Merry Christmas

 

 Merry Christmas

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The phone rings. I grab my mask with one hand and the phone with the other. “Merry Christmas.”

My new habit. Masking has become automatic. Before I leave the house I grab a mask, even if I’m going to the clothesline, expecting to see not one other person. I go masked. Just in case.

I’m locked and loaded. In the holsters on the belt around my waist, a spray bottle of disinfectant rides on one hip and extra masks, gloves and a tape measure for distance (Okay, the tape measure is a joke.) and hand sanitizer on the other.

Overkill? Now that is an interesting word. So, yes, I’d say the Coronavirus Covid 19 is in serious overkill. Is there a one of us not affected?

In my other lives, before I came to Mexico and eased into my quiet solitude, I was active in many groups. I have friends in all walks of life. Friends who have had mild cases and recovered. I have friends who’ve died from the virus.

One neighbor here has a nephew hospitalized over a month. Another, her brother-in-law hovers near death. Another, his close friend died yesterday. One friend whose sister died. All from this novel virus.

My son has been several days in the hospital, again, this time with brain seizures from the virus. I just heard this morning he is home again, but rough around the edges. What does that mean? I don’t know. Will he recover? Will he be disabled? I don’t know.

I’m terrified. I’m angry. Just saying, in case you think I am a mild-mannered Clark Kent sort.

‘Tis the Season, peace, good will to all. I’m having a hard time being jolly.

Despite my helplessness, despite my inability to fly north, kiss my son’s owies and make them go away, I have hope. I know Ben is getting the best of doctor care.

In the grand scheme of life, this is not about me. I am one little bitty cog in the works, yet connected to an entire world of other cogs, all of us feeling fear and hope, love and rage, loss and love. Love. Yes, I said love twice because I don’t want to lose sight of love.

The world is in a sorrowful place. Again. Not for the first time. Not for the last. Just again.

We feel weary. We feel worn. Helpless, yes, sometimes we feel hopeless. Tomorrow is Christmas Day. I wanted to write something warm and fuzzy today for you. Every column I write is from my heart, even when my heart is hurting.

Despite differences, we humans seem to be able to come together, to connect, to help each other, to grieve together, to rejoice together. Together. To love. Most importantly, to love. Merry Christmas.

HDN: Looking Out My Backdoor

December 24, 2020

Sondra Ashton

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

From Big Sky to Big Earth

 

From Big Sky to Big Earth

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Perception is all. I love the Big Sky Country. I like to picture it this way: I stand and slowly turn a whole circle. When I look downward, I see the earth. When I look outward and upward, the sky is a gigantic bowl, covering and visibly encompassing, caressing the earth.

I love this new country of mine, the Big Earth Country. That’s the wonderful thing about love. There is always room for more. Here I stand and turn a circle and all around me is the earthy world, the fields and trees and mountains in every direction. To find sky, I must tilt my head upward. Ah, yes, sky.  Here, in Jalisco, the earth is the bowl holding up the inverted teacup of sky.

Moving into December with a full moon means the nightlight is as bright as daylight in the Pacific Northwest in winter.

For days around the full moon, I see a different world. After daylight comes a short hour of almost dark. The moon towers above the trees like a giant kite, dragging behind a tail of the in-between, not dark, not full day. This shaded-light-night lasts until sun-up bursts full on.

Now that I’ve waxed poetic, let’s move on to other considerations of love. This month the full moon drops November with the leftover turkey and introduces December.

Ah, December, the month of wretched excess. December, the month of guilt.

Have you written your annual Christmas letter, mailed that stack of Christmas cards shedding glitter all over the desktop onto the rug? No? Well, me neither. In fact, by the time I remembered cards, yesterday, I realized if I mailed cards today they would get to you in February, possibly.

As for a Christmas letter, maybe I’ll write one next week to send via ghost mail.

Did you slide your magic plastic and buy the children and/or grandchildren gifts that you wanted when you were that age? Gifts you would have wanted, had they been invented? Gifts that make a stack higher than the tree.

Tis the season for giving. How often we hear that phrase. How quickly we mentally translate that to “tis the season for buying”.

I suspect this year the giving/buying season will undergo adjustments by all of us.

Enough with my Bah Humbug! I got to feeling so Christmas-y that I decorated my tree already, well before Christmas week.

Here at the rancho we traditionally gather several times for shared meals. Not this year. Plates of baked goodies make the rounds. Not this year.

For me, this is a year to reconnect with friends I’ve neglected.

People email me, “Are you still alive?” And it is a real concern.

For me, this is a lingering time of deep solitude. But it is not a time to disconnect from loved ones.

My friend Karen said it best, “I will never again take a hug for granted.”

My Christmas tree is sparse, a new lime tree I planted in my postage-stamp sized front lawn. I chose to decorate my lime so all who pass by may see it and grin.

Charlie Brown lives—and loves.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

December 3, 2020

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Ghosts of Fruitcakes Past

Ghosts of Fruitcakes Past

 __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

            In the past three weeks my gal-friends and I have been unfolding Christmases we have known. We six women, who went through school together, keep alive a group email conversation began over ten years ago. We live in England, Washington, Montana, Oregon, California and Mexico.

            Our shared memories are similar. Details vary. Take ice skates. Some received new white leather skates wrapped and beribboned beneath the tree. Others wore big brother or sister’s hand-me-downs from the closet. We skated in Harlem at the old rink, ice over dirt, courtesy of volunteer firemen. Was it where the “new” post office now stands? We skated on the frozen Dead River, the Milk River and irrigation canals.  All agreed, we skated with pure grace and elan, to music only we could hear, waiting to be discovered, Olympic material. 

My daydream exploded the day I fell through an iced over air bubble on the Milk River. I was alone. I crashed through the thin skin of ice to land hard on the solid ice a foot or more below. I was alone. Nobody saw me. I felt terrified and humiliated. I limped home. I don’t remember if I ever skated again. Probably I did. Humiliation and sore bums don’t last forever.

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire was not part of our historical past. Chuck roasts chestnuts at the annual modern-day Harlem Christmas stroll and as far as I’m concerned, Nat King Cole can keep his chestnuts. Food was a big part of Christmas for all of us with lefse and lutefiske, Norwegian and Swedish cookies taking prominent roles at most tables. In my English family, we baked gingerbread, molasses cookies and decorated sugar cookies. We whipped up  batches of divinity and fudge, frosted cakes and baked pies. 

 

Generally entire families gathered for Christmas dinner, most often at Grandma’s house. Every mother and auntie brought her best creations and plenty. Everyone ate to bursting. You had to because Grandma kept filling your plate. Leftovers were wrapped and shared about, enough for days.  

School and church programs loomed large in our lives. We all participated, willingly or not. I’m still jealous of the first and second grade rhythm band girls who got to jingle the bells or shake the tambourines. Stuck in the last row with the taller boys, I banged two sticks together. I never did graduate from sticks. 

The best Christmas program memory came from England Karen. Before the church was built, Lutheran services were held in the basement of the old bank building. She was maybe six or seven. Herman Gebert, two years ahead of us, had a speaking part. In Karen’s words, “Herman calmly walked to the front of the church, turned toward us and promptly spewed the entire contents of his stomach on the floor. It was quite dramatic.” 

Floweree Karen remembers being a “holy terror”, threatened with lumps of coal and willow switches. One year her Mom sent her brother and sister to the drainage ditch to cut a swath of switches and put them under the tree. Years later Karen’s son Mike was born on Christmas Day and that helped heal the hurts. 

None of us had piles of presents. We tore the wrapping off soft flannel pajamas, a sweater set or saddle pants and usually a special toy, a doll, a wagon, or games and puzzles. A bicycle was a super-huge big deal. But the bicycle usually had to sit on the porch until spring thaw.  

Everyone has asked me, “What is Christmas like in Mexico?” Now I can answer. What I saw is that Christmas here is much like our past Christmases, when we imagine times were simple. Decorations are glitzy but sparse. Silver bells with red and green ribbon might hang from a door. But the yard is not cluttered with Santa, Reindeer, Frosty, Charlie Brown and fifty-thousand flashing colored lights wrapped around every available surface.  

The holiday focus in Mexico is on family. Church goers attend Midnight Mass or special Church services. The family gathers around plenty of traditional food, crab and shrimp serviche, cecina en adobo and pollo mole. Some families have a tree. My favorite was created with poinsettias. (My tree is made with six braids of smuggled sweetgrass.) Gifts tend to be clothing and one or two special toys or games. I’ve not seen a lot of toys for sale. The Mexican families I know have a long way to go to reach the excess we take for granted.

Memories are like fruitcake soaked in the brandy of time, made to nourish us today with new understandings of who we are and to remind us to cherish what got us here. 

But for the life of me, I cannot find words, to explain hookey bobbing on the icy streets of Harlem to my new friends. 

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

January 2, 2014

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________