All My Noisy Neighbors

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First things first. Our Baby Marley is home. She is home, ready for the hard work of getting healthy and growing and looking at everything around her with those big eyes. We are so grateful. And we are so grateful for all the friends and strangers who cared, who in small ways took our baby in their arms and into their hearts and helped her heal. Thank you.

That dog of mine has put me into the habit of greeting the rising sun on our first walk of the day. Believe me, before Lola came to live with me, I did not leave the house at first light.

I’ve no problem anthropomorphizing non-humans around me. This morning, in my meditations, the birds, in all their great variety, inhabiting the wide-spreading trees, took on characteristics of people living in high-rise condominiums, maybe without quite as much fuss as we humans.

Kiskadees prefer the upper floors, the penthouse suites, noses high in the air, a bit above the rest of us, more colorful, louder in their opinions. Let me tell you, those Kiskadees, they are loud! And insistent that you hear their opinions. Over and over and over. They would be great radio personalities, you know the kind, ones who host phone-in talk shows.

Tanagers and Palomas seem to furnish the middle units quite happily. These characters are softer voiced, more musical, more space between their words.

Rainbirds like to hang out, separate but connected. They are private types, tend to listen before they sound off. (I’m making this up, of course, you know that.)

Partridge doves and warblers nest in every limb of the lower units. These inhabitants of the numerous condos, apartments and high-rises around us, provide the background music of life, always there, always singing.

Of course, this is my own silliness, a silliness that sprang from thinking about how much the birds need the trees and the trees need the birds. That’s what I think, at any rate. And we, or I, need the trees and the birds.

When I leave the house in the morning I walk beneath a ring of trees, full of birds singing the sun up. If the birds go silent, I look around to see what and why. They pay no attention to me. This morning I saw a hawk, a rare sight.

Vultures are always circling the air currents. Vultures don’t live in our ring of trees but they have habitations in a particular group of trees in town. The birds give no mind to the vultures, knowing they are looking for riper prey. Once my birds deemed the hawk of no danger to them, they resumed song.

But is it song? Maybe they are arguing. My nest is better than your nest. What about that slovenly bird-brain on branch 23? Birds of that feather shouldn’t be allowed to live among we-are-better-than-thems. Deport that bunch back to Missouri. Take away their visas. Those lower-caste birds on the bottom tiers, can’t we boot them to the slums? They are surely nothing but troublemakers.

In my world, silly or not, I’ll call bird voices song. Or prayer. Or blessing.

This morning I noticed a flock of yellow Tanagers. I love the Tanagers. (The Western Tanager is red-orange, a glory of feather-dress, and likes to hang out in the Bottlebrush.) These yellow Tanagers, or they might be Orioles, were riding the air to the height of the tallest pines. We have a type of pine tree that tends to loom above the spreading-branches trees.

The tanagers this morning perched on outside branches of the pine tree above Julie’s house, arranged themselves as if they were Christmas decorations. The sight so delightful, I had to stop in my tracks with admiration for so long that Lola, who’d pranced ahead of me, came back to see why I had not followed her back to our house.

I’ve come to believe, personal experience, youth is wasted on the young. When I grew up on my Dad’s farm on the Milk River, my get-away place was a cottonwood tree, trunk and branches leaning over the water. I’d climb that tree to sing, to cry, to celebrate, to sulk, to dream, to tell God of my understanding back then, what I wanted and how I thought my life should go. Amen.

I remember the texture of the cottonwood bark beneath my fingers, the solid branches holding me in the air, the mottled shadows of sunlight through the leaves, the tortured twigs of winter. But, I don’t remember the birds. I know there were birds. There had to be birds.

Where were the birds?

Where was I?

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

February, still winter

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Making My Retreat Center in the Kitchen

 

            Making My Retreat Center in the Kitchen

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Life is tough. At times, life is tougher. I’m on the periphery of that tough life but I feel it just the same.

Baby Marley is still in the hospital in Billings. She’s not out of the woods, but slowly on the right path, healing from RSV and Pneumonia and detoxing from the drug that kept her paralyzed during the worst of her personal storm. Mom and Dad still camp out in her room.

Meanwhile, back home in Glendive, Grandma Dee and Grandpa Chris and Uncle Tyler are taking care of the other children, in ages, two and three, six and eight. Grandma came down with a horrible cough, ear and throat infections, and is medicating the best she can while continuing work and child care.

Sure, I could hop a plane. And be one more person needing care, not being currently winterized, among other disabilities.

Me, I’m 2500 miles away but next door to the whole rumpus. I want to run away. I want to go on retreat. A three-day retreat would be better than any vacation. I’m serious. I’ve given this a lot of thought, edging into overthink.

The solution, obvious, is that I live in my own retreat center. I could hang a sign on my gate: “On Retreat. Do Not Disturb”. My problem is that I don’t want to unplug my phone. I want to know. I want to stay in touch with family. Goes against retreat rules, right? Rules such as no phone, no computer, no contact, no talking.

When Baby and Grandma are back to health and their own homes, I will make my retreat, sans phone and computer and talk.

In the interim, I find retreat in my kitchen. My kids used to say, “Watch out. Mom’s making bread.’ That was shorthand code for “Mom’s upset. Stay out of the way.” I’ve always found comfort in pummeling bread dough.

Baking bread doesn’t mean I’m upset. I bake bread because I’m out of bread. Because I want to do something nice for a neighbor. Because I’m stressed. Because I’m happy.

I find comfort in my kitchen. Instead of my usual honey whole-wheat bread, I decided to try a different bread roll recipe, new to me. Oh, my. I found the queen of all breads. Instead of baking cookies to eat with my morning coffee, and I had cookie dough in the refrigerator, ignored, I broke off a bread roll and delighted in the goodness.

I shared these rolls with a couple other people, suggested they try them with morning coffee. They have metaphorically lined up outside my gate waiting for me to bake again.

Figuring I had to make sure the recipe wasn’t a fluke, I made a second batch. Plain dough that good just might make sweet rolls. I divided the dough into sandwich buns, dinner rolls and cinnamon rolls.

When the cinnamon rolls cooled slightly, I broke off a taste-test. These are better than my usual cinnamon rolls. The bread is softer, more delicate, carries the flavors well.

Immediately I contacted my friend. Michelle, I know you and Ana are taking your sister Susan to the airport tomorrow. If you have time, stop by for cinnamon rolls and coffee. I knew their schedule would be tight.

They came. We ate, we drank, we had an unspoken communion. The plate of rolls disappeared. I shooed my friends on down the road.

That is one of the joys of a kitchen retreat center.

Several friends bake bread. We compare and share recipes. Most of my friends bake bread without ever touching the dough. This I do not understand.

We all use recipes. A recipe is a guide, right? We grew up, each with a slightly different guide or recipe for how to live. Circumstances might change, a difference in ingredients, an addition here or a subtraction there. That’s life.

Same for bread. The flour here is less refined but ground to a fineness that makes me smile. My butter is different than your butter. Honey or sugar? Sea salt or the stuff from the blue box with the girl and umbrella? Do they still sell that? Potato water? So many choices. Same for life.

I want my hands in the flour, to bring the ingredients together just right, to knead the dough until it is smooth and elastic and slightly blistery. How can I pour my heart into the dough without getting messy? The dough talks to me. My fingers understand the lingo. My fingers know when the dough is just right, ready to rise in a covered bowl, ready to shape and bake.

Bread of life with love and worry and frustration and goodness.

Don’t bother me. I’m in the kitchen.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

February, none too soon

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I’m all shook up!

 

I’m all shook up!

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No, that does not refer to an earthquake.

If you are of an age, you will recognize this as a song sung by Elvis when he was a youngster himself, around 1957. “I’m in love. I’m all shook up!”

Love manifests in many ways and early last week my world and the world of my family was all shook up. My great-granddaughter, Baby Marley, was diagnosed with RSV and pneumonia. Along with Mom, Jessica, Marley was transported from Glendive to Billings on a life-flight. Her family immediately came together with plans for how to cope. Of course, all the plans fell apart.

By the end of the day, revised plans in place, Jessica and Marley were safely ensconced in the NICU at St. Vincent’s. Damon (Dad) was en route with instructions to drive mindfully on the snowy, icy roads to Billings. Christopher (Grandpa), Dee Dee (Grandma) and Uncle Tyler stepped in to take care of the other four little ones, schedule to be revised as needed, which pretty much has meant daily restructuring.

Several hours passed that first day before we learned that Marley was in NICU, hooked up to various lines to support her life. Life lines. Sounds better than tubes. Semantics, I know. During those several hours of knowing nothing, I was a wet, sopping mess.

I’m an old hide, as my friend Dick used to say. I’ve lost my parents, my aunts and uncles, my closest friends and many, many people close in other ways. Each death left a scar on my heart. Nothing hurt like losing my baby. It is a different kind of pain. Too many women in our part of Montana can attest to what I say. Many, many women stepped out of their path to comfort me that winter in 1964.

This little Baby Marley, one I haven’t held in my arms, took over my heart in an overwhelming way. Part of my feeling was from fear. I do not want Jess and Damon, my whole family, to go through that loss. Don’t tell me that fear and love cannot live side by side. Love is bigger but I would be lying if I told you love pushed out fear. I wish it would.

The latest news from the doctors is that Marley will probably be in the hospital another week. My family “on the ground” in Glendive are exhausted, juggling child care for the other four children with their regular jobs and responsibilities.

We all have hope. The second night Marley was in the hospital, I had a dream in which a tightly swaddled baby was thrust into my arms. This little baby was a boy. Throughout the night’s dreams, I held that baby snug to my chest. I wondered if I had carried Marley through the night.

My friend asked, “Did you carry the baby or did that baby carry you?”

“Ah.” I said, as I recognized another truth.

I respond to soppy, sappy old love songs. We’ve all been bit by the bug. Baby Marley is our little buttercup. We surround her with a puffy pillow of love. Her whole family is carried on a puffy pillow-clouds of love.

At this point, week two in the hospital, it looks like another week ahead. Exhausting. But hopeful. We are all shook up. All of us. We know what matters. Love matters.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

January soon over

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