Felled By A Blackberry Bramble

Felled By A Blackberry Bramble

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            I certainly never expected to spend an afternoon in the emergency room of the local hospital on my holiday with my son and granddaughter. Just an innocent scratch, I tried to tell myself.

            Lexi and I, along with Deckard the Dog, had walked the newly-hacked trail to the “Fort” in the woods, constructed by Lexi’s grandpa and father. If you’ve never been around wild blackberries, you need to know, the vines are indestructible.

            Left to grow uninhibited, blackberry brambles will eventually push out the holly, salal, ferns and all other woods growth. Wild vines can and do take down entire buildings, including abandoned barns and houses. I’ve seen it.

            When I first moved to Washington back in the early ‘80s, I didn’t understand this phenomenon. I was appalled when I saw my neighbor out hacking away blackberry bushes at the edge of his yard. Coming from Montana, where chokecherries, a poor excuse for fruit, requiring extreme measures to harvest and use, are revered, I learned any fruit is sacred and blackberries are rare treasures.

            The following year, and every year thereafter, in the spring and again, in the fall, after I had picked all the plump juicy berries I wanted for pies and jellies, machete in hand, I hacked the vines into pseudo submission. Blackberries always win.

            So even though Ben had cleared the path through the woods to the Fort, errant vines lurked. As I followed, Lexi ran ahead along the uneven ground, with Deckard tugging on his rope in my left hand and my cane for balance in my right hand. An errant blackberry vine whipped out and sliced through the back of my calf.

            My leg was bloody but I was on a mission so paid no attention. Lexi gave me the grand treehouse tour, we poked around the base of the tree a while, then returned home. After I cleaned my messy leg, I considered I might need stitches but could probably get by without them. What’s one more scar? I smeared Bag Balm, my go-to cure-all, on my leg and promptly ignored what was obviously not a mortal wound.

            Three days later, while having coffee with Kathy Currie and Cass Quinn, friends from my theatre days, Kathy noticed my cut leg with an expression of horror. Remember, this thing is on the back of my calf, not terribly painful, out of sight, out of mind. I twisted around to look. Ewww. My leg sported a nasty purple gash, discolored an inch around the edges of the actual cut.

            My son Ben, who’d worked several years in nursing homes when younger, cleaned the cut, disinfected a needle and broke through the crust, expressed the discharge, and smeared on an antibiotic cream, hoping for the best. By this time my leg looked as though it were being eaten from the inside out.

            On the second day of home treatment, Ben and I looked at my leg, looked at each other, and without another word, climbed into the car and took my infected leg to the Emergency Room at Harrison Hospital. I’m terrified of infections with good reason. I have a prosthetic knee on one leg and prosthetic hip on the other.

            That’s why I’m taking a horse-pill antibiotic, my mouth tastes like metal, food turns my stomach and I must rise up in the middle of the night to swallow another pill, rigidly adhering to the doctor’s precise instructions.

            The good news is the pills work. Yes, I should have gone in for stitches. I’ll add one more scar to my growing collection.

            Now, please understand I’ll probably not act on impulse. I’ve never been one to consider tattoos. I can admire good tattoo work on you but have never been tempted to deliberately jab needles into my own skin. However, my legs are criss-crossed with scars.

Recently I’ve thought about creating a “roadmap” tattoo, utilizing my natural “lay of the land”, complete with scars, dips and doodles. Towns along the “route”. Mountains and valleys. Perhaps add a lake here and a railroad track there. I could create an entire mythical country from my natural scars of life lived.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

August 17, 2017

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When One is Invisible

To be or not to be . . . -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When One is Invisible _____________________________________________________________________________________________ Two weeks ago I was at Sweet Medical in Chinook for my annual Woman’s Exam. My doctor asked me a series of routine questions, and concluded by asking my age. I’ll be mumbly-mumble in two weeks,” I said. She looked up from her paperwork. “Happy Birthday, Sondra.” “I’m getting older grudgingly, not gracefully. I dislike aging. Brown spots, papery skin, this one long white hair that sprouts three inches overnight on my face. And why can’t we sit down or stand up without sound effects matching every move?” She laughed. “Would you like to go back to when you were younger?” “Not on your life—or my life.” “Not even if you knew all you know now?” “I’d probably do the same foolish things over again. With the knowledge I have today, life would be even more painful. But the thing that makes me angry about being an aging woman is that sometime in my fifties I became invisible. I don’t know how, but when I became an older woman, I vanished.” My doctor’s eyes sparked fire. “I know what you are talking about. I experience it all the time. It happens whenever I transact business. My husband and I were shopping for new floor coverings. We spent hours in the store looking at samples. The clerk talked to him the entire time. I made the choices, not him. I paid the bill, not him. But I might as well have not been there as far as that clerk was concerned.” “Yes, sometimes it seems like we don’t exist, like we are vague shadows. I remember one time when I went to buy a cargo van. The salesman insisted that I didn’t want a cargo van and he had the perfect mini-van for me and I needed to bring my husband to make the deal. I told him, look, I need a full-size cargo van for my business. And I don’t have a husband. He didn’t even hear me; he repeated it again, bring in your husband and test drive the mini-van. I stomped out of that place steaming and never went back. “I went down the road to the next dealership, smoke pouring from my ears. I told the young salesman that I’m single, I know what I want, and if you even hint that I need a man to seal the deal, I’m walking right back out that door. Whew, he brought me a mug of coffee, sat me in a chair in his office, closed the door and said, you just came from up the street, huh. An hour later I drove out of there behind the wheel of my new cargo van.” We had a good giggle. My doctor then said, “Frequently a female patient wants her husband in the room so that he can hear the information first hand. I make sure I address most of my comments directly to her with good eye contact. I talk to him too, but most of my discussion is with her.” Invisibility still dominated my mind when my daughter Dee Dee, a family counselor, phoned. “It’s not just women who are invisible,” she reminded me. “Add to your list the physically or mentally challenged. Old people don’t see young people. Young people disregard the elderly. People with dark skin or those with light skin, both can be invisible. Or people who speak a different language or wear unfamiliar clothing. Some people erase those who have green hair, tattoos, or body piercings. Almost all of us avoid looking at the homeless. It’s easy to become a non-person.” We humans are talented beyond belief. We make people disappear who are not carbon copies of us. We forget that every human being is unique. Each one of us has a compelling story. What would happen if we stopped, looked for the humanity in her eyes, and listened to her story? Or his story. Think about it. Sondra Ashton HDN: Looking out my back door March 31, 2011 _________________________________________________________________________________________________