Make good times. Make good memories.

 

Make good times. Make good memories.

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Whatever your beliefs, whatever your inclinations for this wintery holiday season, I wish you only the best. Make good times. Make good memories. Make good. With love from my heart to your hearts.

While these few weeks living in my new home have been mostly about creating that home to be my sanctuary, I have taken some time out to make memories by exploring the land around here.

I’ve been to the Ocomo, the archeological digs in Oconahua, several times in the past years. In looking back, I realize that I had viewed the country and the town through the eyes of a tourist. Now I’m a resident and see every street differently, noticing details tourist miss.

The photo, taken by Michelle, is of Ana and me with Dude drooling over our shoulders, exploring the foothills of Oconahua.

This is my “Christmas Card” to you.

 

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

December 26, 2024

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The trumpet vines, the grasses, and the frothy pines

 

               The trumpet vines, the grasses, and the frothy pines

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One of my friends asked me how I felt when I came back to the Rancho and my old home sat there empty of any aspect of myself.

That’s a hard question to answer. For one thing, I’ve been so busy, focused on creating my new home, that I have little space in my head for my old home.

Until I find a buyer, my old home is still my home. Maybe all the ties are not cut. The good memories and all the love that place has given me will never be erased. I hope a new owner someday will feel the same. I’d still be there if the largeness of the place had not become too difficult for me to maintain.

I like it that I’m so close to my friends at the Rancho and we can easily visit.

I like exploring my new surroundings, meeting people in my new town, my neighborhood perched way out on the edge, half-way up the mountain.

I like my yard filled with new bushes and plants I’ve not before seen. Take the yellow trumpet vine. I looked it up, found it, the yellow Angel Trumpet. It is more a shrub than a vine with huge, footlong, yellow trumpets hanging, bugle downward, serenading the earth.

One of my favorites, a mystery tree to me, has a pale green fragile-skinned trunk onto which it looks like a thousand-thousand sea shells have been glued. Right now it is not so pretty, mostly leafless, but in bloom has large pink flowers with a peppery scent.

The other day Ana and Michelle and I climbed into the ATV and explored the neighborhood, the adjacent tiny town of San Rafael, a huge eucalyptus grove, and then continued down into the foothills skirting the mountains. I felt great, getting out and exploring the countryside, learning new terrain.

This country reminds me of the Bear Paw Mountains, only lusher. It’s the same kind of country, the mountains and gullies similar but thick with bushes, trees, flowers, and grasses. Oh, the beautiful grasses, tall overhead, tasseled, and so many varieties. I have gathered grasses for bouquets, they are that stunning.

I must tell you about the pines, the frothy pines. When I first moved to Mexico, one of my early acquaintances was the coastal pines. They are obviously pine trees. One can easily see that. But the pine needles don’t look like needles, they look, well, fluffy, frothy.

I don’t know if the pine grove we landed underneath has the same species of pine as on the coast. They look alike. Three of my friends grabbed me the other day for lunch out at the Laguna Colorado. Prior to the pandemic, this was a favorite place for several of us to go eat. Good food. Great views overlooking the laguna, the water birds, the hills and mountains beyond.

The place has grown up. When first introduced to us, the first years, there was one eatery. Then two. And now another has sprung up, all venues with good food. We went to the third, which might become my favorite, situated in an older, well-established grove of huge frothy pines. The seating is open air beneath the ceiling of pines, with lines strung from trunk to trunk, each line crowded with hanging planters, some trunks wreathed around with flowers. Oh, the orchids, the unbelievable orchids, growing wild. Who could not like that!

So my friend, to attempt to better answer your question, I don’t feel any sense of loss, but, more of a sense of what I have gained. My domicile is smaller. My life does not feel smaller. In ways for which I have no words, my life feels bigger.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

December 19, 2024

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The Sudden Social Life of a Recluse

 

               The Sudden Social Life of a Recluse

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“They” let me out at night. What a revelation! It was the night of the Christmas Parade in the Plaza at Oconahua. The “they” who let me out is that part of myself which has kept me a recluse these past years.  Note that I had not been out after dark in five or six years.

I had taken on the self-imposed role of recluse due to pain, surgery, the pandemic, habit. With a good life in my own back yard, I felt no need to spice it up with outside entertainment. My mind does it all: comedy, drama, horror, past, present, future. No limits to where my mind might go.

Now I live in Oconahua and have had a regular spate of visitors through my door. One friend said, “We see you more now than when you lived around the corner.”

My friends, Ana and Michelle, decorated their ATV with Christmas lights and flashy fun, filled it with bags of candy, in preparation for the Christmas parade. They invited me to join them. At night. In December.

“Okay,” I said. “Dump me in the Plaza to watch the parade. Throw me candy.”

I’ve lived in Mexico a while. I know that a parade that lines up at 6:30 to start at 7:00, won’t get rolling until 8:00. I know that sitting in the Plaza will be enjoyable for me, no matter the hour.

I mentioned my plans to John and Carol. “We’ll join you. Sounds like fun.”

“Dress warmly,” I said. We had a delightful time in the Plaza, people watching, talking with passers-by, munching goodies, seeing children running and playing and laughing.

We never saw one mean or disturbing incident. Just pure play. This is a small town. If one child acted out, an adult nearby would tap that small person on the shoulder, lift a brow, and that would be the end of necessity for discipline.

Beautifully decorated floats, er, floated up the main street and around the plaza, all aglitter with lights, music and every possible Christmas icon, most of them foreign to Mexico, imported by way of movies and television.

After the parade, the lighting of the Christmas tree and overhead decorative lights in and around the Plaza,  topped the evening with “oohs and aahs”.

A good time was had by all. That was Sunday.

When I arrived home, I found an invitation to a December-birthdays gathering at Lani’s house. Kathy said she’d come get me and carry me home, please accept. I accepted. Lani makes a grand pineapple upside-down cake. In our small group there are five or six December birthdays. I’ll go to celebrate my father’s, same day as Lani’s.

Previously, John and Carol and I had arranged to go to lunch one day at El Parral in San Marcos, the next small town west. We’d not been there for a few years. They serve traditional meals, homemade on the premises.  Food was as wonderful as we’d remembered. That morning came close to being a communications disaster.

Ana called me earlier that day to say we could get haircuts in San Marcos. She and I arranged to meet in the San Marcos Plaza after my meal with John and Carol. We even set up Plan A and Plan B, experience having trained us to expect the unexpected.

Ana and Michelle had finished their business early. Michelle called John while we were eating our last bites. Not knowing about Ana’s and my Plans A and B, they arranged C. I was still operating on A, which was, meet at the Plaza. Add to this mess, a text glitch which was supposed to show us where the hair cutter was located, text sent from a new cell phone which still hadn’t learned to obey instructions.

Unaware of this contingency plan, delicious meal finished, I decided to walk the few blocks to the Plaza. John and Carol intercepted me just before I turned toward the Plaza. In another fifteen minutes of confusion with numerous phone calls, driving, seeking and searching, I decided to forego the haircut, and we’d all meet at the Oxxo at the entrance to town where I’d change cars for home.

I guess that might have been Plan G or H. It worked. I changed cars. We all went home.

Just think, I might still be at the Plaza in San Marcos, turned to stone, my hair grown to my feet. Tourists would ask, “Who’s this?”

“Don’t know. It just showed up one day. Senora Whatshername comes with scissors and cuts her hair once a month. Plaza birds use the clippings in their nests.” Children would leave flowers and trinkets at my feet.

The next big happening is a trip to the new Ikea in Guadalajara next week, four of us. What could possibly go wrong!

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

December 12, 2024       

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Making Home

 

        Making Home

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In the third week in my new casa just up the road a ways from my old casa, I am making home. In ways this is like baking a cake. It is not a one-step process. It is not a box mix. The moving van (non-existent) does not pull up, put boxes in marked rooms, and roll on down the highway while I make the bed and go to sleep.

Oh, if only it were so simple. Bit by bit though, this cake batter of a home is coming together.  While there is still a lot to do, let’s call this a complicated cake, it is coming together in ways that blend efficiency, ease of use with beauty and comfort. Keep adding ingredients and mixing well and the batter eventually pops into the oven and becomes cake. Home.

Yesterday John and Carol, snowbirds from Minnesota and friends who also have a casa in Gringolandia, which is what we in Oconahua call the little enclave of residents at the Rancho, came to visit, to see my new home.

I watched the looks of wonder on Carol’s face as she took my tour, kept exclaiming, “Oh, Sondra. Oh, Sondra. This is so nice. This is so perfect for you.”

Before John and Carol left, she whispered, “Now I won’t worry about you any more.”

I don’t know what she was expecting but I my imagination of Carol’s imagination knocked on the door of a tiny hovel, one room with bed, bath and stove. The end.

Leaving the cake in the metaphorical oven, let’s segue to Goldilocks and know that the home I make is just right. Just big enough. Just beautiful enough. Just roomy enough. And, bonus, I still live a goodly portion of my day outdoors on my just-right patio surrounded with just-enough plants.

To borrow from days of Radio yore with Paul Harvey, so what’s the rest of the story? Because we know, there is more to this than everything is “just right”, right?

No internet. No phone.

That’s not all bad. Think about it. Three weeks with no news, no horrors, no news, no sales pitches, no news. Not all bad.

But, oh, the inconvenience. The lost touches with friends and family. We are so used to instant access. I am so used to instant access. I want my Telmex and I want it now!

I don’t get what I want when I want it. Instead, I get the clipity-clop as men on horseback ride past on my narrow street. I get the daily sound of the water truck delivering drinking water. I get dogs barking and chickens clucking and my neighbor across the way practicing his trombone and neighborhood children laughing.

Guess what? I want my Telmex and I want it now!

Sondra Ashton

Havre Daily News

December

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This year I’m the turkey!

 

This year I’m the turkey!

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I am living in my new home in Oconahua these few days, surrounded with decisions, mind changes, piles and stacks of books, dishes, food, turning in circles, where to put, what to do, which next. For this I am Thankful.

I’m not brilliant, but I’m not stupid. When I get crowded into this corner, I know what to do. I go outside to my patio shady spot and sit and watch the hummingbirds, birds I cannot identify, ever-present vultures overhead, let the breeze clear my head. For this I am Thankful.

This is an unusually warm autumn for us, 55F in the mornings and 85F the afternoon high. I don’t mean to gloat, much, but for this I am Thankful.

I don’t have internet yet, so once a day I go to my neighbor’s casa where my laptop has resided on their red wooden breakfast table, read, respond, delete emails as necessary. For this I am Thankful.

Little by little, yet more quickly than I had imagined, shade cloth hangs over a sunny area, bamboo pots are moved into place, my clothesline, lovely umbrella clothesline is lashed to a fence post embedded in concrete, the last loads of all that I own delivered via Leo’s father’s cuppa-truck. For all these little delights I am Thankful.

After a first icy shower, Michelle came over with her ladder, knew what to do having experienced the same, installed a different showerhead and “Voila!” Hot water to scald my skin. For this I am Thankful.

My doggy Lola gets to play with Paco and Monkey every day out in the common area (Monkey is her sister. We live next door to the folks who let me adopt Lola.) For this she is Thankful. As am I.

In the evening I climb the stairway to roof to watch the sunset, the panorama of mountains, fields of shocked corn, the eucalyptus grove to the west just beyond the arroyo, neighbor’s rooftops. For this I am Thankful.

Everyday a new experience. Guests arrive in the guise of joy, despair, hope, disappointment, wonder, wet doggy tongues, laughter, friendship. I welcome them, teachers, each to show me some new facet of self. For this I am (albeit sometimes reluctantly) Thankful.

In my new home, despite some-going-in-turkey circles, I’ve created enough order to feel at home, to cook my meals, to sleep peacefully at night. For this I am Thankful. 

Thanksgiving Day I will have dinner with Ana and Michelle and Crin and Leo. I will bring fresh bread rolls and not-so-traditional mango pie. Michelle managed to find a turkey. Dinner will be a mix of cultural delights and stories and filled plates quickly emptied and love. For this I am Thankful.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

Thanksgiving, 2024

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Two Longs and a Short

 

 

                                                Two Longs and a Short

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It hung in the kitchen in the house in which we lived, on a farm outside New Winchester, Indiana, the first telephone of my memory, a wooden oak box which hung rather high on the wall. My Dad took down the ear piece which hung onto the right side of the box, connected by a short cord and leaned toward the black Bakelite cone and shouted into the mouthpiece in the center front. He turned the handle on the right a few turns. A grinding noise alerted the operator that somebody wanted to be connected, either on our line or the dreaded long distance.

Our ring was two longs and a short. Every ring on our line was distinct so we knew whom of our neighbors was receiving a call. We also knew when a neighbor picked up their earpiece to listen in to our calls. Precursor to Facebook.

In our next house, on a farm between Laconia and Elizabeth in the Ohio River hills, we had the traditional black Bakelite office-type phone. Easy to use. Those old phones lasted forever, never had to be replaced. Same party line. Same nosey neighbors.

Then the Princess phone emerged, a product of imaginative style and merciless marketing, and everyone had to, just had to, have one.

Oh, yes, the dreaded long distance. Even in his later years, my Dad seldom called me, several states away, unless somebody in the family or a close neighbor had died.

We used a telephone judiciously, when necessary, with forethought. A telephone was a tool.

We’ve come a long way, baby. Today a telephone is seldom used to talk to another person. It is a data processing machine, implanted into one’s palm, to be replaced annually, and if contacting another actual person, we don’t talk, we text. Or less. Send an incomprehensible, to me, emoji, eliminating the necessity for actual words.  Amazing, that!

Dinosaur that I am, texting, along with other social media, mystifies me.  People can be whomever you want them to be, until you meet them. We tell ourselves these stories. As long as we don’t actually talk, really talk, to the other person, we can keep building our stories.

I digress. What started me on this line of thought about telephones was fear. Fear that I would lose my land line in my move. Dinosaur, remember. I like a land line. They are still handy for some few things, at least, here in Mexico.

When I’m on a telephone, I picture you on the other end, know your voice, your facial expressions, your body language. I feel connected, even long distance.

Ana, Michelle, Crin and I drove to Tequila to the regional Telmex office, each of us with a wish. We each have learned not to become too invested in our wishes. After two hours of face-to-face conversation with the lovely woman in the Telmex office, we left the office with smiles on our faces.

All of this is with Ana’s good help as interpreter, negotiator, and conveyer of our wants.

Crin will have wi-fi service at her house, without having to piggyback onto one of ours. What you must understand that for years different people here have tried and failed to get a line.

Ana got to cancel a service she no longer needed.

She and Michelle got to upgrade another service that they use.

I get to take my account with me and, if the planets are lined up right, retain my same phone number at my new house, even though it is in a different town. Another unheard of, unimaginable impossibility, to move a service 10 K up the road to a different town and retain the same number. Impossible.

Cue the woo-woo music here. We felt as if we slipped into a parallel universe, and in a business office, no less! I’d understand if it were through the back of a wardrobe, perhaps in company with a lion and a witch. Perhaps, oh, never mind.

The challenge will be to stay inside this magical place while four different technicians show up with work orders to make the changes. Might happen. Might not happen.

After a short drive back into the real world, in the center of the city by the Plaza, we ate bang-up excellent meals at a lovely and expensive restaurant in Tequila. We did, however, leave the tequila in Tequila.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

November 21, 2024

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The Adventures of the Gallant Clothesline

 

The Adventures of the Gallant Clothesline

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Once upon a time, in the far northern reaches of China, bordering Mongolia, there lived a beautiful princess. Oh, wait, wrong story. Start again.

Once upon a time, in the far northern reaches of China, bordering Mongolia, a factory dedicated to producing the best umbrella clotheslines in the world, meticulously began to piece together the very Prince of All Clotheslines.

Disclosure: Parts of this story have been fictionalized. However the main thread of the story is absolute truth.

In all innocence, unaware of consequences which would surround my decisions, I began looking for an umbrella-style clothesline suitable for my next life chapter, in which all my living space shrinks.

I kept returning to the (Yikes!) model which cost (Yikes!) much more than the other models flanking it left and right. My chosen model is made of steel rather than aluminum. Maybe it wouldn’t matter. I batted around pros and cons with friends who know no more about this style appliance than I do. Finally, I ordered it, ordered the (Yikes!) model I most wanted.

I waited for confirmation of my order. Waited. Waited. Finally, I got a message from the Big A that if I did not get confirmation from the supplier within a certain number of days, I should cancel my order. This message did not instill confidence. No, no, no.  But, I wanted this model. I waited. Waited. Waited.

Meanwhile, back at the factory in the far north reaches of China, bordering Mongolia, workers began meticulously piecing together the poles and slides and strings on what would become the most Princely of all Umbrella-style Clotheslines. With each piece of the Umbrella Puzzle, the dedicated workers explained to the clothesline, that it would find a new home in which it would be expected to outperform all others models of same. They whispered to the pieces and parts, that they would be appreciated, that the newly formed umbrella would find honor in rising to its highest function. You have my word for this.

Finally, before the deadline, I got a message that confirmed my order. I even got an expected delivery date. Whew.  

This was last month.

The delivery date came. The delivery date passed on by, as dates tend to do. It long passed. It passed.

I waited. I waited.

Meanwhile, this Most Honorable of All Clotheslines was battling its way to my arms, adventure after adventure.

Upon leaving the factory, my clothesline had to endure the grumbling of the Grumbliest of All Camels crossing the great Gobi Desert, enduring sandstorms, battling sandworms, oops, sorry, different story again, but you get the picture. It wasn’t easy.

Finally, across the desert, through villages, crossing rivers, my Brave Clothesline reached the Sea where it boarded a Sampan and crossed the Wide Pacific Ocean, through typhoons, dodging hurricanes, and weary but undaunted, landed on the Shores of Nayarit in Mexico.

Almost home, almost. First, it found itself tied onto the back of a little brown burro which bowed its willing head and set off on trails up, up, up and over the Sierra Madre Occidental Mountains. Up and over and down and down and down, through Nayarit into Jalisco. Brave little burro.

Finally, today, my clothesline was delivered to my own door, a little weary, somewhat battered but undamaged and glad to find a home. Not an easy trip but remember, it has nerves of steel.

I will love my Princely Clothesline which has travelled half the known world to reach my arms. I will honor my Clothesline. I promise to Cherish my Prince of a Clothesline.

The End.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

November 14, 2024

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My Circle of Gold

 

My Circle of Gold

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My friends, I don’t have a story for today. Instead, I’ll send a poem. It is raw, fresh and flawed, but I no longer care about flaws.

I’ve been thinking a lot about love. Remember how we used to say “Make love, not war”? Today my chant would be, “Make love, not hate”.

Love is difficult, takes careful consideration, time, decisions. That’s my experience. I’m so fortunate to have known and to know so much love. I’m human. I get angry, frustrated, irritated at my friends, but love is bigger and I love you anyway. Why not? You continue to love me. So here is my love poem for today.

“Sondra, you need a man in your life,”

Says my young, young friend. I laugh.

“Are you applying for the job, Pool Boy?”

My rejoinder. I am the only woman,

Living alone, in a tiny community,

In a foreign country, a dozen or so

Snowbirds, who come and go,

Willy-nilly. Most of the year I am

The only gringo. I don’t feel alone.

I grew up as if an only child, although

I had a sister. I’ve been married,

Have children, grandchildren to love.

Now I’m an old woman, comfortable

With whom I am, alone.

I’ve had a full life.

Took years of aloneness

To learn not to be lonely

With whom I am alone.

Around me, near and far, a circle

Of quiet people, fluid with comings

And goings. These, you, have become

The ring on my finger,

My circle of gold.

 

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

November 7, 2024

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Wreck on the Communications Railroad

 

            Wreck on the Communications Railroad

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In each life it seems there might be one or two individuals with whom, no matter how hard we try, we simply cannot communicate. We usually marry them.

Seriously, if nothing else, we surround ourselves with people of like mind. We act together in ways beneficial to both parties. We are on the same track, click-clacking to the same destination.

However, now and then we encounter a person with whom out tongue jumps the track, derails, stops at the wrong station, or otherwise completely mucks up what started as a smooth ride.

Presently I’m trying to negotiate a small business deal with such a person. I don’t think it is the fault of either of us. If I say left, she hears right. If she says up, I hear down. Makes it really hard to stay on the rails. It’s even harder to keep imagination under control and not let that creative entity wreck the whole process.

Putting aside the latest attempt to get somewhere involving a stranger and money, I went out to my washing machine to grab the load of sheets only to find water on the patio and dry sheets in the tub.

My washing machine had broken down. Hopefully, it is a small thing, easily fixed.

I put the sheets into my laundry trolley and went inside to email my friend Kathy, with whom I have great communications, a friend of 24 or 25 years. We come close to being able to mind read with one another.

We both prefer email to telephone, maybe because neither of us lives with one of those things glued to our body. So, keep in mind, most of the following was by email.

“Kathy, my machine broke. May I use the washer in Crin’s bodega?” Crin is Kathy’s sister and when she isn’t here, Crin wants me to use her machine periodically, just to keep it friendly.

“Sure. I’ll go unlock the bodega.”

I trotted over with my trolley. The bodega was locked. So I went back home, left the trolley there. I would return in 15 minutes or so.

I went to my computer to answer another friend’s email. There was a new message from Kathy. “I’m flat out on the couch. I’ve got vertigo. Don’t know what is going on.”

“Okay. No problem. Ana and Michelle are coming over. I’ll send my laundry home with them.”

So I trudged back to the bodega to get my sheets and the bodega door was open, light on, so I went ahead and filled the tub and started the washer. Kathy must have unlocked the door for me, gone back to her house and collapsed.

I didn’t worry about it because Kathy would see my empty laundry trolley and know that we’d just slid past on different tracks, side by side.

Following my visit with Ana and Michelle, I walked back to get my laundry. The bodega door was shut and locked.

Back home, I checked my computer and the email from Kathy said, “Okay. I’ll lock the bodega.”

That was strange, not like Kathy at all, but she was not her usual healthy self.

I went over to Kathu’s house. “Hello oo oo.”

“Kathy, when I found the bodega open, I put laundry in the machine. Now it is locked. My sheets are hostage.”

Together we walked back to Crin’s, with keys. “I had Richard lock the bodega.”

“Oh. That explains it clearly. Richard would not see the trolley, would not hear the machine swishing the clothes. He would simply lock the door as you asked, right?”

“You said it.” We laughed. I retrieved my laundry.

See how easily the train jumped tracks with a good friend of years?

No wonder if is more difficult with a stranger, with two people who know nothing of each other.

This is a pretty silly example, trite, inconsequential. It is too easy to add inflammatory elements such as runaway imagination, anger, hurt pride, greed, self-righteousness. Think global. Plunk in a few nuclear weapons, geo-political feuds of centuries standing, power lust, the impossibility of accurately translating many phrases, cultural misunderstandings. The list is endless.

Yes, Virginia, it is possible for two freight trains, running full steam ahead, to crash in a tunnel.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

October 31, 2024

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A Gusty Autumn Day

 

A Gusty Autumn Day

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The northeast wind doth blow! Just like that, fall is no longer on the way but has arrived.

This is not our prevailing wind but is our October wind, here in Etzatlan, Jalisco. Not that much can be said to prevail these uncertain days.

Conditions here are generally mild. This morning the winds are at 6-7 mph, gusting to 25! For us, this is windy!

I love autumn. One thing I love most is that the air carries whiffs of spices. Spicy scents seem to be layered, to waft around my patio, to make love to my nose. Flowers, trees, grasses, all smell spicy in October, each day, each hour, a different mix.

From the 20^th until the end of the month, our town celebrates Festival Days. Depending on one’s whims, this annual celebration is a time of thanksgiving and blessings or one whoop-up party or, likely, a combination. Festival is a time of parades and processions, most of them beginning and ending at the Cathedral and the Plaza.

Streets are closed to auto traffic. A Carnival for the children dominates several blocks. The center of town feels like a street bazaar with vendors hawking jewelry, clothing, artisan craft-ware, toys, pretty much anything and everything.

Food purveyors make various specialties in front of your eyes, hand-patting tortillas, filling tacos, cutting into the centers of coconuts, lifting hot empanadas out of ovens, pouring decadent crepes, stirring vats of birria, selling tamales out of buckets, whetting every appetite.

Horses, the most beautiful horses in the world, parade, perform, and dance to every music. Music. Bands march, play, compete. Some of the music is quite good. All of the music is loud.

Each day begins with a bang. Fireworks celebrate the sun. Around 11 in the evening, vendors, families with sleeping children, dancers, and musicians prepare to go home for the night, but gather in the plaza for the finale, elaborate displays of fireworks, dancing colors.

Last night I hardly slept, not because of the music, audible from town, nor from the fireworks, always audible. Every time I drifted off, a gust of wind knocked another avocado from the tree outside my bedroom window, to crash into the yellow oleander below or onto my rock garden or most loudly, onto the concrete patio surround, each landing a different auditory explosion.

This morning I started out with a bucket to pick up all the fallen fruits for the trash when I realized it would be a suicide mission to walk below that tree on a windy day. The tree tops out at a good 30’. Imagine a hefty football-shaped missile, 5-6” long and 3-4” high, a dense fruit, landing on your head.

Michelle told me that we would call this native variety pear avocados. I call them footballs. My Haas avocado tree succumbed to the heat dome just when it was getting vigorous, ready to produce. Joys of small-scale farming.

Instead of risking my life under the attack tree, I decided to make teriyaki sauce in the safety of my kitchen. Woman does not live on Mexican food alone. Another scent to add to the air while my mixture simmered to reduce to the consistency I wanted. I had to close one window to prevent the flame from being blown out beneath the bubbling sauce.

While gathering ingredients for the teriyaki sauce, I noticed with my eagle-eye bug-check vision, that my garbanzo beans, in a glass jar, seemed speckled. Bean bugs. I took the jar of beans and bugs to the outside garbage, away from the house, to dump them.

I keep all my food in glass jars to prevent bug infestations. Even so, if one bean has a bug, they all have bugs. I check my jars regularly. Bean bugs seem to find it exciting to scoot around the winding lips of the jar lid and into the trails of the neighboring jar, perhaps their version of a Tilt-a-Whirl. From one jar to another. If that happens, one might as well bring the large garbage can inside and empty the cupboard, hazmat suit in place, fumigation gear at hand.

Once before, when I didn’t know the necessary routine for eradication, I dumped a jar of infested beans into my garbage bin under the kitchen sink. Bean bugs terrorized my kitchen for months. Never again, I say.

Mid-afternoon.  Wind has shifted from the southeast, a steady 7 mph with gusts to 27. It’s a great evening for a stir-fry with a side of avocado.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

October 24, 2024

10 24, 2024

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Old Dog, New Tricks

 

Old Dog, New Tricks

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Scritch, scratch, scrape, scratch, scritch. Chips flying. Breathing dust. I really should have eye protectors.

I cannot believe I am doing this job. Just last week, just days ago, I told you I do anything to avoid using sandpaper. Here I am, sanding down metal rocking chairs, one pair so old that the only thing holding them together might be the paint. I proceed cautiously, dust up my nose, in my hair, in the fibers of my clothing. Oh, well. Must be done.

It was not my idea. Kathy and Richard are the first pair of snowbirds to arrive for the winter. Kathy, bless her perfectionist heart, suggested that since I’ve slathered everything else I own with a bright, new layer of life, the rockers deserve a similar renewal.

I could have nodded my head and ignored her. But, no, I could hear the rockers squeaking out, “Me too! Me too!” Green, I’m thinking. Shades of green. With that thought I am doomed.

First, I must make the job tolerable. This I do by covering my hands. Something about the texture of sandpaper, my sensitive finger skin finds intolerable. I have nice leather gloves but I know that before I make one chair decent enough for paint, my good leather will have holey fingers, that is, with holes, not sanctification. Fortunately, in my bathroom supplies, I have a large box of nitrile gloves. The life of a glove, at most, is half an hour. Tolerable.

My rockers are metal, outside chairs, and, as such, have been sitting in the weather, enduring these nine years of intense UV sun rays and pounding rain. They are faded, chipped and peeled in places down to the original, down to rust.

True to myself, I picked the most difficult looking chair to start, one with 5 layers of old paint.  Three hours into the job, with sandpaper, a knife and a wanna-be wire brush, my chair looked downright scabby. I’d swept three cups of chair paint debris from beneath my work table. Time is flexible. I will continue to scratch-scratch until I deem the chair ready for paint.

As the pile of discarded nitrile gloves mounted, I’d quit measuring paint dust/chip debris.

Meanwhile, my attitude to the dreaded job had changed. I won’t say I loved it, but by focusing on the transformation of the poor neglected and abused chair, what I can sing is this: You gotta have heart, miles and miles and miles of heart . . . there’s nothing to it but to do it . . . You gotta have heart.

Thank you, Eddie Fisher. And just like that, the work doesn’t seem to be half as hard. Even smarmy lyrics send me encouragement from the past.

Monday morning I engaged Leo for a quick trip to the hardware store. I left armed with heavy-duty work gloves, safety glasses, and a real wire brush. At the Comex I bought heavy-duty sandpaper and four vibrant paints, flowers in jewel tones, Bougainvillea that hang over my garden wall, plus one leafy green, one paint for each chair. 

Back to work, with better tools, I quickly discovered that something had shifted, perhaps only within myself, but the shift felt monumental. These poor, abused and much neglected rocking chairs had become my teachers. When I go slowly enough,  even inanimate objects speak clearly.

I had been holding up a good front about my coming move. My battered chairs showed me my edges of fear and trepidation, to move, to change, during the end-days of my life. As fear feeds fear, it grew, without me noticing.

My new home will be vibrant with splashes of color, each color a flower, my new garden, singing loudly with joy. Now I know, I can feel, deep in my heart of hearts, this move will be good for me, will give me, even now is giving me, the capacity to change, to begin again, a new chapter in my life book.

As I scratch-scratched away old paint, my sensitive hands protected with new gloves, I sensed the chairs showing me that even I, creaky and rusty as I am, can shine with new life.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

October 17, 2024

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Fighting Fear of Boredom

 

    Fighting Fear of Boredom

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Often I say that I am never bored. It’s true. Always I find plenty to do, things that I enjoy and want to do. Fortunately, I grew up learning to like whatever I am doing. I give credit to the good Sisters at St. Joseph’s. Even today I take pleasure in plunging my hands into warm dishwater or ironing creases into my cotton pants.

I’m not pure or perfect. I dislike touching sandpaper and a lot of things in my home would be better detailed had I not skipped a crucial step in a process of smoothing. I manage to rationalize ways to avoid a good number of my dislikes.

My new house, to which I will move, is finished. Before I move, two things need to happen. The patio roof needs to be built to protect my patio furniture from mountain UV rays, severe year round, not to mention sun and rain. And, my little section of yard must be fenced, to keep Lola, my pooch of various pedigree, from stress.

The owners of my new casita rescue dogs. Lola is quite happy, alone, protecting me and her own little kingdom, behind a wall. Or a wrought iron fence. The fence will keep Lola in and the other dogs out, although only a couple at a time are allowed in the common area. 

Consequently, it will be at least another month before I can finish my move. I’ve packed and moved every single thing that can be pre-moved and am living with my Buddha bowl, metaphorically. It’s not that bad, but every other day I realize I should have kept this or that or the other thing.

I’ve run out of things to do, to pack, to paint, to renovate, pre-move. At the beginning of the month, did you hear the calendar page turn and look out to see the leaves on the Fresno trees turn golden overnight? Did you hear me wailing, “October will go down in my personal history as the only month in which I was ever bored.”?

In my family, we do not do boredom. Thank you, Sister Mary John B. Thank you, Grandma.

Ask my children. They will tell you. Once and once only, each of them said, “Mom, I am bored.’” I swiveled my head and squatted down to their level, and gently said, “Oh, good. Here is a list of things with which I need you to help me.”

My kids might tell this story a little differently. They swear that my brown eyes turned flashing red and green, that my teeth grew into fangs, my fingers into claws and I exuded the stench of a fiery pit, as I gave them orders fit for road workers from a Louisiana prison in the 1800s, complete with snaps of a bull whip. Don’t you believe it. They made up their story. Pure fantasy. Fangs and claws, indeed.

When I was a child, boredom was not yet a popular concept. My words were, “I don’t have anything to do.” My Grandma was matter of fact. “Good. Start with washing and oiling and polishing the base boards.” In our 1920’s farm house, every room had base boards, about six inches high.

Interestingly, although I still did all the jobs Grandma gave me to do, I never again ran out of things to do on my own. Nor did my own children ever more than once suffer from ubiquitous boredom.

Along about the first part of October, I began fearing boredom. To counteract the fear, I gave myself a job. Washing windows. My house has more windows than walls. I live outside while inside. There are eleven large arched sets of windows to wash. Typically, this can take several days.

And it did. I eked out window washing three days. Along with other chores and opportunities which seemed to magically pop up. Here it is the 10^th of October, and my fear of boredom is unfounded. Thus far.

Each evening, like the good Shoemaker in the Fairy Tale, I lay out my job for tomorrow, hoping the elves will come and finish the job for me. The elves have not arrived yet, but I live in hope. And, so far, I’m not bored.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

October 10, 2024

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Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic

 

            Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic

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I am writing this, talking about this hard subject, for you, for that one person out there who needs to hear that you are not alone.

This is a topic nobody wants to talk about. Me, included. Let’s sweep it under the rug and pretend that lump isn’t real.

I’ve lost my son. Again. Last time I lost him, the County Sheriff picked him up in a ditch, beat up with broken bones, a backpack containing heroin and other contraband. Landed in jail. The County had a special program, unique, and he volunteered for it, wanted to get clean. It was a great program, combining individual and group counseling, work, AA and NA meetings, physical help, and more.

Once he left jail, the program continued with counseling, a safe house, a job, meetings, a rigorous routine.

From there this man, my son, managed to put together several years of sobriety. It wasn’t easy for him. He didn’t go back to his prestigious IT job. Bit by bit, we, family and friends, saw him getting better.

Then a couple years ago, we began to see troubling signs. Stories that didn’t quite make sense. But we wanted them to be true, right, so we made allowances. He quit going to meetings. He pushed away friends. A year and a half ago he quit talking with me. I had been questioning some of his decisions, those few I knew about, long distance. When he quit talking, I knew he was using.

Why am I writing about this now? Well, I just heard from a relative, some ugly details of my son’s life. Broke my heart all over again. Oh, yes, I knew he was using. But in the last couple years, I’d managed to compartmentalize the pain. Living 2500 miles away helps.

Two years ago his situation was bad. Now it is beyond ugly and desperate. One knows it is desperate when one hopes and prays that one’s son lands back in jail rather than die in a ditch. That may sound brutal. I don’t know if he will claw his way out of the pit he’s dug for himself. He can, if he asks for help. If.

My understanding is that to those who are vulnerable to it, heroin is like the ultimate bliss. My son, himself, told me that he never forgets, that nothing ever measures up to what he feels on the drug, that it sings a continual siren song.

There is help. For the User. For the Family. If my son had continued to surround himself with friends who didn’t use, had stayed in the job with people in recovery who valued him and supported him, continued with his counselors, gone to meetings, reached out to others who needed his story, had continued contact with his family . . .

This could have been a different story, right?

One of the ways I take care of myself, while crying and allowing myself to feel the pain, to feel it more deeply perhaps, is to throw myself into work.  Physical work is balm, for me.

I will take care of myself. I will not allow his addiction to crush me. I know that I didn’t cause it, I cannot cure it, and I cannot control it. 

So that is why I set about rearranging deck chairs on my own Titanic. I’m between homes at present, closing down my life in my little casa in Etzatlan, moving to another small casa up the road in Oconahua.

My house was a jumbled mess but I had figured to live in the mess a few more weeks. Then when my son was brought back before me in techni-color detail, I began doing what I know to do. Physical work. I decided to make these last few weeks in this house as comfortable as possible.

I rearranged the furniture, the clothing and food items, some of which I had stashed in boxes, the few patio items I had not moved. I worked until my legs, my back, my arms hurt. Compared to the pain in my heart, physical pain was a comfort. One day of hard labor and I felt better. The heart hurt will never entirely go away. I’ve learned how to live with it. (Counseling, sharing, friends, my Higher Power, see above.)

I will not stop loving my son. He’s my 47-year-old baby. I will not allow him to tear apart my life. It’s hard. It hurts. Heroin is a Destroyer. We do not have to let it destroy us and our family. I’m not giving up. Nobody, but nobody, has to go down with the ship.

Whoever needs to hear this: You are not alone. I hear you. I care. I love you.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

October 3, 2024

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Changes? What changes?

 

            Changes? What changes?

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My morning readings include a short poem by Rumi as translated by Coleman Barks. One morning this past week, I read:

Who makes these changes?

I shoot an arrow right.

It lands left.

I ride after a deer

And find myself chased by a hog.

I plot to get what I want

And end up in prison.

I dig pits to trap others

And fall in.

I should be suspicious

Of what I want.

 

And that pretty much says it. My life in a nutshell.

Rumi has not become my daily horoscope. Some days his words mean nothing to me. Some days he is incomprehensible, like reading mud in my path.

As I’ve become older, some days I actually am able to think, let’s just see what happens, rather than wanting this way or that way and plotting to get it. Wanting, along with wanting to know the outcome ahead of time, is a pit so familiar to me that I’ve hung pictures on the walls and made the pit cosy.

It’s been a Rumi week for me. Another day the poet reminded me that it is good to take time before making decisions. Ha! Another trap I know intimately. He tells me to sniff like a dog. Throw a dog something to eat and he sniffs to see if he wants it. Me, I tend to face-plant into my wants. Rumi says to me, sniff, take three days, then decide. Three days! Is that not forever?

Another day the poet counseled constant slow movement, like a small creek that does not stagnate. Slowly, slowly, one step at a time. Ah.

That day I replied, “I think I will. Slowly. Step. Step. Step. Slowly. No decisions. No wants. Just wait to see what unfolds in front of me.”

 

Maybe Rumi is my Daily Horoscope.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my backdoor

September 26, 2024

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Might be this, might be that.

 

Might be this, might be that.

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The longer I live, the less certain I am about anything. In fact, when I detect certainty in my thinking, I immediately stop and investigate to find the flaw.

You’ve all met Leo. He works in my yard a couple half-days a week. Leo is much more than a garden worker. I’ve come to depend on Leo for all manner of help. He is a gentle man, educated, generous, and has a brilliant sense of humor. Over time, he’s come to seem a grandson to me. He trusts me enough to tell me when he thinks I am wrong and that’s a huge compliment.

I’m the only one of us who lives here on the rancho without a partner and the only one since the pandemic who lives here constantly year round. That may have served to cement our friendship. Leo shows up most mornings to ask if I need anything. He’s my taxi driver, shopper, legal advisor, all-around helper. He has a big heart. Sometimes I call him Mother Leo.

We were sitting on my patio, me telling a story from when I lived in Mazatlan. Suddenly Leo leaned forward and said, “Sondra, you have . . . “ and here he used an expression, a masculine anatomical term, which I thought was pure Montana but perhaps is pure Mexican and crossed the border north centuries past. After all, Mexico has written history centuries longer than Montana’s.

The expression means courage so I’ll use that word. “Sondra, you have big courage. You are alone. You are old. (The young man is brutally truthful.) When you need to make a change, you just make it. You moved to Mazatlan. Then to Etzatlan. And now you are going to move to Oconahua. Alone. You have big, huge courage.”

I know a compliment when I see one so, taking no offense, I said, “Thank you.” Graciously.

However, my mind was quietly thinking otherwise. My mind spit out words such as flighty, loose cannon, loco-loco.

It’s true though. When a situation becomes untenable for various reasons, I’ve learned to make a change. If opportunity beckons elsewhere, I’ve learned to make a change.

Every decision carries its own consequences. For me, that has nothing to do with right or wrong. I could go. I could stay. I could move one step left. Or right.

That sounds so smug and smarmy. It actually took six years of terror, being afraid to do anything, not “allowed” any decisions, to give me the strength to break free. Every move or change since has been relatively easy, easy only in comparison to the years I call “Chicago Time”.

Leo went on to say about himself, “Me, I’m a big chicken. I’m scared to change. Friends tell me I need to break away from here, to get a job to use my education and skills. I’m chicken. I’d love to work in one of the big resorts on the Gulf Coast. I’d be good at helping people, at managing a crew. I would like that work. But my family is important to me. I don’t want to leave family.”

Immediately, I felt guilt. I’m one of the people who’d said, “Go, move, do something for yourself.”

In that moment, I saw that I had been wrong to urge change for Leo. I don’t know what is best for this young man.

“Leo,” I said, “You know what is best for you. You are the only one who knows what is best. If living here, helping us, being here for each of us, for your family, your friends, feeds your soul, who are we to say that’s not enough? You have no idea the value you give us. We don’t express our appreciation as often as we think it. If your circumstances change, if the time comes for you to make a big change, you will know. That is also courage.”

I’ve often thought that in different times or circumstances, Leo would have been a priest. He ministers quietly, without fanfare, to us, to his family, his neighbors. If you want to see the consequences of his ministry, just take a short trip into town with him. Everybody knows Leo. Leo gives of himself, no matter where he is. That is who he is.

Fool? Wise? Chicken? Courageous? By whose definition? Might be this. Might be that.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

September 19, 2024

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It was a dark and sleepless night.

 

It was a dark and sleepless night.

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It was a dark and sleepless night, not a storm cloud in sight.

I did the usual when I don’t sleep. I gazed out the window. Turned from my right side to my left side. Threw back the blanket. Turned from my left side to my right side. Pulled up the blanket and tucked it around me, a cocoon. Too many times.

Sensible people, I am told, get up and do something. Binge on Netflix. Scrub the toilet. Read until their eyeballs fall out. Work an entire book of Sudoku. Drink a bottle of Old Grandad. Do something.

Not me. I lie in bed, very awake, and let my mind entertain me.

My mind thinks it knows everything. It doesn’t. It also thinks it is invincible. It thinks when I die it will go on living. We, me and my mind, have had conversations about this kind of stuff.  

We listened to road traffic. Car. Truck. Car. Big truck with jake brakes. There are a few haulers who like to race up to the first tope (speed bump) and slam the brakes. Evidently that satisfies something in their psyche. I wouldn’t know. I’m not a trucker.

In Etzatlan, I live a block off the highway, just off the edge of town limits.

In Oconahua, I will live on the far side of town, no highway in sight, on a cobble street going up the mountain to nowhere, among the last houses, no traffic. Please, soon.

I listen to the night birds, the tree frogs, to something that might be a kind of cricket.

My mind wants to visit the past. We argue. It wants to visit dark times I want to forget. I want to visit more pleasant memories. Why are the good times harder to hold onto, harder to dredge up the details?

In this tug of war, I roll over and toss off the blanket. Whoosh, a ripe avocado falls from the tree outside my bedroom window, through a crumple of thick leaves making a bumpity racket on the way to a hard landing on the ground.

I hear my dog on night patrol, whiffling along, checking out the disturbance. Dogs eat avocados.

My mind always wants to do a body scan, check for dire diseases. It will find them. I try to stomp that activity down before it gains momentum. An unnoticeable daytime twinge can and will, if fed and pampered, erupt into nighttime pain that only morphine will cure. I know. My mind tells me so.

Roll over, pull up the blanket. Just as my mind slows, almost restful, along comes a bobcat with its distinctive skunky reek. The bobcat sniffed around the tree and passed on to other hunting grounds.

Such was my night. I’ve learned to not fight it, to relax into it, whether this peculiar restlessness brings sleep eventually or not.

Want to hear something strange? I could have come up with any number of real things to worry about to keep me awake.

Real stuff, like health of family and friends, lack of money, questioning right or wrong of past decisions, writing script for if this or if that happens.

The possibility of Mt. Tequila erupting despite lack of activity for centuries, a rogue tsunami crossing a range of mountains and drowning all of us. Mass abduction of our community by aliens. You know, real stuff.

No, I stuck with the mundane, traffic noises, bouncing avocados and a roaming bobcat.

On a sleepless night, there is no understanding the quirks and quarks of my mind.

In the morning, I found on the ground, an avocado for the kitchen along with three seeds, licked clean.

On that sleepless night, it seemed, the whole season turned. I went to bed in summer. Didn’t sleep. Got out of bed in the newly turned fall.

The wind was blowing. Not a Montana wind. But wind enough to bend palm leaves and wave the stretched-out branches of the jacaranda. A cooler wind. A wind that chased the daily 99% humidity down to 50%. Oh, blessed wind.

The air smelled like spices, autumn air.

In the sky white puffs scudded along the blue like pleasure boats in a bay. Not a gray rain cloud in sight. Yesterday was summer. Today is autumn. Tonight I will sleep like a rock.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

September 12, 2024

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Wrong Season

 

Wrong Season

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We all get them. This has been our turn. A week fraught with “one thing after another”. The kind of week where the little disasters loom large in shadows of big fears.

My friend Ana in Oconahua had been having stomach pains for a long time, much longer than anybody knew when she finally admitted them and went for tests. Bango—into the hospital she landed, gall bladder surgery. She left minus a body part, with rocks in hand.

She is recovering nicely from the surgery but suffering from the medication. Ana has severe allergies, which is why she was able to ignore the gall bladder pains for so long. She thought the pain her own fault for eating what she shouldn’t eat. Among the long list of allergies, Ana’s body does not tolerate medication but she must use an antibiotic for an intestinal inflammation, no choice. Hence, she is both relieved and miserable, but on the road to recovery.

She lost 20 pounds. I told her, not to worry or go searching. I found them.

Seriously, and actually, Ana is a little bitty woman but once she can eat again, surely her body will adjust.

My daughter, Dee Dee, was hit with acute vertigo. Unlike her mother, she tends to not speak in superlatives, yet she reports that half the town has West Nile and the other half has Norovirus. Her symptoms are along the West Nile variety.

I urged her to get a blood test. She stumbled into the ER, since all the clinics were closed, and stumbled right back out. Standing room only in the waiting area. Had Dee Dee stayed, surely she would have left with a multitude of other ailments.

My daughter is in bed, staying hydrated, pretty much immobilized, hoping to outlast and stabilize her whirling world.

Lesser problems abound. Broken water pumps, leaking roofs, equipment malfunctions, a broken lawn mower, a weed-whacker quit whacking. Every wheel-barrow on the Rancho had flat tires, I kid you not. Frustrations, all.

At my house, Leo broke the handle on my favorite shovel. Not that I’m the one usually using the shovel. This is a short shovel with a good spade. The rod is topped with a cup-shaped plastic handle. The plastic handle broke. Split open like a rotten tomato.

Don’t tell me plastic doesn’t rot. It may not break down into dust but I deal with rotten plastic constantly. I move a bucket of chilis and the lip of the bucket comes away in my hand. Happens regularly.

In frustration, after deciding to have a blacksmith fashion a new metal handle for my shovel, I buried the blade in a pot of bamboo and said to Leo, “There. Maybe it will grow a new handle. Everything else grows.”

Leo seriously contemplated the shovel a good half a minute, shook his head, and said, “No.”

“What do you mean, ‘No’?”

“Wrong season,” Leo replied.

Not to be outdone in the Sympathy Stakes, I am here to announce I have cancer in my left forefinger. You might look at my finger and say, “Looks like a patch of little bumps here on the first joint, oh, and here at the base.”

“Yes,” I say. “Tumors.”

You might reply, “Look like spider bites.”

In return, I might say, “They are driving me nuts. I’m sure they are tumors. They itch, they hurt, I can hardly use that finger. Cancer. What if I have to have my finger amputated?”

You could at least pat me on the shoulder and say, “Poor baby. Here. Put some Bag Balm on it. Cures everything.”

Sondra Ashton

HDN:  Looking out my back door

September rainy week

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