Build On A Sound Foundation

Build On A Sound Foundation

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            My friend Kathy, who first introduced me to Mazatlan, and I often giggle over the fact that neither of us are “cruise material”. By this we mean, we hardly dress the part. Both of us are pretty casual. Dress to impress, we do not. Clothing is to cover the body; for modesty in summer, to keep warm in winter. Basic stuff. 

            So I was a bit surprised when Kathy sent me an email with the message—“Hit the Beach—Here’s What to Pack”. In old-fashioned paper it would have been a glossy ad brochure. In email form it was a glossy ad brochure. Kathy went on to say, “Okay, we’re not cruise material, but since you will be at a resort, I thought you’d want to look at this. I know you like to keep up with the latest.”

            That last line was a cruel dig. I gave up any sense of fashion in my 40’s when I realized I like blue jeans, flannel shirts and Birkenstocks with wool socks. So that’s what I wear.  

                        And, if you must know, I have been feeling sorry for myself. I have stood in front of the dozen or so items in my closet and realized how old and how shabby they are. One after another, I have tossed garments into the trash bag and have replaced none. Most of my Mexican wardrobe I bought my first year of Mexican holiday, including two bathing suits I had to buy because I forgot to pack any.  I only wear these items in Mexico. None are frost proof, wind proof or mosquito proof.

            The beach? Resort? Oh, didn’t I tell you? My Medicine Woman massage person who has been doing wonders with my leg is going on a two-week holiday to Tijuana.  She said to me, “Walk in sand.” I must obey. The resort is five blocks from my apartment. But I can walk out the entry and onto the sand and take short walks every day. 

            “Kathy, what would I do without you,” I replied. “I’m ready to throw away everything I own and begin fresh.  You must have caught my vibes. Will they ship overnight express? I love the styles and colors. I want to order one of each. And the sandals encrusted with turquoise bling on the first page—aren’t they the wildest! I like the salmon colored ones too. Maybe I need both. You sent me a timely remedy to my dilemma. I want it all. I shall be the best dressed old woman on the beach.

            “I haven’t mentioned this, but Kathy, every morning I have been studying the dozens of beautiful young women who walk by on their way to work at the multi-storied government building on the opposite corner from me. They give me inspiration to change my life.

            “First, I must lose two hundred pounds. No, I don’t weigh two hundred pounds. No matter. I must lose at least that much for that perfect pale-shadow look. Next, I’ll buy all my clothing three to four sizes too small. Claustrophobic—maybe—I’ll deal with it. 

            “Bust enlargement—did I mention bust enlargement? Everyone does it so how hard can that be?

            “Most importantly, bags and shoes. I never, before living here, realized the vital importance of matching bags and shoes; one set for every possible contingency, for every combination of blouse and skirt and pants and those legging sort of things that I’ll be able to skinny into once I lose that two hundred pounds. 

“Oh, for scrumptious bags and shoes! Oversize bags are de rigueur, spangled with plenty of sparkly hardware. It’s all the rage. But the shoes, yes!, the shoes! Platform for height, stiletto heels for sex appeal, and more straps than a set of harness. I shall be the Imelda Marcos of Mexico. Add sun glasses. Add bangles and beads. Oh, the joy!

“Kathy, you’ve seen my place. I’ve been pondering how to create a closet dedicated solely to bags and shoes. The only solution I have come up with is to convert the kitchen. What do you think? After all, in order to lose two hundred pounds, I’ll never eat again, so who needs a kitchen. Not me. 

            “No sacrifice is too great. I can’t believe I’ve been so blind to fashion. I must have skipped a vital phase of my development during my formative years. I hope I’m not too old to learn how to trowel on the makeup. Soon, I too shall look like a toothpick on stilts, but, oh, so elegant.” 

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

June 5, 2014

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Leaping Lizards and Gripping Geckos

Leaping Lizards and Gripping Geckos

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            Lizards startle me. Back in the long-ago days when I rode horseback to check cows, now and then I’d see a flash of movement when a lizard sunning itself on a rock was equally startled by me. My mouth emitted a screech without my permission and my heart swung into overdrive. I couldn’t help myself. Meanwhile the lizard disappeared behind, around or under the lichen encrusted rock, a perfect habitat for its lichen colored skin. 

Fortunately, there aren’t a lot of lizards in eastern Montana. More fortunately, my horse was smarter than me and had become used to my ways. Otherwise I surely would have been dumped into the prickly pear.  To snakes I reacted even more loudly but my horse simply flicked back his ears and carried on. 

            Even harmless salamanders gave me the heebie-jeebies. When I was young, a trip down into the dirt cellar beneath the kitchen for a quart of pickles was an exercise in courage. No, that’s wrong. It was an exercise in fear.  

            It is a surprise to me that I’ve become quite fond of iguanas, not the most handsome of beasts. But you know how we women are; we can become used to anything.

            There had to be geckos in my apartment. Clues were there for me to read. I moved to this place in November. It is hardly airtight. When I opened the door to come in or go out, often a fly or mosquito from outside would, uninvited, flit through. I might spot the insect once or twice and then it would disappear. And I never swept its little carcass off the floor. So where did it go? 

            Geckos have a distinctive chirp when calling to one another. I hear them every day. Chirp-chirp-chirp-chirp. I scanned the walls. Searched the corners. Looked behind dressers, into the dark places. I never saw a gecko. Week after week. Month after month. Nada. Nothing. 

            Despite my distaste for lizards, I like geckos. I recognize their service to humanity. Anything that eats mosquitoes is a friend of mine. Bats, swallows, geckos. Bring them on. 

            Now I must explain that mosquitoes here are wimpy. Days go by and I never see one of the little pests. Compared to the mosquitoes-on-steroids we breed in the Milk River Valley, the variety here is the 98 pound weakling. We sneeringly kick sand in its face. However, small and seemingly harmless, it carries dengue fever, which is nothing to sneer at. So bring on the mosquito eaters, I say. 

            Sunday, near evening, I was sitting at my dining table eating pitayas, the fruit of cactus, of which I’ve grown quite fond, when a pale green gecko skittered up the wall and darted behind a painting. “Samantha,” I said, “I knew you were here.” 

            Silently I thanked her for keeping the bug population down. I was nearly giddy with excitement. Monday night I was propped on my mound of pillows, reading before lights out, when across the room a light tan gecko popped from behind the dresser and raced up the wall and with gripping huge foot pads, cut across the ceiling at Interstate speed. I promptly named it “Sam-I-Am.”  

            Isn’t this strange. Two geckos in two nights.   

Tuesday night I went to the kitchen to refill my water glass and a smaller pale green gecko dashed across the floor in front of me. “Samish.” 

Wednesday night, a darker brown gecko made tracks across the living room wall. “Son-of-Sam.” Is there a pattern here? 

My theory is that gecko spotting is much like deer hunting. In my first hunts along the coulees, I never saw a deer. My husband would see twenty. Gradually I learned their habits. I learned to watch my horse’s ears; to watch where he put his attention. It seemed as if I imagined the outline of a deer and the deer would walk into that outline becoming visible. Same technique with geckos.

I have a great “Hands-Across-the-Border business idea—to export geckos to the Milk River Valley.  Customers will line up to buy my little mosquito eaters. Each gecko will come with a name and pedigree, like Beanie Babies. Geckos will become a national craze. They are the perfect pet, quiet, nocturnal, unobtrusive. They don’t climb on furniture. The shed their skin but then they eat it, cleaning up their own mess. Wintering might be a challenge, but, small problem, easily solved. We’ll sell them in colors, stripes or speckles. We will employee hundreds of people. 

Already my friend Kathy and my daughter Dee Dee want a piece of the action. Geckos-R-Us. 

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

May 29, 2014

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Life is A Bowl of Mangoes, Ripe From My Tree

 Life is A Bowl of Mangoes, Ripe From My Tree    

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Did you know that three weeks housebound makes this woman restless and a bit dingy? While I revel in the opportunity for extended days of retreat and reflection, be careful if you knock on my door. I am liable to drag you inside and hold you hostage for hours of tea and one-sided conversation. 

When I was young I believed I was “inscrutable”, the perfect poker face. This despite an unfortunate experience that still makes me cringe—ah—but that is a different story. Truly, for better or worse, every thought that runs through my head, conscious or unconscious, writes itself clearly across my face. The only way I could get away with anything would be to wear a paper bag over my head. This morning, while I stood apprehensively silent, Carlos, my faithful pulmania driver and Nana, my Medicine Woman, had a five minute conversation in Spanish, at my expense, complete with laughter and vivid hand talk, discussing my progress from my first massage until now. “Look at her face.” I understood every gesture. My face does not lie. 

The other day Mazatlan and Havre shared nearly the same weather forecast. With the slight difference of thirty-two degrees. And one word. The Montana forecast was for “possible” thunderstorms. We know that means “probably no rain”. Mazatlan’s forecast was for “stray” thunderstorms. What a delicious phrase. So rich with possibility. One might round up a thunderstorm, like a stray calf. Or kick it out of the way, like a stray dog. 

The better my Spanish, the worse my English, especially spelling. Spanish is wonderfully sensible: “a” is always pronounced “ah” and so on. Lately when I write an English word, I want to make the “e” sound spell like a “long a”, the “i” a “long e” and I end up muddle-fuddled and searching the dictionary to spell words I know perfectly well. 

The papaya tree in my back courtyard is not a papaya. Ted, my snowbird neighbor from Edmonton, who putters in the courtyard every day during the winter, told me those tiny green buds, in March the size of peach pits, held the promise of papaya fruit. They are now the size of my hand and turning color.

Yesterday Rudy stopped by to see if I needed fruit or vegetables since he was going to the big market downtown. I put in my request for whatever looked freshest. Before Rudy left I asked if he would remove the hideous vertical blinds (which wouldn’t open) from my front window. He dragged them to a corner in the courtyard to be disposed of later. I asked when my papaya would be ripe. “What papaya? That’s a mango.” Woo-hoo! I tolerate papaya. I feast on mango. 

I’ve come to realize that every creative act is a self portrait. (The gospel, according to me.) Last winter when I had put the finishing touches on a painting, I stood back and looked at it lined up my other winter oils. None of my paintings were of myself but they all were a reflection of me. Immediately I understood that whether our creative act is building a straight fence line, restoring a ’46 Pontiac, lining rows of jeweled jars of garden produce on the pantry shelves, soothing a child, making music or painting a picture, all creation is a self portrait. I’m painting another picture of myself that looks somewhat like an old grain elevator at Turner.

My friend Kathy thinks I’m becoming Buddhist. It is true that I escort spiders out the door with good wishes and cringe with apologies (This hurts me more than it does you.) before I prune a plant. There’s more to spirituality than spiders and flies. Kathy did not see my Zen fly out the window when Monday I gleefully butchered a scorpion in my living room with the meat cleaver. 

This morning I woke grumpy, restless, irritable and discontented, feeling too alone. I need a companion. I travel too much to want a cat or dog. I was sitting at my dining table dutifully eating my broccoli like a good girl, when a pale gecko skittered up the wall beside me. “Ah, Samantha.” My new friend. I suspect she is not alone. I seldom see a fly or mosquito. 

Did you know that if one has two appliances side-by-side on the counter, that if the food processor won’t work, that no matter how many times one disassembles it and pushes the “reset” button, that the processor still will not work if the coffee grinder happens to be the appliance plugged in? Silly woman!

But, of course, you already know that.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

May 22, 2014 

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The Stories We Tell Ourselves

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

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This morning I shredded a bread roll and scattered crumbs for the birds. I would like to say these were the beautiful exotic birds that take my breath when I spot them. No, these were common mourning doves, omnipresent sparrows and one tenate, a grackle with blackbird manners and a shrill whistle that could cut glass. 

            The tenate would grab a hunk of bread, stamp it underfoot, marking it for his own. Then she’d dive in for a different (The grass is always greener!) piece while a sparrow swiped the original chunk. The doves were so busy chasing off relatives that nobody got much. The sparrows moved about with vacuum mouths. 

            “O, the stories we tell ourselves,” I thought. The tenate: “If I brand it with my foot, it is mine,” totally ignoring the little thieves and rustlers. The doves: “If I can keep my brothers from getting any, there will be more for me.”  The unobtrusive sparrows clean house.

            Being unable to walk, housebound for a couple weeks, has given me time to contemplate my own stories; stories born of fear and childhood experiences, stories that color or make my adult decisions. One story taught me by my family was, “You’re a big girl. Big girls don’t cry.” It is the same story as “Be a man.” Since I was the oldest, it didn’t matter if I was four or fourteen, I was a “big girl”. It never occurred to me to say, “But I’m a child!” I could never have forced the words out my mouth. 

            One valuable way to shed light on the dark stories is to face death. When I was twenty-three I was in a car wreck. At the moment of impact, I have no other way to describe it, I felt and saw a presence I identified as the “Hand of God” reach out and cup me. I knew I’d be severely injured and I knew I’d live so I relaxed into that knowledge. I never told a soul that story, having no desire to end up in Warm Springs. I wish I could say I walked away healed and lived happily ever after. Ha! 

            But the chink in my cracked armor allowed me to begin a life-long healing process, a process that began, appropriately, with tears. I cried with grief, with pain, real and imagined, with sorrow, with pathos, for you and for me. Took years to drain that well dry.  

            In the process I learned to quit obsessing over my stories and listen to your stories. I’m ashamed how often the person, of whom I had rendered instant judgment, was most helpful. If we only knew the pain beneath the skin of our neighbor, we’d drop our judgments and hold out hands to him.  We would celebrate together every forward step. 

            Life is a bag of mixed greens. Some bitter, some tender, some tough. I love the stories that have segued into urban legends. When my daughter was born, my mother-in-law, in all seriousness, said, “Keep the cat outdoors. She’ll jump into the baby’s cradle and suck away her breath.” 

            The idea startled me but, in respect, I kept Siam outdoors when Grandma Rose visited. 

Someone I know swears this story is true. A man died from filling his bedroom with his own gaseous emissions. (His wife might have been who died.)  

Most of us grew up believing that earwigs crawl into our ears and eat out our brains. Isn’t that a fun thought? Tell me you haven’t entertained it on at least one of your sleepless nights! If you haven’t, you will, now that I’ve told you. 

When I got to Mexico, I was told, nay, ordered to dispose of my bathroom tissue in the waste basket, not the toilet, because the paper would plug up the pipes. Inwardly I rolled my eyes, but did not argue. Nor did I quit flushing my paper. I filed the story away until I heard it again. Careful questioning revealed the origins of this legend. When the City built a modern sewage system and outlawed backyard privies, the newspaper or thick gray paper used to wrap fruit, no surprise, plugged the system. Like our Monkey Ward catalog pages in our own transition times. 

Now, of course, everyone uses modern tissue, but “Mom said,” and what Mom said, lives forever and gets passed down the generations.  

Most of the stories we tell ourselves, whether funny or pathetic, can be traced back to family experiences or youthful events. And we often go a lifetime without questioning the origins of our beliefs. 

So I strive to dig those earwigs out of my ears. Listen with compassion to my neighbor’s stories. Question my own stories. Take my foot off the breadcrumb. Cry a little. Laugh a lot.  

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

May 15, 2014

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

May 15, 2014

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