Don’t Mess With Us!

 

            Don’t Mess With Us! 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I thought long and hard before taking on the responsibility of adopting a pooch.

Lola has proven to be an asset to my life. If nothing else, she gets me out the door several times a day for short walks, for little chats, for daily interactions. She’s taught me when she wants to be brushed, when she wants a walk-about, when she wants her belly scratched, that sort of thing.

My neighbors, Josue and Erika, have two small poochies, Snowball, aged and toothless, and Princess, who showed up the year I moved here. Both are barkers, with small dog voices, though no less irritating for that. If something seems unusual in their world or a stranger is around, they sound the alarm. We pay attention.

Lola, my new companion, has a loud harsh voice, in comparison to her buddies next door. Really loud. As soon as the intruder is gone, the dogs settle down to silence. We know that when the dogs bark, something or someone is afoot. The dogs do not bark without reason. They do not yammer on just to hear the sound of their own voices, unlike  . . . never mind.

Last night Snowball and Princess began the bark concert. Whatever was going on seemed to be on the other side of us. Until Lola joined the chorus with an explosion of louder-than-normal-loud, aggressive and if I were to give human interpretation, the only kind I know, fearful barking that did not let up in either volume or intensity after several minutes.

Me? I was snuggled in bed under my down comforter. I was not about to get up and go outside. My theory was another possum. Or perhaps the same possum returned with vengeance in mind. An attack possum? Anything is possumable.

Josue and Erika had other ideas. They came over with flashlights in hand, “Sondra, are you okay?” I opened a window so we could see one another and we agreed, “Somebody must be snooping around. This is too unusual. Unless it is a possum. Might be a possum.”

They checked the bodega, the tool tunnel between the bodega and the walls, the back yard. Nothing seemed amiss. Erika went back home for a baseball bat. Josue checked all the other properties.

He also decided to turn on the water for Kathy’s lawn, to let it water overnight. While bent over the spigot, a light flashed on in Kathy’s house. Kathy and Richard are in Victoria at present. Nobody is home.

Very carefully, Josue slid up the wall and peeked into the window. A man was standing in the kitchen. Josue squatted down so his cell phone would not illuminate his face, and called Erika to phone the police. He continued to stay on guard, a dumb thing to do, but would any of us have done differently?

The intruder nonchalantly went from room to room, turning on lights, obviously not understanding how nosey we neighbors can be, though the way the houses are situated, nobody has direct sight into any other’s homes.

Within minutes, which surely seemed long minutes to Josue, body plastered against the outside wall, but peeking through the window to keep track of the man’s proceedings, the police showed up. Josue explained the situation. The police went inside and took the man into custody, and hauled him away to the hoosegow, but not before giving Josue a stern lecture for taking such dangerous chances.

Everybody is safe. Nothing was taken or damaged except the jimmied lock. The only thing we lost was sleep.

What we gained, is knowledge of Lola’s barking intensity. We know the usual, somebody walking the lane, neighborhood dogs cruising through, that sort of thing. Now we know how to interpret “Danger”.

Josue and Erika have my greatest appreciation. They always have looked after me. They keep a watchful eye out for all of us, for any activity that shouldn’t be, especially at night.

And Lola gets an extra big bone from the butcher today. Along with other assets, she is a lovable, huggable early-warning system of danger.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

February 24, 2022

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Famous, Notorious, Adequate, Anonymous

 

            Famous, Notorious, Adequate, Anonymous 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

My friend Cheryl, a former high school classmate, was talking with our ‘girl-group’ this week. She expressed how all her life, when among certain gifted, professional, highly recognized and extremely wealthy people, she has felt inadequate.

Haven’t we all felt that way? Isn’t that a universal feeling, to feel like whoever we are, whatever the circumstances, we are not enough?

Is it just me, or have we all at times felt like frauds and if people find out, oh, my, what shall we do! It is a very real fear.

Maybe not. Maybe it is just me. Back in Jr. High I remember first reading Emily’s “I’m nobody. Who are you?” What a relief. Someone who understands how I feel!

If you are one of us, as a result of my vast age and multi-colored range of experiences, have I ever got good news for you!

But let me give you the bad news first. Any time I want to compare my insides with your outsides, I come out ‘less than’. It’s just one of those rules. No matter what I can do well, somebody else, probably you, can do better. Accept it and don’t give it another thought.

Let me give you some examples and I’ll grab them out of my own life since it’s the only life of which I know well enough to speak.

I’m an adequate cook, farm style, with variations. My friend Kathy is a gourmet cook and everything from her kitchen looks like art on the table. Better or different? Does it matter? We each serve delicious food prepared from our hearts and from our experiences and knowledge.

I know another woman, Deb, who can quiet any baby simply by lifting the child into her arms. She is gifted. But she’ll never be able to package that gift to make her rich and famous.

What I’ve come to believe, and I could be wrong, is that Life is for us to experience. Furthermore, I think we are here to express those experiences. Kathy expresses excellence in the kitchen. Deb has a gift for making everyone around her, not only babies, feel comfortable and relaxed. 

Which brings me to my next point. Life is mean, ugly mean. This is the good news. It won’t seem to be but it is. As soon as I get to feeling I’m pretty good at a task, Life throws a wrench in the works and gives me a job at which to fail, often spectacularly. I confess each wrench to hit the works makes me grind my teeth. Takes a long time for me to learn.

Balance. Life likes balance. If we are really lucky, life throws a lot of mean wrenches into our works, giving us lots of chances to fail and lots of chances to become adequate at this or that.

I’ll never be rich or famous or lauded for expertise. But I’ve been given opportunities to become adequate at a lot of things.

My first year teaching, I was dreadful. I had the chance later to repair the damage. I got to try my hand at sales work among a lot of successful men. In one I was adequate. The other? I’d rather clean toilets. In another job, I learned how much I enjoyed listening to life stories of the elderly. Now I get to be one.

I got to develop elemental life skills into a way to make a living for my family while giving items long past their use-by date new beauty.

Life dumped me into a theater group for which I was not at all prepared. Passion and hard work are great teachers. I became more than adequate.

My life passion, writing, doesn’t bring me a dime, I’ve not published a book, but writing sustains me in uncountable ways. I made a choice years ago at a writing conference. I chose to continue to write for self-satisfaction, unhampered by any need to learn the business.    

My friend Cheryl, who began this conversation, is an admirable woman, had a successful career, a lovely family, has traveled extensively, is active in her community and has strong friendships with people from all walks of life. She’s a success. Best of all, she’s a friend.

We can’t all be a famous “Somebody” but we all can be an adequate “Nobody”.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

February 17, 2022

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Life Before the Wood Pulp Industry

 

             Life Before the Wood Pulp Industry 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I’m not the least bit enamored with “the good ol’ days” which to my mind were rather rugged. Hard, one might say. I suppose every age is hard in its own way.

You might think I’m crazy and perhaps you are right.

A few months ago I was standing over the ironing board, dealing with the aftermath of cotton clothing sun-dried on the clothesline, letting all kinds of thoughts ramble through my mind when it seemed as if some of my notions coalesced into a decision without consulting me.

The consultation part of my decision came along gradually, a bit at a time, another aftermath.

I thought about how much stuff we surround ourselves with, how much we throw away, don’t fix, buy new, don’t need but buy on whims. I thought about how much cost of everything is going up and if one has a limited income, one must consciously pare down wants and even needs. And since I had an iron in my hand, I thought about when I was a child, learning to iron handkerchiefs. Which thought led to the wood pulp industry.

In another lifetime, in the ‘70s, and believe me, the ‘70s were another lifetime, I worked for the Kimberly Clark Company. The Kleenex people, among other various paper products. I got to tour the plants in Neenah, Wisconsin. I saw the vats of fuming wood pulp churning away at one end and rolling out paper at the other.

This was the ‘70s. I was from Montana. Never gave a thought to the chemical aspect, or any other. I still prefer Kleenex even though I know I’m wiping my nose with wood.

When neighbors go to Guadalajara, they always ask, “Need anything from Costco?” Pretty much the only items I buy from Costco are laundry soap, coffee and paper products, uh huh, Kleenex, paper towels and toilet paper.

It also happened to be trash pick-up day. I saw how much paper, not recyclable paper, but soiled paper, was in my trash.

Like I said, these threads of thought got together, formed a committee, and made a decision. Immediately I began to pare down my use-and-discard paper products. I began this transformation with real handkerchiefs. I wanted it to be a thought provoking process so I hand hemmed several squares of cotton. Voila! Handkerchiefs. Know what the hard part was? Making a habit to grab a hankie instead of plucking a Kleenex from the box.

Next I whipped out a stack of napkins. I’ve always used cloth napkins. When I had guests. Now I am my own guest, a napkin in my lap instead of a section of paper towel. Ha!

Paper towels, amazing how many little chores can be done with a cleaning cloth or paring carrots and onion husks into a washable dish instead of onto a disposable paper towel. 

My favorite new thing is re-usable muslin coffee filters. Work like a dream.

On trash pick-up day, I am amazed and pleased to see how my bag of garbage has dwindled in size.

I laughingly call my little experiment “Saving the planet, one tree at a time.” I’m not a crusader nor an evangelist. Most of my neighbors have no idea what I’m doing. I don’t expect a following. What I do myself is what is important to me.

A friend asked me if it made me feel righteous, this new way of being. “A little,” I replied. “Virtuous.” Said with a grin.

That leaves the other large paper-product purchase. I had to give this one some extra thought. I grew up, not in poverty, but in a cultural situation in which we did not have indoor toilet facilities but walked, marched, trudged, or ran down the path to the out-house, depending on the urgency and climate.

Sometimes we had rolls of toilet paper. Sometimes we didn’t. We always had the Sears catalog. But what did people do before Sears? That was my question.

Those Sears catalogs were pretty wonderful. They provided dreams and inspiration for an entire year. When the next year’s catalog arrived in the mailbox, heavy and colorful, the old book went to the outhouse, still useful, page by page.  

We’ll always have uses, needs, for disposable paper. For me, I intend to follow the rule of less in the trash is one more happy tree growing out there on the edge of the clear cut. And, no, I do not want another trip to the outhouse, ever. 

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

February 10, 2022

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

We are as sick as our secrets.

 

We are as sick as our secrets.

When I had cataract surgery a few years ago, when the pads were removed from my eyes, I felt like I had been given a new set of eyeballs. Suddenly the world appeared more clearly, more colorful than ever before in my clouded memory. 

Other gifts of new sight have happened more gradually, like this one I want to share with you.

You all know I have quite an extensive array of plants in my garden. To some of the flowers, bushes and trees I’ve given names. I have a couple plants I call “George” simply because I like the name and probably associate it with my Uncle George, who had a terrific dry sense of humor and was a farming genius.

In my main bucket garden area, I have Homer, my taller than me, Day of the Dead garden-guard statue, named after an old friend, writer and wit. In the back corner beneath the Jacaranda, I have The Lady. That’s all I’ve ever called her, The Lady, a beautiful sylph-like being with a bird on her shoulder.

My Mango tree I call La Senora, after Leo’s mother, who has helped me a lot though she died before I moved here. La Senora radiates energy.

Another special named plant is Kristen’s Azalea. I planted a white azalea in memory of my son’s girlfriend who died a year ago. On New Year’s Eve, the first flower opened and today she looks like a princess in a white gown, whose scent permeates the patio area with sweetness.  

And in what used to be my stump garden, until the stump rotted apart and had to be removed, I have Francis. This story is about Frances. Not so much maybe about him but about me from back when I was too young and too naïve to know better.

The real Francis back when we all were young and foolish was a handsome dude. He had a great nickname which I won’t mention. He damaged me. Then I did a horrible thing. I disappeared him. I attempted to erase every aspect of him from my mind and memory. It never hurt him. But it hurt me, festering away in the attic of my mind all those years.

Twenty-some years later, I was talking and laughing with a group of friends when in walked Francis. I did not recognize this shell of a man, but knew him when he said his name. I got quiet, became wallpaper. I don’t know if he recognized me or not. I never saw him again.

But that afternoon, what I knew was that he was a very sick man, torn apart by the ravages of alcohol. I was able to have enough compassion to know he had been sick even back when he was young. This was “head” knowledge. I never breathed one word to anybody of the past. That was my hidden secret. And like I said, I never saw Francis again.

Then one morning after the stump had been gouged out of my stump garden and we’d begun to rearrange the rockery and plants, Leo showed up clutching the ugliest mal-formed elephant foot plant I’d ever seen. It looked like a last-gasper, with a wizened foot and crooked trunk. Somebody had chopped off the pony-tail like fronds from the top.

Leo said, “This was dying but I think it will come back to life in your stump garden.”

Without conscious thought, I said, “That is Francis.” And so the stump garden became the Francis garden, and eventually, as Francis the elephant foot plant gained in strength and even in beauty, became the St. Francis garden.

In the beginning, I was uncomfortable with Francis, but gradually, with time and with the need to take care of him, to nurture him, as Francis the Elephant Foot took root in my stump garden, my memories of the original Francis seeped out of my head and took root in my heart, fed with a new compassion and understanding. As this new Francis healed, so healed my memories.

You must please know this was nothing special in me. I was content to keep that ugliness buried inside forever. It took a poor spindly plant to root it out into the sunshine.

Today Francis stands tall. His twisted trunk has straightened and his pony-tail topknot has grown out gracefully. I hope that somehow, somewhere, that young, handsome, also damaged, dude of my past lives and prospers.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

February 3, 2022

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________