October is the Best Month

 

October is the Best Month

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Finally, sunny days are here, every day a sunny day. I know. Next week I’ll be grumbling at dragging hose to water vulnerable plants every day. Today, I celebrate the Sun. I celebrate October, my favorite month, (well, along with some others).

 These days I gravitate to my back yard, my current favorite spot, beneath the mango tree. She welcomes me to her shade. I’m not a sun bunny despite my yearning for sun, any sun, on a cloudy day. Some days I take a book. Some days I read the butterflies. Birds. Bugs.

October in Etzatlan is also the month that ends with ten days of Festival, a time of feasting and blessing, parades, celebrations in the streets, dancing and singing, especially a time of thanksgiving, giving and forgiving. The streets are humming with people, filled with laughter.

Yesterday Leo took me to the Cathedral to see how beautifully it is decorated. I no longer care to be out at night, walking the plaza, taking in the music and festivities. I like to go sit in the Cathedral, adorned with thousands of cut flowers, this year’s theme colors green and gold. I simply sit, sit and soak in the love and give thanks. The people who handle and arrange these flowers cannot help but be awash in love and the flowers give it back to us.

These past several days I’ve given a lot of attention to the hundreds of folks in southern Mexico who have lost their lives, families, homes, businesses, their everything in the torrential rains and mudslides and to those in Alaskan villages facing the same losses.  

These kinds of horrendous disasters stop me hard, lead me to take note of my own life. Now and then I get down on myself because of past decisions I have made. However, by my own choices, I have changed my entire way of life. Today I own absolutely nothing of any value. Yet, I have so much.

I have shelter, food in the refrigerator, enough pesos to pay the monthly electric bill, to keep the propane tank topped up. I have friends here and around other parts of the world. I have people who care about me and about whom I care. I often realize, even more particularly now, that I am among the richest women in the world.

I have a dog who walks me two or three times a day. My neighbor brought me a slice of her homemade loaded pizza, I have a mango tree waiting to shade me. I am wealthy beyond belief.

Give thanks, whatever you believe or don’t believe. Give thanks for sun, for rain, for cold and snow, for they have their places too. Give thanks for breath of life, for sustenance, for your neighbor, even the neighbor you don’t like very much. Give thanks for love and if you think you don’t have enough, go give some away.

As for me, the sun is shining. I’m rich beyond belief. On top of that, October is the best month.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

October 23, 2025

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