle of sanitizer in hand, went to town, for the second time in a year. The first time was three weeks ago for vaccination.

While this later trip was not of ultimate necessity, I let impatience rule and set off for my favorite furniture store with a purpose. My bodega remodel is done. Josue made and delivered the new base for a bed. Everything is in place for a guest room except for a mattress.

On the principle of “build it and they will come”, I bought the best mattress in the store.

What made my eyes bug out, were all the visible changes in town, even during this pandemic of woe. I’m not the only one spiffying my domain.

David at Vivero Centro had completely shifted plants and pots and nursery items. He stood in the middle of an emptied space directing a man on an earth mover.

Half a block beyond the vivero is a new outdoor restaurant. Imagine living where most of the eateries are outdoor or open-air.

I courted whiplash trying to see both sides of the street as Leo drove me into the center of town. That corner restaurant is gone. Is it become a clothing store? And so it went. New storefronts. New paint, new plantings, walls knocked down, walls built.

When we parked across from the Muebleria, a new Copel was being built behind a block of city government offices. Copel is a department store, like a Sears. We now have three “big box” stores in town. Outside money coming in. It is a fearsome thing to one fond of the old ways.

Our little village is changing. Growth? Progress?

Part of me shouts “NO!” That part stomps her foot and cries, “I don’t want to lose our little village.” I enjoy stopping in fourteen stores to do a week’s grocery shopping; buying bacon at the Mercado, butter at a Cremeria, eggs three blocks down and around the corner, fruits and veggies next to Romero’s, herbs and beans and such at that new place across from . . . well, you get the idea.

And then a memory blasted through to knock me sideways. When I grew up in Harlem, the streets were mud. I mean dirt. But the day of the particular vivid memory was about this time of year, after a sudden spring thaw. Mud. Gumbo mud.

Crossing the street to the grade school, my right foot sucked down into the deep gumbo and stuck. In trying to jerk loose, I lifted my foot out of shoe and boot. There I am, in the middle of the street, balanced on one foot, white anklet hovering above my mud-bound footwear. Inevitably, gravity won.

Fast forward from that memory to years later when my daughter was a baby and we lived on a ranch south of Dodson. The City of Harlem paved the streets. I don’t know how the city fathers ever did it. We heard the uproar of protest at the money spent on “unnecessary nonsense, paved streets, indeed”, all the way to Dodson.

Forty-some years later when I moved back to Harlem I still heard rumblings of discontent at the money the city wasted on paving the streets. Aren’t we people strange?

I doubt Etzatlan will lose its small town flavor overnight. Vaqueros will still herd brindled horned cattle from the mountains to the valleys, through town. The herd of goats across the highway will be there in years to come. Tiendas will close and others open.

I’d rather see growth, change and progress than boarded-up storefronts on Main.

Hopefully in a month or two, I’ll be double vaccinated and able to go back to my pre-pandemic shopping routine in person. I look forward to exploring all the changes at the vivero, to indulging my best big weakness. I’ll window shop Copel. I’ll continue to buy back-yard eggs. I want to drive up and down every street, just to gawk at the changes.

I hope for small changes, for improvements of the familiar old places. No Starbucks. No McDonalds. No Costco. For those dubious pleasures, it is a short drive to Guadalajara.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

March 18, 2021

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An out of mind experience

 

An out of mind experience

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Because of the pandemic, health cautions and precautions, these past several days, I’ve found myself to be the only gringo in town, or to be precise, on the ranch.

Tom and Janet drove their big yellow cargo van to Arizona for medical appointments and to bring back another load of belongings from storage.

Lani and Ariel exited Etzatlan about when winter entered, gone off to lounge on a beach somewhere near Manzanillo.

John and Carol, in a fit of stir-crazy, packed up their ancient VW Van-Go and took off just because they could. 

Exactly one year ago this week we began hearing news about this strange new virus. That’s not exactly true. That March week was the first in which we actually listened to the news we had been hearing since the autumn.

By the end of March, we had battened down the hatches against this raging storm. One year, folks. For me, a year of very little eyeball-to-eyeball, hands across our brick border walls, real live social interaction; most often just a wave and a shout of ‘howdy’.

These last three weeks with my on-going bodega renovation project, I hardly noticed my lack of neighbors. Now that my bodega work is done, I notice.  

I’m scared. Really scared. I’d like to blame the pandemic, to blame my lack of socialization. It’s my mind, you see. I fear I’ve lost the plot, gone around the bend; I fear that my last wing-nut fell off and rolled under the refrigerator.

One minute I’m sipping coffee, nose in a book. Then . . .

Without any thought, as if I were in a blackout, I came to consciousness, appalled, with scrub rags in hand, washing windows, with no earthly idea how I’d gotten there. In fact, before I’d noticed what I was doing, I was scouring down my second window.

I hate washing windows, a thankless, repetitive task. I’ll do anything to put off window washing. If I could still physically get down on the floor without risk of not ever getting back up, I’d rather tackle the grout between the floor tiles. Okay. Maybe that was a slight exaggeration.

I don’t mind most household chores; even get a sense of satisfaction from keeping countertops clean and dishes washed. I like a clean floor.

My windows to the world? They can get really dirty before I cave in to necessity and put them on my ‘round tuit’ list. And I’ve no qualms about dropping the task to the bottom of the list on a daily basis.

Once your feet are wet, might as well wade across. So I finished the job, rinsed out my cleaning cloths, grabbed my discarded book and went out to the patio.

But I couldn’t read, couldn’t concentrate for worry. How had this strange action happened? Might seem a small thing to you, but I’m worried. Scared.

I’m sorry. You don’t understand. This is serious. This is not the real me.

I cannot find any logical explanation. Not for washing windows without malice aforethought.

Zombie Apocalypse?

Aliens have sucked out my brains?

I’m the victim of an evil conspiracy to turn all the women of the world into Stepford Wives?

I’ve lost my mind?

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

March 11, 2021

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The Day My Mimeograph Machine Broke

 

            The Day My Mimeograph Machine Broke

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 Back in the olden days, in grade school, teachers used low-tech machines which made copies for all manner of school work, from pictures to color (don’t color out of the lines) to test questions.

Teacher, most of whom we called Miss: Miss Brown, Miss Naomi, Miss Mary, would snap a stencil onto the drum of the machine. The slick paper, the stencil, and the ink combined to make an unforgettable sensory memory scent, sort of chemical alcohol. If you were Miss Brown, Miss Naomi or Miss Mary, you were careful to keep the ink away from fingers and clothing. In fifth grade, we got Mr. Glasgow.

Once Teacher attached the stencil to the drum, she/he placed the counted sheets of paper (waste not, want not) onto the tray, turned the handle, round and round; from in-tray, around the drum from whence it was spit, slightly wet, into the out-tray, a Thanksgiving Turkey or dreaded math equations.

Kathy and Crin and I were commiserating on how every day is the same, over and over and over again. “Like papers rolling off the mimeograph machine,” I said. That triggered a stroll down memory lane.

For those of us who choose to self-isolate during this pandemic, it doesn’t take long for a pattern to form. Routine creates a sameness to each day. We three friends pride ourselves on being flexible, rolling along with the adventure of each day. For us the sameness is unusual. And it is tiresome.   

My routine includes some bit of work. Task. Project. Bake bread. Laundry. Plant beans. Work.

The past three weeks, with the renovation of my “tunnels” around the back and one side of the bodega creating a classy tool shed plus the complete make-over of the bodega into household storage plus guest bedroom, my work has been more focused.

Of course, the heavy work I leave to the men. Josue and Leo are the experts. I respect their skills and leave them to it. When their work was nearly finished, I began to move bins and boxes back into the bodega and filled my first shelf unit.

After a long hard day I felt very satisfied. I figured one more day should easily wrap it up. Leo still had to do touch-up painting. Josue had to install a shelf above the washing machine. Then together they would move my second shelf unit into place.

Then my mimeograph machine broke, maybe beyond repair.

That is not a bad thing. Actually, I felt more like it was the olden days, before this last year, back when adventures simply happened.

Early in the morning, Rick from Oconahua called. He asked to come visit before he leaves for his northern home in the Confused States, outside San Francisco.

“It’s a lovely day with a bit of breeze. It is safe to visit on the patio.” I learned more about Rick in that one visit than all the others added together. Our previous visits (Before Covid) have been in a group gathering or a five-minute shout “howdy” (After Covid) through the gate. I confess, our last visit I motor-mouthed the entire five minutes!

When Rick left, I went to the bodega itching to work. Josue walked in with materials for the shelf above the washer. “Oh, good. I’ll leave you to it.” For safety, only one person at a time works inside the bodega.

When he finished, I said, “That is absolutely perfect. Uh. Could I have another shelf above that one, please?” “Sure, I’ll be back.”

The clock was crowding noon and I was hungry. After a sandwich, I went back out to my bodega. Leo startled me, paint brush and paint can in hand, come to finish the touch-up. Out I went.

Leo finished painting and left. I hurried to the bodega, just as Josue came through the gate to install the additional shelf above the washer. See how they gobbled my day? But in such a good way. I gave up. Read a book.

The following day, much refreshed, I whisked the remainders into place, leaving a comfortable space for the bed, yet to be purchased.

Now I want to go, yearn to go, shopping. Nobody is coming. There is no dire need. But I want a bed. I want it now.

My inner puppy is going wild. Down Girl. Sit. Stay.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

March 11, 2021

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Stick, Stab and Jab at the Lab

 

            Stick, Stab and Jab at the Lab

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Have you ever felt like you don’t really know what’s happening until it’s over?

If I’m not around people to mirror back to me what I’m doing or saying, it is easy to fool myself. When I begin to fool myself, it is easy to slip back into unhealthy behaviors from my past.

A few days ago I told my daughter, “I think I’m mildly depressed.”

“Ya think!” she replied, with THAT tone of voice. Truth be told, what I was fishing for was sympathy. I’d cast my line in the wrong pond. Dee Dee is a family counselor, specializing in trauma. She tells it like it is, no holds barred.

Isolation is fine if it is balanced with enough social interaction. Honest social interaction. I’d quit sharing my fears. For good reason, I thought, because they are so petty. Wrong thinking. Share those petty fears before they find food and grow up into monsters.

When I voice to my petty fears, I can hear myself, laugh at myself and say, that’s silly, based on nothing real. When I don’t let my fears talk, they build and grow like a pile of dirt against the weeds in a wind storm.

So I got all spun up over nothing. Had I shared my fears with friends, they would have laughed, with or at me, put me in my place. My place is a good place. But, no, I had to go dig my own pit and that is not my good place.

 It’s just little stuff, no worse than getting a speck of dust in one’s eye. Started when the Governor of Jalisco announced a shipment of vaccine was on the way to our State, so if one is sixty or older, sign up for your shot using this simple online procedure. Uh, huh. I tried. Tried. Tried. Gave up in frustration.

Leo took my information home to his computer and signed me up. He did the same for John and Carol.

Next step was supposed to be an email and phone call with one’s appointment time. Nobody called. Again, saved by our gardener. The shipment arrived, right here in Etzatlan! Yes, in our little village. Big ceremony. Important people. Speeches. The usual. I read about it in the news.

Since I hadn’t been contacted, I immediately plunged into the “what’s-the-use” swamp. Shrug. Meanwhile, Leo saved the day for me and John and Carol. He took our paperwork to the appropriate people and secured our appointment time. For three days later.

By now I’m so stuck in my own mud that I just knew they’d run out of vaccine before they got to me. Believe me, I’m not usually like this.

We showed up dressed like polar bears on the very cold morning, clutching our wads of paperwork. I noticed that a lot of people also had their electric bills in hand. Again, Leo rescued us. Yes, indeedy, we needed proof of actual domicile. Again, Leo rescued us and sent John racing back to our casas for our latest bills. Just in time. Like a mother hen with her chicks, Leo herded us through the steps.

From this point on, we went through the procedure as slick as butter on toast. We moved through three waiting areas on the blocked-off street, presented paperwork, got the actual jab, presented paperwork for second sign-up, waited a half-hour to make sure of no dire effects, and were released. Each station was outdoors, in open air. Everybody, and I mean everybody, wore double masks.

For the actual shot, arm bared from two sweaters and a sarape, I turned my head, squinched my eyes. The nurse laughed, told me I was done. I hadn’t even felt it.

While waiting between the jab and home, the woman next to me asked Leo if I was his grandmother. Leo explained that I was his patron, a gringo. “A gringo!” The woman burst into laughter. “A gringo!” It was funny. We all laughed. Leo and I look nothing alike. He has a Pancho Villa mustache.

The real revelation came after I returned home. Such a simple thing. A vaccination. You’d have thought I’d won the lottery. My entire attitude swung back around from the dregs in the bottom of the empty cup to the full, steaming, satisfying cup of morning coffee.

I had not realized I’d lost my future. Misplaced it. Stuck it in the closet and locked the door. But that is what I had done. Now I’ve turned a corner and feel like my lost feet are back on the path.

I’m not ready to buy tickets to fly off into the wild blue yonder. We are nowhere near “herd immunity”. A strange expression. The sooner we join the herd, the safer we all will be.  

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

February 25, 2021

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Dear Leanore,

 

Dear Leanore,

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I love it when Leo comes from the post office with a real letter in hand. Here it is mid-February and I just received your Christmas card. Denise’s arrived last week.  I’ll not see Karen’s for a while because she mailed it mid-December!  

Our post office was closed for weeks; both postal workers were down with the Covid virus. Simultaneously, the lockdown closed government offices. In ordinary times, mail in Mexico is slow.

We never get over worrying about our children, do we? I’m pleased to hear that Paul is managing so well and I know Cathi is a joy. Did Mark and Angie get to visit over Christmas?

My son gets stronger and healthier every day, even with the “dark” days. The pain of losing your loved one with no warning is unimaginable. My Dee Dee was rear-ended at a stop light by an erratically driven mail truck on Friday. See, mail is unreliable everywhere.

She says she has less pain every day. But when I first asked, she used that lying “F” word, “Fine”. I’ve been around that block so I said, “Sure, so now tell me how you really feel.”

I raised my children to question things and to be independent. I often think I overdid that aspect of my job. But I wouldn’t have done it any other way.

I hope you and Roy both have your vaccinations by now. Just last night the first shipment of vaccine arrived in Etzatlan for the elders. I am signed up but my name did not make the first drawing so I’ve no idea when will be our next opportunity.

Just this morning my friend Karen in England said she and Mick got their first jabs. But we commiserated that we will possibly never go unmasked in public.

I’m reminded of when I went to China, must be nearly twenty years ago, and most people wore masks for ordinary health reasons. We also stepped into numerous vats of disinfectant before entering public gardens, temples, a tea plantation, and other places where there was a lot of foot-traffic.

I miss grocery shopping for myself. I miss eating in restaurants. I’m tired of eating only my own creative cookery. I miss handshakes and hugs.

Most of all, I miss being able to share little things of no importance. I’d love to show you the egg shell I found on the patio when I opened my door this morning. Or the lizard who lives in my bamboo outside my window, happily scarfing down bugs on the screen. Or take you on my garden tour this morning to smell the flowers on the lime trees.

I’m especially delighted with my key lime. That tree was one of the first ones I planted. It nearly got the ax at least three or four times each year and I stubbornly nursed it back to health along with a giving it severe warning out loud of its impending fate. For the first time the little tree is covered with white blossoms.

I do thrive in Mexico. In many ways “here” seems a lot like Montana. I’ve lived in a lot of places and found something to love in each of them.

Chicago was a struggle. But some areas resonate with one’s core. Some places are “home” in indefinable ways.

Goodness! I just got the good news. I have my appointment for vaccination scheduled for Thursday morning. I’m excited. In Spanish, Estoy emocianada!

Maybe I can begin to plan a trip north for later in the year after all. I’ll start my list of things I want like Bag Balm. In town I bought the equivalent but it smells like pine tar, which is okay, but . . .

I hope to see you before summer ends,

Much love,

Sondra

Looking out my back door

February 18, 2021

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