At the Orderaria

 

            At the Orderaria 

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What a week. When my son flew back to Washington, along with a bundle of two-foot long cinnamon sticks for gifts to friends, he took my energy. I wasn’t worried. I knew that the following day my supply would be replenished.

Sure enough, the next day I flew into a cleaning frenzy. Order was soon restored but I have a question. Where does order hide out that it needs to be restored?

At the Orderaria, of course, Spanglish for the Order Store. You know, like “carneceria” (meat), “lavandaria” (laundry) or “tortillaria” (obvious).

Okay. So I like jokes an eight year old would tell.

I’m not sure order is important. What order? Whose order? Order by which definition? My disorder might be your order. I learned to shut the door on my son’s bedroom when he turned teen because it drove me nuts. He explain that he was differently organized. I quit fighting the mess.

Shut the door. Good advice for a lot of situations.

I got busy cleaning and re-arranging shelves and puttering in the yard to keep from so badly missing my son, missing from here but not missing from there. Keeping busy is my therapy, or is it my avoidance?  

A strange thing happened last week while shopping. I chose to stay in the car and watch people rather than go into the store and watch stuff.

I believe a limited number of cookie cutters make people. We’ve all had similar experiences. Unexpectedly, we spot a person we know, or knew, in a place impossible for them to be.

This man, so familiar that I almost called out to him, walked up to the pickup truck in front of me, big as life. He was the lick-spitting image of a man who married one of my friends from high school, a man who has now passed on. I dropped my jaw but was able to pick it up, dust it off, and restore it only slightly bruised, as he drove away.

Do we all have a doppleganger? How scary is that!

As scary as my avocado tree is loaded with fruits half the size of a football? The tree is a local variety, the skin of the fruit thin, not engineered for shipping. I like avocado, sliced for salads or sandwiches or mashed into guacamole. But I don’t eat it every day.

The first green globes I hoard. After a couple weeks feasting, I give away most of the fruit. I hide piles of fruit in Josue’s driveway or sneak them into the back seat of Leo’s unlocked car. Then I run. That’s a metaphorical run.

My daughter suggested I whip up an avocado cheesecake. I haven’t convinced myself it would be good.

However, last week I made a mango cheesecake. Ben took a platter of slices to Erika.

I heard through the grapevine, that Erika threatened to return my platter laden with avocado slices. And run.

Reminds me of zucchini. Those are scary. Delicious too.

Today Leo will climb the tree, harvest buckets of the fruits, and give them away in town. I will keep two avocados. A ripe one for tomorrow and a hard green fruit for next week.

When my son left, he took the rainy summer season with him. Which is appropriate, I guess, since September harbors the end of our rains and the beginning of the Olympic Peninsula rains. If only I could have talked him into staying another couple weeks!

However, in a snap, summer twists into autumn.

Most times the change seems gradual, meanders along in such a way one hardly notices. On August 27, temperatures plunged from 84 to 64. The rains stopped two valleys over the hills. Two species of seasonal birds showed up, adding their songs to the stay-at-homes’. And the air smells like fall, like change.

I like change. Order is overrated. I’d gladly send all my newly established order back to the orderaria for another visitor to disrupt routine.

Now that the rains have abated, I shall plant my garden buckets. Gardens like disorder, weeds and bugs, the mystery of seeds sprouting into fullness of beans and peppers and squash and maybe a carrot or twenty.

I don’t mark my buckets so only know what I planted if and when it shoots out of the ground. I did not get that trait from the Orderaria. Probably inherited it from my children.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

Firstest of September

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The Right Way

And it is my way, all of the ways.
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The Right Way


When I was growing up I learned that it was important that I always get it “Right”, do things the “ Right Way ”. The “ Right Way ” was never spelled out for me. So I had to watch like a hawk and hope to figure “It” out. But, if I did not catch on in time, I caught a different “It”. This “It” meant a willow switch to the back of my legs or humiliation or harsh words.

“Antoinette insisted we put together a five-hundred piece jigsaw puzzle,” my daughter announced with laughter.

“Five-hundred pieces! But Annie is only four. She won’t have the patience for that. Last month we bought her half-a-dozen twenty-five piece puzzles.”

“She whips through those, Mom. Maybe the big one will be too tough for her, but she insisted. She and I turned all the pieces right side up. Then she kept trying to start in the middle. So I had to teach her how to find the edge pieces and start with them.”

I cringed. “Oh, Dee , I taught you to do that, didn’t I? I taught you that’s the right way to work a puzzle. I was wrong. There is no “right” way. Maybe Annie’s way is just as right as ours and she should be allowed to figure out what works best for her. Her way might suit her better. Or it might be how she learns patterns. So you go back and un-teach her right now.”

“Whoa, Mom. You feel strongly about this, don’t you?”

“You bet I do. The “ Right Way ” is a trap. Brings your thinking to a dead stop. Fortunately, along the way I had good friends who took me under wing and showed me that it’s a lot of fun to explore different roads to the same destination. What’s more, the road that is best for me today, may not be the best road for you. And tomorrow’s road may be different yet.

“In fact, watching how you and your brother learned things also taught me a lot. Both of you were still babies when I realized you were ambidextrous. I could have forced you to be right-handed. Remember Sister Mary Bernadette? She didn’t allow left-handers. You still have chicken-scratch handwriting. And we three each have a different way we organize things. I’ll never forget the day I learned to avert my eyes and simply close the door to Ben’s room, knowing he is ‘differently organized’.”

When I realize that I cannot see over the top of the rut I’m in, I try to climb out. Here’s a test. Which foot do you start with when you are putting on your britches? Uh, huh. See. Same foot every time. Try alternating left and right each day. It is just a little brain shift trick. It affects our left-brain/right-brain creativity. And it’s kind of fun.

Annie’s puzzle stuck in my mind. I like jigsaw puzzles. I decided to perform a puzzle test. I dug my thousand-piece puzzles out of the cupboard and laid them out in a row. I chose a winter scene, snow piled high, just like the drifts outside my windows. I dumped the puzzle in the middle of my largest table. I turned the thousand pieces picture-side-up. I cleared a space in the center. I bravely forsook the siren call of the edges. I picked an obvious middle-section piece with which to begin my grand experiment. In a short while I had cobbled together a section roughly twelve by eight inches.

I learned that a puzzle can be worked from the inside to the outside. I chortled with glee when I finally got to press an edge piece into place. I finished the puzzle and proclaimed the experiment a success.

So today I have two ways to put together a jigsaw puzzle. I wonder what would happen if I started on the left side and worked toward the right. Or from top to bottom. Or corner to corner.

Next I’ll tackle crossword puzzles. Vertical clues first.

Sondra Ashton
Havre Daily News: Looking Out My Back Door
January 28, 2010
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