Might be this, might be that.

 

Might be this, might be that.

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The longer I live, the less certain I am about anything. In fact, when I detect certainty in my thinking, I immediately stop and investigate to find the flaw.

You’ve all met Leo. He works in my yard a couple half-days a week. Leo is much more than a garden worker. I’ve come to depend on Leo for all manner of help. He is a gentle man, educated, generous, and has a brilliant sense of humor. Over time, he’s come to seem a grandson to me. He trusts me enough to tell me when he thinks I am wrong and that’s a huge compliment.

I’m the only one of us who lives here on the rancho without a partner and the only one since the pandemic who lives here constantly year round. That may have served to cement our friendship. Leo shows up most mornings to ask if I need anything. He’s my taxi driver, shopper, legal advisor, all-around helper. He has a big heart. Sometimes I call him Mother Leo.

We were sitting on my patio, me telling a story from when I lived in Mazatlan. Suddenly Leo leaned forward and said, “Sondra, you have . . . “ and here he used an expression, a masculine anatomical term, which I thought was pure Montana but perhaps is pure Mexican and crossed the border north centuries past. After all, Mexico has written history centuries longer than Montana’s.

The expression means courage so I’ll use that word. “Sondra, you have big courage. You are alone. You are old. (The young man is brutally truthful.) When you need to make a change, you just make it. You moved to Mazatlan. Then to Etzatlan. And now you are going to move to Oconahua. Alone. You have big, huge courage.”

I know a compliment when I see one so, taking no offense, I said, “Thank you.” Graciously.

However, my mind was quietly thinking otherwise. My mind spit out words such as flighty, loose cannon, loco-loco.

It’s true though. When a situation becomes untenable for various reasons, I’ve learned to make a change. If opportunity beckons elsewhere, I’ve learned to make a change.

Every decision carries its own consequences. For me, that has nothing to do with right or wrong. I could go. I could stay. I could move one step left. Or right.

That sounds so smug and smarmy. It actually took six years of terror, being afraid to do anything, not “allowed” any decisions, to give me the strength to break free. Every move or change since has been relatively easy, easy only in comparison to the years I call “Chicago Time”.

Leo went on to say about himself, “Me, I’m a big chicken. I’m scared to change. Friends tell me I need to break away from here, to get a job to use my education and skills. I’m chicken. I’d love to work in one of the big resorts on the Gulf Coast. I’d be good at helping people, at managing a crew. I would like that work. But my family is important to me. I don’t want to leave family.”

Immediately, I felt guilt. I’m one of the people who’d said, “Go, move, do something for yourself.”

In that moment, I saw that I had been wrong to urge change for Leo. I don’t know what is best for this young man.

“Leo,” I said, “You know what is best for you. You are the only one who knows what is best. If living here, helping us, being here for each of us, for your family, your friends, feeds your soul, who are we to say that’s not enough? You have no idea the value you give us. We don’t express our appreciation as often as we think it. If your circumstances change, if the time comes for you to make a big change, you will know. That is also courage.”

I’ve often thought that in different times or circumstances, Leo would have been a priest. He ministers quietly, without fanfare, to us, to his family, his neighbors. If you want to see the consequences of his ministry, just take a short trip into town with him. Everybody knows Leo. Leo gives of himself, no matter where he is. That is who he is.

Fool? Wise? Chicken? Courageous? By whose definition? Might be this. Might be that.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

September 19, 2024

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“Make love to me . . . “

 

“Make love to me . . . “

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“Ba ba ba ba boom. Take me in your lovin’ arms and never let me go. Whisper to me softly while the moon is low.”

I woke in the night with the inimitable voice of Jo Stafford as she swayed in her chiffon dress, singing at the mike, complete with the “Ba ba ba ba booms”, the band members behind her, all in handsome suits, well, handsome for that nugget in time.

“Hold me close and tell me what I wanna know; Say it to me gently, let the sweet talk flow.”

Remember when all the band members wore suits? I remember, perhaps a memory loop from “The Ed Sullivan Show”? I could hear individual trumpets, the drummer whishing brushes against the cymbals, could hear the entire music in my mind. Don’t forget the “Ba ba ba ba booms.”

“Come a little closer, make love to me.”

And I lay in there in bed, in the dark night, feeling totally and completely loved, listening to the rain patter on the roof, on the palm tree outside my window, smelling the wet mist.

This morning my daily Rumi poem, to paraphrase loosely, said, “The sky poured out love and the earth opened to receive it.” Amen, I thought, amen.

Yesterday Leo mowed my lawn and trimmed the edges. After letting my backyard orchard go brown over the dry, dusty winter and searing hot spring, a couple rainfalls and it looks like a park. Tomorrow, after another forty-eight hours of rain, the same lawn will look like a shaggy dog.

The gray-brown foliage on the mountains looming just across the highway, seemingly overnight mirror a vista of the hills of Ireland. Some of my plants have burst into flower like songs in the night. Some are waterlogged, blooms drooping to the ground.

Memories are strange. Now that I’m older with time on my hands, the time in my mind dredges up memories long forgotten. What I find strange, is that I have a clearer view of events in my life now than I had back when a lot of the memories were freshly implanted.  

I think I’m fortunate that some of my memories did not transform into cast iron monuments that then ruled my life. I had good teachers along the way.

People tell me things. One of my early customers had me transfixed by her tragic story of how her husband abused and left her. I couldn’t imagine how she could begin to want me here with her, contemplating a job. Innocently, I asked her when this happened; her story was so fresh. I couldn’t understand how she could function. “It was twenty-three years ago next month,” she replied through clenched teeth.  

“Oh.” Oh was all I could respond. That poor woman had lost twenty-three years of her life. She chose to stay in that moment. Realization hit me like a hammer. I never wanted to do what she did, to plant myself immovable in a past pain. I had not done so but it was still a good lesson to hang onto. I made my excuses and left.

I suppose some people don’t have ugly memories. I have plenty. And the uglies visit from time to time. Yes, I did that. I’ve sabotaged myself. I’ve made choices I knew would end in disaster to myself. Yes, that happened. Fortunately, today I can see details that I chose to ignore at the time. Those outer details make a difference.

As the more clear and complete picture emerges, I can see how to change my perspective. Painful memories aren’t as hurtful. The bad wasn’t all bad. Pieces of denial float away. The good wasn’t all good. “Ba ba ba ba boom.”

A lot, if not most, of my most cringe-worthy memories were made while looking for love (in all the wrong places). Like there was the time, ooh, naw, let’s leave that story on the shelf in storage for now.

Ironic that I live in semi-isolation, alone, among people, with whom I have little in common, and frequently have these strange experiences of feeling utterly and completely loved.

“Ba ba ba ba boom.”

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

June 17, 2021

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Floundering Through the Crevasse

Another chapter in our never-ending winter!
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Floundering Through the Crevasse

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A few days ago I was dragging a sack of garbage across my backyard snowfield to the alley for pick up, when I fell into a crevasse.



That sounds melodramatic. But there have been weeks this winter when I could not get to the alley. When our daytime temperature rose above freezing for several days, the snow drifts had settled somewhat. In fact, there were indications that soon I would be able to see benches, flower pots, rocks and currant bushes which have been buried since November.



So I laced up my Sorels , grabbed my walking stick, shoved the snow away from the back door, and eased over the icy embankment and up, up onto the snowfield. Carefully, I probed my way with my walking stick, testing the depth of the mounded snow, dragging my garbage sack behind me. When I came to where my “path” skirted the cabin, I faced a quandary.



My house is centered on the front of my lot. At the back, in a corner, sits an old cabin, the original home of the family who once lived here. The snow, which had melted off the cabin roof, had formed a small pond. During the night the pond had frozen, creating a skating rink of some size. The skating rink blocked several feet of my path.



Rather than risk the rink, I ventured out into the garden on the other side of the path. I use the term “garden” loosely. In this area I cultivate volunteer lettuce, onions, Canada thistle, pig weed and kosha. But I digress. I ventured further up onto the snowy plateau which hid all but the memory of a garden. I found the mound to be quite solid.



I also saw my little world from an unexpected perspective. In ordinary times my yard is flat, with nary a distinguishing vertical feature. Never had I viewed the roof of the cabin, my neighbor’s houses and the full reach of the alley from this heady elevation. I looked out over a brave new world. I took another step and plunged into a crevasse. With one leg. My other leg stayed on top of the drift. My buried leg was tightly encased with crusted snow all the way past mid-thigh. I could not move either leg. I could not get purchase to lift myself from my icy prison. I could not go forward. I could not go backward.



A gray car drove by on Fourth Street . The people did not see me. I pondered tying my garbage sack onto the end of my walking stick and waving it in the air, a distress signal. I also considered that my garbage weighed at least forty pounds. My neighbors across the alley hurried out of their house, jumped into their car and drove away. I waved. They did not see me. Or they pretended they did not see me. Well, what would you have done?



First of all, I looked pretty funny, anchored in my snow bank. It is not polite to laugh at someone in distress. I know my neighbors to be very polite. Besides, they were on the way to work, probably already five minutes late and they wanted to stop at the new coffee shop in town to order caramel mocha-rocas, venti, three shots, skinny, extra hot, whipped cream, coco powder, a chocolate covered coffee bean and no straw, please.



So I sat down. I was mostly sitting down anyway, with my leg stuck in the ice. Very slowly, on my bottom, I scooched myself backwards out of the jaws of the icy trap. Still sitting, I dragged me and my garbage bag over the snow field several feet to the distant edge of the bank. There I swung my legs over and jumped to the “ground,” grateful that we do not live in avalanche country.



Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

February 24, 2011
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Dining Out in Smudge
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The names and places in this little story have been changed to protect the innocent. Let’s call the town where the man and the woman stopped for dinner, “Smudge”. The town was well-named. It was not much more than a smudge along the highway. And let’s call the restaurant where they dined the “Hole-in-the-Wall”.



On this evening of the opening day of elk season, nearly every table in the Hole-in-the-Wall was full. Many of the customers were families with children. Hunters, sprinkled throughout the room, were dressed in the unlikely combination of camo regalia accessorized with day-glo orange. Three tables had been pushed together in the center of the room to accommodate a gathering of senior citizens, there to celebrate the birthday of a smiling, grandmotherly-looking woman. The place buzzed with excited voices, interrupted stories and laughter.



At a corner table in the back of the room, his back against the wall, sat a middle-aged, balding, part Native American man. We’ll call him Ollie. Yes, that’s a good name, Ollie Oxinfree. Across from him sat a woman whose hair showed more salt than pepper. We’ll name her “Pyridoxine”. Pyridoxine Hydrochloride Donnelly. She was the seventeenth child from a practicing Catholic family. Her mother, desperate to come up with yet another name, had been reading the ingredients on a cereal box when her waters broke. The name had something or other to do with Vitamin B6. So her family called her “Bee” for short. They might have called her “Doxie”. Whenever she thinks of that, Bee shudders. The couple, recently re-acquainted, were no strangers to the aches and pains or the hard knocks of life.



Their table had been cleared but not yet wiped clean since the last diners left. The harried waitress put down menus, water glasses and utensils, and turned to deliver steak sauce to the folks two tables over. Ollie loudly called after her, “Would you bring a rag and wipe off the table?” The waitress did not visibly respond. Ollie glared at her departing back, swiped his hand across the crumbs and knocked them to the floor. “She’s racist. Obviously,” he spit the words. Ollie drained his glass of water and set it down with a thunk.



Bee lifted her eyebrows. “Ollie, this place is a hive. She could be feeling hassled. No doubt she’s overworked, underpaid, and probably inexperienced to boot. Maybe her boyfriend just dumped her. Or she missed her car payment. What if she just found out she’s pregnant? Or maybe she is just having a bad day.”



Ollie grimaced. “No, no, no. She’s racist. Bee, I can tell. I’ve lived with this all my life. Don’t you try to make excuses for her.”



Bee had no answer to that but Ollie’s words sparked in her a determination to put a smile on both Ollie’s and the young waitress’ faces. She turned slightly in her chair. She watched the waitress place three meals in front of other customers as she made her way to their table with a cloth. “You ready to order yet?” the girl asked as she wiped the table. Bee waited for her to finish then nodded to Ollie. “Take his order first. I still have to make up my mind.”



As the waitress left their table, Ollie called after her, “And bring me some more water. Didn’t you see my glass is empty? Listen, just leave a pitcher here.”



Bee studied Ollie. She felt very sad at the pain this man tried so hard to hide. She had no way to know what insults and abuses he had lived with. She knew him to be well educated, articulate, a kind and gentle man, not the sullen hurting four-year-old across the table from her.



The waitress returned with a pitcher of water and their salads. Bee complimented her on her promptness, especially given this busy evening. When the waitress returned with their dinners, she ventured a half-smile that almost crinkled her eyes. Bee exclaimed, “My goodness, there is enough food heaped on this platter to feed three lumberjacks!”



Ollie and Bee ate quietly. Ollie secretly wished he had ordered a pizza to take home to eat alone. Bee made a mental list of the ways in which she had experienced bigotry. “None of us are immune,” she thought. Her list included being a Catholic, being a farm kid, being poor, growing up without a mother, being divorced, too skinny, too white, too fat, too old and crippled. “And we all are bigoted to some extent,” she thought. “Usually because of fear. Or maybe we become critical because of perceived differences. I like people. When I focus on the person, I see my fear is unfounded, the difference becomes unimportant.”



This story has no ending. There is no ending for bigotry. Bee wished she could ease Ollie’s pain, but knew she could not touch it. Ollie wished he could make Bee understand. When they left the Hole-in-the-Wall, the waitress, with genuine warmth, wished them a good evening.



Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

November 18, 2010
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