Among the Mung Beans & Family

 

               Among the Mung Beans & Family

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

How We See Ourselves

 

               How We See Ourselves

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Every time I thought of my cousin, who had just had heart surgery, I found myself angry. I mean spitting angry, upset, because it seemed the man was not taking care of himself, was ignoring the sensible cautions, being a he-man gorilla, invincible.

Finally, after a full couple of weeks of growling, I asked myself, “Why so angry?”

Well, that question stopped me in my tracks. After some deep digging through my own rubble heap of rationalizations, I realized that I was afraid. I don’t want to lose my cousin. We all go sometime, but, please, not to foolishness, not when a little care might mean years of good life.

You know what? My cousin’s decisions are none of my business. I can care and do care. But maybe my cousin has his reasons. I realized that my anger was a cover for grieving.

I was reminded of my feeble attempts half my lifetime ago to present myself as always calm, serene, at peace. I wanted others to see me in this perfect picture but even more, this is the way I wanted to see myself. I was devouring self-help books back then, one after another. Ommm.

The truth was that I was a mere breath away from a panic attack most of that time. I was trying to cover up, to bury my real feelings. I was a right wringing mess.

A perceptive doctor, a good counselor and a circle of friends not afraid to laugh at me and with me pulled me through that foolishness. Not overnight, mind you. It took years. Obviously, I’m not done yet.

I pretty much no longer care how other people view me. Pretty much. I do care that I view myself with honesty, no matter what. That pretty, perfect picture I used to dream flew out the door long ago. You might have seen my shadow fly over!

Over the years I’ve learned we seldom see ourselves as others see us. Yes, thank you, Mrs. Hunter, I do remember the poem. I always loved Robert Burns. He had a sense of humor.

“O, wad some Power the giftie gie us

To see oursels as others see us!

It wad frae monie a blunder free us,

An’ foolish notion.”

This last year particularly, I have lost too many good and true friends.

Grief. Anger. Self pity. Tears. Shocking language. Along with compassion and love. I wear it all, for anybody to see, to hear.

So, yes, I’ve lost a lot of friends. But, mercy me, look at the friends around me. They still love me or at least, tolerate me.

Just yesterday Jim came over to hang doors on my kitchen cupboard. I waited and waited and waited for the young local workman to do it when finally I realized he was being Mexican polite, saying yes, not to offend me, putting me last on his “maybe” list.

Jim shooed me out onto the patio, out of his way and got to work. Within an hour I had the rare chance to ask, “How they hangin’, Jim?”

Today John and Carol are coming over, bringing a pot of bean soup. They want to visit before taking off for Pacific beaches. I’ll make a salad. Michelle and Ana from next door will bring tortillas and some other delight.

Tomorrow, Kathy and I are going to explore some of the wee grocery stores here in Oconahua. She and I have long history and experience for making fun with mundane chores. I simply want to know what I can get here and what I need to put on my list for Etzatlan.

I hate to run off but I need to sweep the leaves off the patio and set the table. See you next week, my most tolerant friends.

Sondra Ashton

HWC: Looking out my back door

January 16, 2025

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Gone with the Winds of Worry

Gone with the Winds of Worry

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

I’ve been a bit down in the dumps this last week, entertained by garbage mind.  Well, maybe not crouched in the absolute bottom of the pit. More like I stood on the edge of the dump, toes hanging over, wondering if I should just go ahead, jump in and wallow around a bit. Maybe emerge sprinkled with coffee grounds, decorated with potato peels, a rotten cantaloupe shell for a hat.

In the movie, Scarlet O’Hara said, “I’ll think about it tomorrow.” I decided I would think about it today. I generally don’t get too upset when today looks like doom and gloom. I know that in the morning I will have a different outlook. As a friend of mine says, “Tomorrow will be different; maybe not better, but different.” I’ll take different.

These past couple weeks have been filled with sorrow. I lost four friends to death. On top of that six other friends face serious medical problems, hospitalization and surgery. They refuse to worry.  They told me. Without my conscious knowledge, I volunteered to worry for them. I didn’t realize that I’d stepped up to that plate until I was a week into the game. 

Work generally gets me out of any slump. Work is my best medicine. But I found myself toeing the pitcher’s mound in some sort of World Series of Worry. A task I should have knocked out in an hour, took all day. I would pick up a project, set it down and wander out into the yard, seduced by the warm sunshine.

Finally I quit pushing against the river’s flow, tossed worry out the window, crawled out of my gloom. I phoned my ailing friends, told them how much their friendship means to me, how I want to see them home and healthy.  I went to breakfast with Bill and Mary John. I harvested the rest of my tomatoes. They lie scattered across my kitchen table in varied shades of green. I took baskets of garden produce to Peg and Karl. I dug up some of my snow-on-the-mountain, and with a shovel and the hardy plants, drove across town to my cousin’s place and planted them for her.                  

My fruit trees need pruning. I went to my garden shed, found my whicker-whacker and my snipper-snapper, put them in my wheel barrow and set out to trim trees. I wheeled over to my sand cherry. I couldn’t do it. “Maybe next spring,” I whispered. “Let’s see what kind of winter we have.”

I want my lilacs along the fence to spread their branches and fill in the space, so I rolled past them and parked my wheel barrow by the currants. They definitely should be trimmed back. I snipped off two “dead” branches, saw that they weren’t really dead. I heard the bush cry out in pain. I felt awful.  I apologized and decided to wait, to see how the currants wintered. Moved on to the choke-cherries, stood in front of one bush that desperately needs to be shaped.  Stood there five minutes. I couldn’t do it. Gave up, put away my tools.

These bushes have become my friends and right now, I simply cannot chop away at my friends. Winter is coming, bringing with it a long dormancy. Maybe my young bushes will be stronger for another season of full growth. I know that in my imagination I am making up a false connection between my human friends and my fruit-tree friends. No matter.

The next day Shirley, Bev and I drove to Lewistown for lunch, expecting an opulent seafood meal. Never trust the food editor of a rival newspaper. (Rule of thumb: Never order seafood inland. Never order beef on the coast.) We poked around some unique stores on Main Street. On the way home we stopped at Slippery Ann on the CMR Wildlife Refuge to take in the annual gathering of the elk, all the bugling and prancing and sniffing and flirting. It’s like a Saturday night dance at a country western bar. A few hours of elk watching and we had worked up an appetite for dinner. Since we were close, we continued on to Zortman for a burger at the bar.

In jigs and jogs I’ve nudged myself away from the garbage pit of despair. I’ll keep telling my friends I love them, tell them how much I care. My shop work will wait. Today I’ll grab the warm sunshine. Tomorrow I’ll get back to work.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

October 4, 2012

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

And Another One Bites the Dust

And Another One Bites the Dust

_________________________________________________________________________________________

This week Victor Miller died. ‘Most everybody in the state knew Vic. He was a former mayor of Harlem, a Blaine County Commissioner at two different times, talented drummer who nearly achieved national fame, a tireless storyteller, and a man with a heart as big as he was. And Victor was a big man. Victor was my friend.

It was a hard week for me. Every morning I walked down to City Shop for my usual coffee with the boys before work. I wanted to hear the report on our friend in the hospital. Victor was one of our coffee regulars. He called us his “kitchen cabinet”.  He often said we kept him sane. We agreed. His empty chair haunted us. His oversized coffee cup hung on a nail on the wall, untouched.

When I got back home, I flitted from task to task, from kitchen to garden to shop and back around in circles again, finishing nothing. Heaviness like a black cloud had settled around my shoulders. My friend was dying.

I’m not family. Usually when I visited with Vic, it was with the boys at coffee. But I relied on him for advice, for the history of some of the issues I had to deal with, to better understand my role in Harlem City government and for words of encouragement.  Unlike many of our mutual friends, I didn’t grow up with Vic. I vaguely remember that fat little boy standing on the street corner wearing overalls when I was a “sophisticated” high school girl.

I first got to know Victor when a friend of mine married him. Vic was a serious musician at that time, making a name for himself with his drums. When I came to Harlem to visit my Dad I always walked across the tracks to visit Vic and Cynthia. We’d hang out and play pinochle until the wee hours when I’d walk back home through the snow. They came to visit me in Washington. A photo I treasure is of his family and my family, our arms around one another, sitting crowded on the steps of our house in Poulsbo, the shadow of the photographer stretched across the lawn. When Vic and Cynthia’s marriage reached its end, Victor still kept in touch with me, if only through his famous Christmas Letters. He mailed CDs of his music to me. And then when I moved back to Harlem, there was Vic, holding out his hand in friendship.

The Victor all of us knew was a performer.  As his friend Richard said, when Victor entered a room everyone knew he was there. He knew how to hold the crowd, to entertain. At home he treasured his solitude but in his public life, Victor was always on stage, whether behind his set of drums, chairing a meeting, or sitting around a conference table. Victor could tell stories that started with point A and wandered the map to point Z, then wrap up the story where he started. Along the way, he dropped nuggets of wisdom and humor.

Maddening at times? Oh yes! Could he ever work himself into a snit! Stingy? Uh, let’s say careful with money; both the taxpayers money and his own. A story Victor would tell on himself is that when he traveled he carried empty toilet paper rolls in his luggage. In the hotel bathroom, he left the empty roll and packed away the full one. When he told the story, I didn’t believe him.  His best friends assure me the story is true.

Vic loved meetings, maybe because each meeting gave him a stage, but more, I think, because each meeting presented an opportunity to improve the community, albeit in tiny frustrating steps. A couple times I hitched a ride with Vic to meetings across the border in Canada and on those trips, one-on-one, captive in a car, I got to know a different Victor. This Vic was more sober, serious, personal. He opened a window into his soul and gave me a peek at the essential man. I cherished those times. I thank you for that, Vic.

Above all else, Victor was a deeply spiritual man. He lived every moment of his life hard, full speed ahead. He agonized over issues. He lost sleep when his friends were in trouble. He tried to hide his vulnerable heart behind a shield of garrulous loquacity. He laughed. He cried. He loved. He hurt. In other words, he was human.

Good-by, Vic, I’ll miss you.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

August 23, 2012

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Uncle George

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________