Grandma, what big ears you have!

 

Grandma, what big ears you have!

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I remember way back in the last century agonizing about my life’s purpose, as if one had only one purpose and if you missed it, you were skewered on Life’s Barbeque. Or something dire.

We used to believe such silly things. One purpose. One way. And, I love this one, “one soulmate” and he was sexual, instead of possibly a whole raft of soulmate friends, male and female, trees and pets and rocks; who could know the endless possibilities?

At the time I had a little home workshop where I repaired and recovered furniture so I could be in the kitchen when the kids got home from school. Did I not recognize that was my purpose for that time?

 Eventually, I quit agonizing, relaxed, and realized that I was having a good time making ugly things beautiful, was meeting interesting people and, dangled in front of my face, multiple opportunities for all manner of classes and workshops, trips and experiences.

As Dr. Seuss said, “Oh, the places you’ll go.”

And I did. I went. Except when I didn’t. I couldn’t say “YES” to every opportunity. Oh, boy, when I went, I went. Regrets, I have a few. Both the “yes” and “no” variety of regrets. That’s okay. I rounded up a good balance.

As opportunities tend to do, one leads to another and each road branches. There’s always more. More people to meet.  More to learn. More to love. More to receive. More to give. Those various roads, so full of enticements and temptations, have led me to where I am today, living in Mexico, living the last years of my life, more moderately happy than I ever expected to be . . . and . . .

Dumb as a post. That’s me. The longer I live, the lesser I know. So what’s my life’s purpose these days? Much as I can tell, it is mostly to keep my mouth shut and remember that I don’t know.

People tend to talk to me. I listen. That’s all. I listen. Nod. Keep my lips zipped. Don’t solve other’s problems. Don’t tell them how I did it back in ’82. Don’t make suggestions. What about sharing something similar from my past? Not always. Mostly, I just listen.

Sometimes I forget and open my mouth and generally regret that action soon enough to clamp it shut quickly. Revert to listening. My purpose. Be.

Oh, I’m not hearing huge secrets. Mostly, my friends talk about niggly-naggly little everyday irritations. At times, one just needs to unload frustrations. There are moments when more important revelations need to be hauled out into the light. None of them, small or large, require me to pass on the information to anyone else. Period. End of.

What about when I need an ear, someone to hear me? Well, haven’t you noticed? I have you.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

March 13, 2025

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Pondering Important Conveniences

 

Pondering Important Conveniences

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We few who live in Oconahua and continue to use cable internet service have just experienced three days without phone or computer services along with intermittent electricity outages.

I could not explain in a rational way why I insist on clinging to what most of my friends consider to be outdated services. I like my landline phone sitting on my desk. I have no need for whip-quick internet. My service seems plenty fast enough for me. At approximately twenty dollars a month for the combo, it’s a deal.  

I do not find it necessary to cart around a plastic rectangle in my hand. In fact, I refuse to have a cellular phone. Why should I pay for a hand-held computer load of stuff I’d never use. A phone, for me, is for talking with another person. End of. I know. Dino.

When I go to lunch with friends, I’m the only person not checking in with the latest FaceFlap or TickleTackle, some surreptitiously, most outright blatantly.

I’ve no idea why our cable service was interrupted for three whole days. Electrical power was off and on with surges that first day. Does that matter? I don’t know. It was a little windy. By Montana standards, the wind would not have been noticed nor commented upon. So, I don’t know. How can those thing affect cable?

I’m of the generation who recalls when communication meant you wrote a letter, stamped the envelope, and put it in the mailbox hoping for a reply within a month. Local telephone service was sweet although the party line was not always so great. If you don’t know what those are, ask your Grandma.

We never called long distance unless someone in the family died.

Now we don’t even have long distance.

No, I do not want the “not-so-good-old-days” returned. I just want uninterrupted cable service, slow and low as it might be.

Those three days of my own personal disconnect felt like three years to me. It would be a rare day in which I utilize more than an hour of phone and internet combined. But, Holy Canoli, now that I have them, I want them, those faithful little worker bees making my life better. Okay, so I got a tad carried away. You know what I mean. I’ve seen you misplace your cell phone and go into a panic.

Which led me to thinking and you know how dangerous thinking can be.

Obviously, I rate electricity as a “necessary convenience”. I ignore any clash of definition of those two words. I remember when I lived in Dodson, okay, dark ages, my nearest neighbors did not have electricity. Nor did a whole large swath of land south of us have an electric line within double-digit miles.

We, ourselves, did not have running water, unless you counted me running from the well to the house with buckets.

I did not think it was funny when my father-in-law wanted to put running water in the barn but bypass the house.

I value all my modern conveniences, especially power and water. Interesting word, that, “conveniences”. I’ll leave you to ponder that.

I want it all, water and electricity, internet and phone, washing machine and refrigerator. And books. Don’t forget the books. Today I have all these things. What if . . .

Some days I think we are devolving. A huge percentage of my emails from friends show up with cave drawings. Almost cave drawings. None show a whole stick figure, only a round head, like an M&M. What if . . .

Tomorrow I might be climbing up the mountain to the spring to beat my laundry on rocks. Clothes? Animal skins? Will we still have animals? What if . . .

Tomorrow will my family/friends and I huddle around a fire grinding corn in a stone trough? Will we grunt and point because we’ve lost the ability to use words?

What if your cousin, who always was weird, yeah, that one, picked a charred stick from the fire pit and scratched wiggly marks with ashes on the cave wall? Things that looked similar to a water faucet or a telephone or an automobile, yeah, Flintstone era?

Maybe I’ve had enough isolation. I’m off to Laguna Colorado for fish tacos with friends.

I could not make up what happened. When I got home, we had no power in our town. Electricity was off for hours into the night. I located enough black marking pens to write the alphabet and basic rules of grammar on the bedroom wall.

Sondra Ashton

Havre Weekly Chronicle

March 6, 2025

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Life Keeps Happening

 

                  Life Keeps Happening

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Sunday morning when six of us sat around the wooden table at Molletes, sipping our drinks and waiting for our food to be delivered, one plate at a time, as is the restaurant way in Mexico, the conversation veered into the troubling elections in Germany, which meant we were one step away from becoming mired in the world political swamp.

Jim, bless his astute heart, intervened. “All I know is that right here, right now, sitting with friends in this upscale restaurant, sipping our lattes, sun shining, beginning a beautiful day, life is pretty fine. Pretty fine.”

Group laughter, shared and received, our conversations continued in a more personal vein, further cementing already strong friendship.

To backtrack, on Saturday, eight of us gringo friends had attended a pig roast feast and annual family gathering in La Mazata, about a half-hour drive from Etzatlan toward Magdalena, up in the mountains littered with opals.

Last year, Francisco and Julie moved to nearby La Mazata, where Francisco grew up and lived most of his life.

What an event! Francisco has a huge family and my guess is that everyone was there, siblings, cousins, in-laws and out-laws, all ages. Oh, my, the food, the scrumptious pig, the music, the dancing, the décor, the finery, the mingling of family and friends; all spoke of festive love and laughter. Pure fun.

Yes, Jim, life is pretty fine. Pretty fine.

All of life does not revolve around food, although much of my social life seems to center around tables with friends, a table that is generally piled with food. I call it Communion.

By Monday I begged a day of solitary quiet. However, even then, a big part of my day was filled with chopping and grating and measuring and mixing, making a filling. Let me explain.

Several days ago I’d mentioned to Kathy that I am so hungry for samosas. When we spent that month in India so many years ago, we ate samosas almost every day.

Later Kathy told me she wished I hadn’t mentioned samosas. Now they were all she could think about. So Kathy drove over to my house with printed papers in hand. “Okay, let’s make samosas. Years ago I took a class. It’s not that hard, just time consuming.”

After looking over the directions, I agreed to make the fillings and Kathy would make the dough. Fillings require a lot of mincing and chopping and boiling and frying.  

Tuesday we put our efforts together, rolled out the dough, filled the little pockets, and deep-fried our samosas. Oh, the aromas. Oh, the explosion of flavors. Oh, the deliciousness.

After making sure our samosas passed the critical taste test, of course, we divvied up the remainders for our freezers, treats for when we must go to India again, if only in imagination. We are not sharing this batch of samosas. These are for our own selfish selves.

However, next fall, we plan to make samosas in huge batches and piles and host an Asian foods pot luck. I’ll also bring chicken adobo, a Filipino dish taught me by my daughter, who learned to make this dish when she lived in Japan. Kathy will make one of her signature Thai specialties.

Why wait until next fall? Some of our friends are already headed north. We want to share the goodness with as many as possible. And such a feast takes some pre-planning, some gathering of spices and seeds easier to find elsewhere. That’s Kathy’s task.

Life is pretty fine when we can gather around a table with friends, share good food, stories and lies. Yep. I call it Communion.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

Febrero 27, 2025

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The Chicken Woo-Woo Factor

 

The Chicken Woo-Woo Factor

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You must understand that since moving to Mexico I have the smallest kitchen possible. This means that I don’t have standard kitchen helpers, not even such items that my entire life I thought of as essentials, such as a mixer, a roasting pan or even muffin tins.

Basic. Only the bare basics. I do have a hand-held can opener and a wire whip. I could let the wire whip go. It is handy for beating eggs but my eggs are generally well-behaved and seldom require a whipping.

Through the moves, I managed to hang onto some of my cast iron pots. The other day I roasted a chicken in my large cast iron chicken pot. That’s what it is called, a chicken skillet, over-sized, intended for frying chicken pieces for Sunday dinner.

I like to roast chicken in a little liquid on low heat until the chicken falls off the bone, tender and juicy. When I bent into the oven to remove the delectable chicken, done to a turn, I said to myself, “We have a problem, Houston.”

The little liquid, accompanied by the fats and juices from the roasting process, was now doubled. I stood by the open oven door thinking how easy, how horrible it would be to drop the pan. The cast iron pan, the steaming hot chicken, the near-boiling liquid, all together posed a heavy conundrum: how to get the container from oven to cooling rack on the island without damage. Damage to me, my feet and legs, which suddenly seemed to be in the way.

I talked myself through the process, slowly. Doubled the pot holders. I pre-thought every muscle movement. True story. I breathed, in and out, took a deep breath and carefully lifted the heavy pot from oven rack to the island, no steps required, merely a full-body turn. Success.

Big Deal, you might be thinking, rolling your eyes, Big Deal.  Yes, it is a big deal.

It might be time for me to retire my cast iron, search for alternative low-weight pans. It might be a wake-up call. Here’s why: We ain’t getting any younger, chickiedee.

That evening I got this note from Kathy:

               We’re dropping like dominoes.

An eight pound circular wooden cutting board rolled off the open cupboard shelf and landed on my left foot while I was making breakfast. My throbbing foot is elevated and I cannot walk.

Crin, the night before, sliced her finger open, blood everywhere, and spent seven hours in the ER.

Janet was making bone broth in their Arizona home and when she lifted the pot to drain it, one handle broke off and the scalding liquid burned both her feet and ankles. The ER gave her morphine for pain and today she is in the Burn Unit figuring out how to deal with it.

Then Nancie’s daughter called her from Washington to report that she had tripped and spilled an entire pot of beans on her feet.

You’d better take it easy with a book today. We can’t handle any more casualties.

See you in the morning for breakfast.

No kidding, take it easy with a book. Are you seeing what I’m seeing? The Woo-Woo factor? The timing? What made me, for whom impulse control has never been a defining characteristic, “stop to think it through in minute detail” before removing my roasted chicken?

Woo-Woo? Lucky? Grace? A rose by any other name . . .

I like ceremony. An offering of tobacco and oranges. A sage smudge. Incense.  A heartfelt breathing of thanksgiving for all of us.

Served with a chicken sandwich.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

February 20, 2025

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Among the Mung Beans & Family

 

               Among the Mung Beans & Family

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Mung beans have never been my favorite food bean. Pintos. Limas. Navy beans. Yum! Not mung. If you like them, that’s great. I’d rather have spinach.

Well, the other day a woman drove up and off-loaded a huge pile of vines, green and bushy. Ana looked like a tree packing the vines in her arms across our common area. “What are those?” I asked.

“Mung beans. I’m going to cook them now.”

“I’ve only had the dry beans; I’ve never eaten them green and fresh,” I responded, wondering if the difference would be huge, like the difference between green limas and dried lima beans. “I’ll bring you some,” Ana said.

Indeed, she did, indeed. Ana showed up with a serving bowl heaped with mung beans steamed in their little husks. She showed me how to pinch open the husk and eat the bean inside. Hmmm.

I meant to eat a few to be polite. I ate the whole bowlful. In one sitting. I returned the bowl of husks to Ana for the chickens.

What I’m saying is, that you might give fresh mungs a try. It might mean you must plant a patch of mung beans. Harvest them green. Steam them tender. Yummy.

I lost another person from my life this last week. Over the past few months I’ve thought a lot about the importance of Family, Friends, Community.

The woman who died was not close to me but she was a constant in my life. Loss, all loss, hurts the same hurt. I met her at a CYC dance when I was in high school. Then later knew her at three very separate times in my life. I liked and respected this woman.

At my age, Community, sharing feelings of solidarity, being family, chosen and by blood, matters. I cringe to say that with age it “matters more”. At any rate, I think about these things frequently, ponder the importance of people in my life, love them more.

Take yesterday. Ana and Michelle had a BBQ Potluck at their home. There were eight of us, a small group, comfortable, easily able to converse around the large oval table.  

Steve and Judy, their friends from Seattle, were strangers to the rest of us. Three of the group are friends of mine. They know Ana and Michelle, but not well.

We came together that afternoon as a mixture of strangers, acquaintances, friends. You might say each one of us was an individual mung bean in our husk. It is rarely, in my experience, that the magic spoon stirs us around as it did yesterday.

By the time we sat down at the table to eat, plates heaped with deliciousness, we were friends, one and all. By the time we left the table, we were family. I don’t know how else to say it. It is a rare and beautiful magic that melded us.

Later, I wafted across to my casa, feet never touching the ground, while the rest of the group settled down to watch The Game.

I avoid the Super Bowl, avoid it assiduously. The last time I went to a Super Bowl party, I married the man with whom I went. Dangerous things, those Super Bowls.

I’ve had a whole week of mung bean wonderfulness, letters and pictures from family, visits from friends, all of us connected with heart threads, Community.

Yes, at my age, I watch as people I know and love make their exit. Magically, I also watch as new friends enter my life and cement in as family. Magic? Natural? Grace? Who cares? I don’t question it. I love it.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

February 13, 2025

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