My head is in the clouds.

 

            My head is in the clouds.

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Every morning these past few days, when Lola and I take our early morning walk, the clouds are rolling down the mountains. We move through the mist, feet on the ground, heads in the clouds. 

Another hour and the sun burns the air crisp and brilliant with shadows of orange.

As happens, my day turned topsy turvy.

I was all self-hyped to go to Dr. Imelda, my dentista, to finally have my last crown set onto my tooth. This crown has been a process and practice in delay and patience. Dr. Imelda nixed the first attempt immediately.

Turns out that the trusted lab she has used for years had a machine break down. Please understand I’m telling this to the best of my Spanish to English understanding. The lab farmed the tooth crown out to another lab while awaiting their new machine.  

Dr. Imelda also rejected the second attempt. The lab tech said new machine takes new skills and new learning. She filled my mouth with goops, 1, 2 and 3, yet again. Each goop a different color. Not fun. I have great respect for this woman for not accepting less than perfect.

The third attempt has arrived but Dr. Imelda’s son was very sick and she was nursing him. I understand. No problem. We are now into this process two months. Finally, today is the day. I gear myself up for the ordeal.

Then, while waiting for my ride, my dentist called from the hospital in Guadalajara where she accompanied her husband who is very ill. Another delay. What can I say. Please, take care of your husband, my tooth can wait. I’m happy to wait.

Back in the day, I learned to drive a stick shift. We all did. I have no problem shifting gears, actually or metaphorically. I had chilis and tomatillos and tomatoes and extra limes to deal with in the kitchen. I’ll have a jolly kitchen day.

Then Leo showed up to water the gasping, thirsty plants. “When I finish watering, I’ll hang your baskets and hearts. I need you to show me how you want them.”

Down shift a gear while I fill in the back story. Several years ago I bought baskets to hang on the rafters of my covered patio/outdoor kitchen. Each basket is a different, size, shape, color, all made with natural reeds. I don’t put light bulbs in mine for the same reason you probably would not light yours—mosquitoes. I don’t entertain at night. No reason for a well-lighted patio.

I live in farm country. While not in the middle of the corn field, dust is still a constant. Last week I had Leo take down the baskets and hose them clean, hang them on the gates to dry in the sun.

Another year I bought a multitude of colored blown-glass hearts, which I hung on the brick wall to the side of my house. Meanwhile a tiny ivy-like plant, purpose bought, grew and grew and grew, like Jack’s magic bean, until it completely covered my bare-naked wall, entwining and encompassing the hearts. I searched out the long-invisible hearts, cut them free and cleaned them.

Why not hang some of the large hearts from inside the baskets, and then hang the extra hearts on strings from the same beams? I question my ideas because I never know.

Today, we hung baskets, each with a large colored heart hanging from the center. We strung together the extras, five sizes, and hung them from the beams, blue, green, gold, aqua, red and orange. Baskets. Hearts. I like the colorful effect.

Back in the kitchen, I blanched the chili peppers; jalapenos, the long banana peppers, and the little scrunchy green ones, hotter than firecrackers, and put them in my freezer. Same process with tomatillos. I squeezed the limes to make limonada and aqua frescas.  

I eye-balled my half bushel of tomatoes, knowing an equal amount or twice more is yet to come. I don’t eat that many tomatoes so why do I plant so many? My daughter, who is recuperating nicely, by the way, suggested I can my good tomato-apple catsup again. Yes, good idea. Out in the bodega, I counted the jars left from my last batch. I’ve at least enough for another year.

I bagged my tomatoes, kept a half-dozen for my own use, and handed Leo the bags to distribute to the neighbors and to his sisters.

We don’t know, do we?  When I got up this morning, I was prepared to go to the dentist and spend the rest of the day, down-shifted to grandma gear, reading and napping, my usual routine on dental day. We just don’t know.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

The exact middle of September

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We don’t talk about that!

 

We don’t talk about that!

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I was excited. I had just signed the papers and prepaid for a cremation plan. It is the sensible thing to do. I live in Mexico. I, no doubt, will die in Mexico. Dying in Mexico is a hassle when one’s family and citizenship are elsewhere.

For one thing, the customs are different. If one dies on a Monday, one’s body is washed and dressed for viewing on Tuesday and the funeral and burial are Wednesday. Or even Tuesday.  

I live in a tiny retirement community. Most of the year, there are not more than a couple, or four other gringos here. In the middle of winter, maybe eight or ten. There is no need for a formal good-by production.

By my wishes, my end-of-this-life plans are even simpler. No viewing, no funeral, no casket. The funeral man will pick up my body, whether I did at home or in a hospital anywhere in the area, deliver it to the crematorium and return my ashes in a box.

Okay, just imagine the alternative. No plans. My daughter is my personal representative. She would have to drop everything in her life, make a fast, expensive, unplanned trip here, and, a stranger in a strange land, deal with decisions, decisions, decisions.

And all this cost me a thousand dollars, more or less, by today’s exchange rate. I was excited.

When I get excited I want to share the news. Several years ago, a group of us who’d graduated high school together, started keeping in touch with email. After these many years, we are closely knit, we talk about everything. Everything. I thought we did. Frequently we carry on all-day-long conversations, zinging messages back and forth between our various spots on the planet.

Of course, I wrote to them immediately. I figured this would be good fodder for intimate talks for days. We all share when somebody close to us passes over into the great beyond. (Forgive me waxing poetic.)

I waited. And waited. And waited. I’m still waiting. Not one of my friends responded. Not one. Not even a weak acknowledgment, “That’s nice sweetie. What are you making for lunch?”

The odd thing is that not a week goes by without one of us losing a friend, a relative, or an acquaintance. We talk about it. At length. Always.

Let me reassure you. I don’t plan to die today. But who does? My health is good. Creeping arthritis is a pain. I don’t seem to need any medications.

Just last week, I had a really ugly blood clot in my right eye. Looked like somebody slugged me a good one. Most of the white of my eyeball was brilliant stop-light red. I know what to do. Warm tea bags, right. But with a rare prudence, thought I’d get my eye looked at professionally.

I had Leo, my gardener-transportation-translator, take me to see Dr. Firmin at the Hospital Paris in Etzatlan. While all my vital signs were checked, Leo, sat over in the corner cringing. As each number was read out, he would say, “Your numbers are better than mine.” Each and every one. Leo is thirty-five.

My eyeball was healthy. The violent sneezing fit first thing in the morning probably caused the bloodshot eye. I went home, took my medicine for swelling, squinched in eye drops, and soaked my eye with another tea bag. Couldn’t hurt, right.

While I don’t plan to die today, I still think it sensible to plan for the unplanned, while admitting that is not my usual way, planning. When I first began talking about looking into a cremation plan, my daughter didn’t want to hear about it either. 

She mentioned what I was doing to a woman who works with her, a Hispanic woman. Alicia said, “My Grandma did that and it made it so much easier for the whole family. All the decisions were made and there was no fuss.”

What I don’t understand is why my closest friends went radio silent. Is it that we don’t want to think about the unthinkable? I do tend to blurt out whatever crosses my mind. That is unlikely to change.

Now I’m working on small changes to my last will. It is simple too. I’ve not much to deal with.

I really like the inscription I read about, used on a lot of Roman tombstones. Translated from the Latin, it reads, “I was not. I was. I am not. I don’t care.”

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

September 8, dry as dust, season turned.

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EPs and MPs

 

            EPs and MPs

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While waiting for my daughter to get okayed for an operation at the hospital in Billings, I dumped a puzzle onto my table. Jigsaw puzzles are a good distraction.

I had loaned this particular puzzle depicting an antique car show in front of a typical diner to snowbird friends to work last winter. Intact. One thousand pieces in the box. It is a particularly challenging puzzle, fun, so I borrowed it back.

When I finished the car puzzle, on the day of Dee Dee’s surgery, I had two MPs and one EP. Go figure. I’ll return the puzzle to my friends’ house, note attached. When they finish the other puzzle, a mountain lake scene; they will be able to shuffle pieces to the appropriate boxes.

EPs and MPs seldom work that way. Generally there is either a gap or extra parts and how on God’s green acre did that happen!

The good news is that my daughter came through surgery without a hitch. The operation went smoothly, no surprises, no glitches. She now has Missing Parts and that is a good thing. Prior to surgery, she had an Extra Part. Nobody would choose to hang onto a cancerous tumor. The really good news is that she caught it early and arranged for the surgery immediately.

By now you have figured out our Family Speak for missing parts and extra parts. Most of us have history of putting together children’s tricycles the night before Christmas, remember, trying to decipher directions written in China. Then going out in the tool shed to scramble for an extra washer or the right sized nut, or, contrariwise, holding three extra pieces in our hands and wondering where they were supposed to go. Oh, well, hey, the trike works. So no worry.

My first EP experience happened one winter day when I crawled under my broken down washing machine and fixed it. Ended up with a long strange part and a couple other small leftovers. This was back when a washing machine had legs and wringers on top. I’ve always been fairly mechanically inclined. I plugged in the machine and it worked. Threw the EPs into my tool box and washed a mountain of laundry.

If only our bodies were so easily fixed! My daughter now faces the painful process of recuperation. I would like to be with her but I’d be one more person for her to worry over, more a hindrance rather than help. I’d be her EP.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

September One, 2023

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