Una Semana Muy Dificil

 

Una Semana Muy Dificil 

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The first week in October is always a difficult week for me. It marks the anniversary of the death of my baby. He’d been alive that morning. He died that night when he was born.

Still a girl myself, I’d been married only a year and a half. My family did the thing they did best. They hid away all the pain and hurt. I thought that is what everyone did. Stuffed the grief into a hole and covered it with concrete blocks. Or heavy weight of a sort.

Of course, over the years, the pain, still alive, periodically exploded through the concrete, generally in inappropriate ways, cutting and bruising anybody nearby, causing me even more grief.

Eventually, with professional help, I learned to look head-on at my hurts and deal with them in healthier ways, knowing they never go away.

Yes, this past week was difficult. Grief came calling. We had cups of tea and fresh bread. Examined the scars. Talked about things. I held my baby whom I never got to hold in my arms.

Painful, certainly, but I didn’t have to wallow in it. I looked for balance. There is always balance. Some days it is harder to find than other days, but it is there, waiting for me to see it.

I canned tomato/apple catsup. Neighbors would ask me how many jars I put up. Enough, I answered. I didn’t count them. I made one batch for give-away. I took around a jar for each neighbor.

Living here where every food is fresh daily, I’ve not much need for canning. But pickles, jams and a decent spicy catsup are not available in our little town. So I make my own and enjoy the making and the eating.

I sat on the patio a lot, reading, visiting neighbors, reading, just sitting, reading.

More than the usual number of bed-sheet butterflies wafted by. They comfort me, make me smile, always. That’s my name for them, not the scientific name, but when you see one, that’s what you’d call it too. They are huge, flap those big white wings like sheets on the line in the Montana wind.

I put away my sewing projects and dumped the pieces of a new puzzle onto the table. Crin gifted me this puzzle. She knows I like difficult jigsaws. When she told the cashier she was buying it for a good friend who loves puzzles, the cashier told her that maybe when I tried to work this one, I’d no longer be her friend. We laughed.

I’m still her friend, but holy smokies, I see the point. This mess is very monochromatic, a line drawing, crowded, not much to differentiate one section from another. I still have five missing edge pieces and I’ve fingered every piece numerous times. With luck I’ll finish by Christmas.

The government clinic in town has flu shots this week. Went and got my jab.

Leo drove me to Oconahua to visit Ana and Michelle. I had made some large hot pads for their barbeque table, took them some jars of tomato/apple catsup. Michelle always brews a cup of her special cappucchino for us. We tell more stories of ourselves, laugh, get angry at the same foolishness, laugh, gossip, laugh, trade garden secrets and laugh.

We’ve got a bobcat roaming the place. I don’t know if that affects to the balance or not. But the wild feline adds to the excitement. He or she marked territory out by my avocado tree the other night. I recommend you avoid bobcat urine if possible. Made me sick to my stomach.

Lola The Dog somehow had sense enough to stay hunkered in her Dog Mansion and never even whoofed. Snowball next door, a tiny morsel, is still alive and all Janet’s cats are still catting around.

Hurricane Orlene covered us with heavy clouds and never brought us a bit of rain. It’s hard to judge which side of the balance scale that sits on. Depends on perspective, I would say, but don’t most things?

Life surrounds me, life for the living woven with memories of those gone on. As Julian of Norwich said, “All shall be well. All manner of thing shall be well.”

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

October, first week

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When summer sausage is a slice of bliss

 

When summer sausage is a slice of bliss

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Jim from Missouri, funny how we label people, isn’t it, was talking with me the other day, distanced and masked, when, in an idle comment I mentioned that I miss summer sausage, a treat that ordinarily I wouldn’t give thought to since if I had a hankering, in my previous lives, I could go to the grocery and buy a chunk. Or a friend might gift me a chunk of deer sausage after a successful hunt.

Our spicy chorizo sausage is easily obtainable here in Jalisco, and like elsewhere, everybody makes it differently. Generally it is rather soft and juicy, lovely in an egg scramble or mashed into refried beans. Delicious. But it is not the sausage I want.

I’m not vegetarian but seldom get hungry for meat. This winter I find my mouth watering for a slice of hard sausage from the North Country. It has probably been ten years since I sank my teeth into a slice. Why now?

Winter. Definitely winter. Traditionally, a season of rest. Trees rest. Bears hibernate. Flowers tuck into beds beneath a blanket of snow. While, not quite the same frozen details here in my piece of Mexico, still, it is winter.

The time for rest. Since mid-December when I finished my last face mask and unplugged my sewing machine, I’ve not had a “project” as such. I always have a project. One in front of me on stage, one waiting in the wings, one in rehearsal. It’s the way I’m geared.

This morning I had a thought. (Stop that!—I heard you groan!) If we split our lives into arbitrary seasons of twenty-five years, generously allotting ourselves one hundred years, I am transitioning from autumn into the winter of my life.

In this, my year of solitude, in this, my winter of rest, lately my morning walk-the-lanes time has become walk-my-grief time. We Americans don’t do well with grief. We’d rather brush grief under the rug, slap a coat of paint over it, or otherwise make it go away. But it doesn’t go away. I’m guilty. I use busyness or I-need-to-be-stoic-for-others as my avoidance excuses.

Memories are funny though. Rest and they come running. I don’t control them. One day memory brings a girl from my first grade. Shirley had small pox as a baby, which had left visible scars on her face, her arms. Instead of pushing her away, I take a moment to think what sorrows those scars might have brought into her life. I say, “Hello, I remember you. We played around the huge oak at the edge of the playground. Thank you for visiting.”

Other days might bring my own baby, or my Dad or my Mom, relatives. Or 4,000 faces of U.S. Covid deaths from a single day. Or a mudslide. A plane crash. A neighbor whose breadwinner died and her family is hungry. They all come with faces. I let them into my walk.

Instead of making me feel morbid, these memories or reflections bring me feelings of peace, of rest, a quietening of spirit. I feel richer, connected.

If you are wondering what summer sausage has to do with grief, just let me thread my big needle with a long thread and I’ll show you.

I’ll stitch patches of winter together with patches of rest. As they appear, I add patches of memory along with impressions of the day, news from friends, news from around the world. Around each patch I stitch a border, a walk of solitude.

So when Jim from Missouri showed up a few days ago, we talked about what stores are open, which ones are safe to enter, where to find different foods, I said, “In your searches, if you ever see anything like summer sausage, buy me a small chunk.”

Jim said, “My friend sent me a gift box for Christmas. I’ll share my sausage with you.”

I don’t believe in coincidences. I cut a paper thin slice of Jim’s sausage and it tasted like bliss. I’ll stitch this patch of sausage bliss onto the other pieces of my winter quilt. There is the perfect place for it, down here by this corner. It is all about being connected.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

January 14, 2021

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Dear Uncle George

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Dear Uncle George,

I wish I could have returned to Indiana for Aunt JoAnne’s funeral. But more than that, I wish I could have been there to spend time with her and with all of you before she died. She was very special to me.

My earliest memories of Aunt Jo were at the time when she lived in a handsome brick apartment building on Park Avenue in Indianapolis , before she married Uncle Lee. I thought it the most elegant place. One rode up in an elevator. Her apartment spread over an entire floor with bay windows in front and a back porch with stairs down to the alley. It sat on a quiet street lined with stately elms. It was a palace in my young imagination, a romantic place filled with history and elegance.

Aunt Jo was the Princess and Indianapolis was my Camelot. Major streets converged at Memorial Circle where the Soldiers and Sailors Monument reigned. We rode the trolley downtown to view this towering bronze and limestone memorial, built specifically to honor Civil War dead, but which included the names of Indiana men who had fought in our countries wars. I remember how proud I felt to find the bronze plaque from World War II with my father’s name embossed.

From the Circle we would walk to LS Ayers Department Store, eight stories of city treasures. Aunt JoAnne always bought me a special dress or sweater set, all the more special for being “store bought”. She then purchased a pound of assorted pastel bonbons with coconut centers, still my favorite candy. After shopping we would eat open-faced sandwiches in the Tea Room where the linen-covered tables sparkled with china and silver. I sat primly on the plush chair, partly in wonder, partly terrified of using the wrong fork.

Jo would admonish me to stand up straight. I was the tallest girl I knew and tried to slump. She eased me into some of the mysteries of female life, including how to shave my arm pits, roll on deodorant, launder undergarments by hand, and to always wear a freshly ironed blouse. I also learned the importance of clean underwear in case of being hit by a car.

Once we took the train all the way to Cincinnati to go to the Zoo. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my. It was summer and the snake house reeked and the rhinos were the most impressive animals I had ever seen.

But the Museum in Indianapolis was my favorite place, with a labyrinth of rooms, thousands of exhibits. I fell in love with the paintings of the French Impressionists, whom I still love. I wanted to live in the Museum. Instead, we moved to Montana .

Years went by. JoAnne visited me at the ranch in Dodson and held my six month old daughter. She told me stories about my Mom and about the time when I was a baby. It was the first time anyone had ever talked to me about my mother. She answered many questions for me; made me feel like my blank early years had some substance. When Jo had to leave, I drove her to the train station in Malta . I was crying so hard, I backed our old Chevy pick-up into a lamp post.

When Uncle Lee retired, he and Jo built a cabin on Kentucky Lake . She continued to live there many years after his death. Whenever I visited Aunt Jo, I could see why she loved it so much. We spent many hours on the lake, rowing, casting our lines, pulling in sunfish and croppies. I felt sad when Jo chose to sell the place and move closer to you, Uncle George, but I understood the necessity.

Uncle George, when I visit you in Indiana , I love to amble with you along the paths in the cemeteries, stopping at each family grave to tell stories, to reflect, to draw more closely together. Now we will have another place for remembering.

I’ll miss Aunt JoAnne but I have rich memories.

I love you, Uncle George.

Your niece,
Sondra

Havre Daily News: Looking out my back door
February 18, 2010
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