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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