Letters, we get letters, we get stacks and stacks of letters

 

            Letters, we get letters, we get stacks and stacks of letters

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My last two were heavy-with-grief. I received unprecedented response. And lots of questions. I’ll talk about that in a minute.

First, the good news. My son is back, truly the Prodigal Returned. He is returned to his life. He is grieving, hurting, yet doing the hard work of a multi-faceted recovery.

My daughter’s family has a plan, well, more an examination of possibilities and potentialities for when Sweet Jess, and she is a dear woman, slips and lands on the hard ice of addiction.

The thing is, I know that your family and every family is suffering. The Differences are only in the Details.  As for me and my family, we have hope; we have joy.

Friends and strangers sent me letters. Letters of support. Letters of sympathy. Letters sharing your stories. Letters with questions.

Such as the following question: How did you think of tying your week together through soap operas? This was my preceding thought: “How can I write about my week? Nobody will believe me. My life is like a soap opera. I know I’m not the only one. I’ll bet yours is too! We all are living a soap opera.”

Once the words “soap opera” flitted through my head, all I had to do is fill in the blanks. Obviously I missed my calling. I could have gotten several seasons, perhaps years, from two weeks of family misadventures. I could have been wealthy. I could have been in Hollywood. Coulda, woulda, shoulda.

Are your stories fiction? No, I could not have made them up. Every word is true, as honest as I can lay it out there.

Are you a secret soap-opera aficionada and we never knew it? Are you binging in isolation on old soaps from days of yore? No. And no. See next question.

How did you know about all those old daytime soaps? When I was young and during the times of convalescence from measles, mumps and chicken pox, I was allowed to lounge on the living room sofa and watch our tiny television in a dimmed room. I wasn’t allowed to read because that might hurt my eyes. Oh, the irony.

Tack on summer, the day off for Thanksgiving, Christmas vacation and Good Friday (we had few breaks back in the golden olden days) and I could follow the soap-operatic lack of plot and action from illness to holiday to illness. 

I especially remember the adverts. All those jingles which will never leave my head. “Ajax, the foaming cleanser . . .” “Hooray for Beef-a-roni, made with macaroni . . .” “Duz does everything!”

Along with soaps I watched bowling with the whispering soft commentator’s voice, golf, another whisper voice, and grim polio documentaries with background whooshing whispers from iron lungs. I never learned to swim. You have to be really old to “get” that connection.

Readers also sent advice. If we, me and my family, swallowed every vitamin, remedy, snake oil and supplement recommended, we would be invincible, would live forever and probably waft in holiness up into the clouds—if the weight of swallowing all that with water didn’t plunk us back down to ground. However, a long-time aficionado of several snake oils, I thank you.

But I’m making fun and that’s not nice. Every letter that came to me came from genuine caring. They arrived with stories, with prayers, with love, with advice, with solace. And I appreciate every one. Thank you.

Here in Central Mexico, our little town is suffering. The State of Jalisco is on severe lockdown, extended through to mid-February. Hospitals are full. Too many have died. Too many are sick. Those who previously ignored restrictions have become fervid believers.

The postal office and the bank are closed. Workers are out with the coronavirus. Elders such as myself are denied store entry. “Stay home, stay safe,” we are told.  City government offices are open only sporadically. Taxes and water bills, normally due in January, have been extended, both to prevent long lines and because employees are home sick.

Life and Death cycle onward. I woke this morning still breathing. I sat in the sunshine back yard beneath the jacaranda tree, which is shedding like a horse in April, and watched a pair of partridge doves, untidy birds, attempt nest building, untidy nest, in a clump of air plant. Untidy birds. The nest looked like an engineering disaster but I’ll soon hear baby peeps.

For a blast-from-the-past treat, watch Perry Como sing the “Letters” song on You Tube. I wonder if I can watch Mexican soap operas on my computer. I already get the ads.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

February 4, 2021

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As the World Turns The Edge of Night

 

As the World Turns The Edge of Night

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Nobody could have written a soap opera to equal the drama of these pandemic days. It’s not just me and my family. We are all part of the drama. Nobody would believe it. No soap would sponsor such a program.

Last week’s episode in the of my family drama left us hanging with my son struggling with seizures resulting from the Covid virus, on strong medication, and Oops—The Secret Storm we were not supposed to know—drinking. He was a mere month away from celebrating six years of sobriety.

Both he and his girlfriend, a woman he’d met in aftercare treatment, were struck down by the virus and the dummies began drinking. Which came first. Don’t know. Doesn’t matter.

I had not heard from Ben for several weeks so naturally I was worried. Fortunately friends and family quickly intervened. Ben finally reached out to me, admitted he’d drank and claimed three days sobriety at that time. We talked. We connected heart to heart. I did not barbeque the fatted calf. But I gave it an extra measure of grain.

In the dark of the night or early morning if you must be technical, the phone rang. It was Ben. “Mom, Kristen is dead.” “What? How can that be?” I’d just talked with them in the evening.

Ben said they’d gone to bed early; he woke in the night to snuggle and her body felt cold. He called 911 and began chest compressions. The medics said it looked like she’d had a heart attack in her sleep. She was only thirty-five.

We were both in shock. He talked. I listened. We cried. How? Why? The only thing I could think to say was, “Ben, you loved her for five years. Nobody can take that away from her or from you.”

The following day Ben and I talked several times. In the evening, he said, “Mom, Kristen’s mother died.” No—how can that be? Later talks revealed her mother had not died but her aunt who has the same name died that morning, news no less devastating.

Her parents had been on the way to Ben’s house to pick up Kristen’s dogs. They had detoured to the hospital in Gig Harbor where the aunt lay dying. I’m not making this up.

Further phone calls plus talks with Ben’s support team, which grows by the day, assures me that “Ben is still sober which is hard to determine in this mess.” He is beginning to cope, has begun grief counseling, has reached out to friends for help, is running out of room for tuna casseroles. 

Since then we’ve had many conversations and I’m giving the frisky fat calf rolled oats with molasses. I’ll let you know when we hold the fiesta for the prodigal son, after pandemic danger is past.

Let’s leave no stone unturned in my family drama.

The phone rings. I stare at it, afraid to answer, afraid of the daily serial.

It’s my daughter. I feel relief. “How’s your day?” Five seconds of silence. “Like that, huh,” I continue. “Tell me about it.”

My daughter is still weak and exhausted with on-going symptoms of the Covid virus she’s been dealing with for two months. “It’s your granddaughter,” she said.

“Ah.” In addition to dealing with family illness, with both Dee and Tyler ill, in the past two months the furnace blew up and Dee’s husband Chris has been quarantined in the basement because he works at the hospital.

Their eldest girl, twenty-seven, with a non-employed boyfriend and three stair-step babies, is an on-going worry.

Back when Dee Dee was working on an advanced degree in college, she held this baby girl in her arms six hours after birth, an emergency foster care baby she later adopted. The baby was diagnosed Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Dee worked hard with her child. 

When Dee and Chris married, Chris immediately adopted the young girl. They have been supportive with Jess through times thick and thin, above and beyond; you get the picture? Jess is a remarkable young woman when at her best. When off the rails, she is not so remarkable.

Jess is making choices which ultimately will endanger her babies. Dee, Chris and Tyler, now fifteen, held a family conference. The safety net is now transferred to the babies and the young adults may land in a snow bank. No more enabling, no more rescuing. The next several days will not be pretty.

These are the precious Days of Our Lives and like no other time in my life, I’m aware that we each have One Life to Live. In our Search for Tomorrow we certainly need The Guiding Light.

I don’t know about you, but if this daily drama with All My Children gets much worse, I’ll be headed for the General Hospital.   

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

January 28, 2021

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It’s a mess

 

                        It’s a mess

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When one thinks it can’t get worse, it can. And it does.

This coming February 20 would have been my son’s 6^th sobriety birthday.

I considered a thousand different ways of talking about this and each one led to, “Just vomit it out.”

In “Looking out my back door” I write about what is pertinent in my life. And I vowed to be honest with myself and honest with you.

My son, Ben, this man who is super intelligent with a computer mind, this man with such a big heart that a year ago, he gave up a month of his life to come to Mexico to care for me when I needed it, this man slipped off the rails. This man I love more than my own life.

I’m so angry that I could chew nails and spit tacks, each tack to nail his hide to the wall after I peal it off his body with a dull bread knife.

Nearly ten years ago my son decided to try out the world of mind-altering chemicals and lost his job, his wife, his home, his daughter, his family, his self-respect. His mind.

Of course eventually Ben landed in jail long enough and low enough to ask to enter an intensive in-jail treatment program. A year later he was out of jail, still in an intensive out-patient part of the same program for another year.

Over time he got a job, began paying debts, cleaning up his life, got a home, got a girlfriend, got his family back. Six years, six years clean and sober and now this. There is no explanation.

A couple months ago Ben landed in the ER with coronavirus, later followed by seizures. Then a brief reprieve, as far as I know. Then a few days ago, back in the ER with seizures again. The hospital sent him home. They do a blood test, first thing, you know. Which came first, the alcohol or the seizures?

And my heart is broken. The first night of realization I soaked my pillow with tears that leaked from my eyes through no volition on my part.

I’ve been here before. I know I cannot carry this burden alone. First I talked with my daughter and then with a couple very dear friends in Washington who are close to both me and to my son, who’ve been down this road with me. They will move forward with intervention, if possible.

Each morning I go outside to walk-the-lanes to air out my head. Along the way, I meet one neighbor and then another. I cannot hide my grief and despair. They ask, “How are you?” I cannot answer, “Fine.” “Fine” is perhaps the most frequent lie told. I tell my story.

One neighbor then shared his story about his wife’s nephew. Yes, I remember him, I said. He used to be around here all the time. Well, his mother is just waiting for him to overdose. I am not alone.

Another friend told me about his daughter’s fiancé, now gone, leaving a trail of tears. I am not alone.

Yet another told me about a sister’s husband, who also re-entered that dark world after a time of sobriety. I am not alone.

I doubt there is anybody not touched by this horrible disease of alcoholism-and-drug-addiction, all the same in how it affects the vulnerable person and his/her family. And to have it strike during the coronavirus plague, a double whammy, more than we can bear.

There is always a chance that early intervention will shake my son back onto his path. It’s up to him. Twenty-four hours of sobriety is better than the alternative.

I share this story with you because I cannot bear it alone. If my story helps even one person who also has a family member in a world of hurt, then it is worth me baring my soul.

We are not alone. And we do have help if we choose to use it. We might find help among our friends and neighbors, at church, at a group program, a treatment center just for us. This is a disease. There is no shame. A secret aired is a secret with no power to hurt us.

I keep in mind the Three Cs of Alanon: I (You) didn’t cause it. I (You) cannot control it. I (You) cannot cure it.

I am completely powerless over this dread disease. There is help for you and me just as there is for the addict/alcoholic. Even with my heart broken, with tears on my cheeks, I can find serenity in the midst of this chaos. I love my son with a never-ending love. And we are not alone.

Sondra Ashton

Looking Out My Backdoor

January 21, 2021

When summer sausage is a slice of bliss

 

When summer sausage is a slice of bliss

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Jim from Missouri, funny how we label people, isn’t it, was talking with me the other day, distanced and masked, when, in an idle comment I mentioned that I miss summer sausage, a treat that ordinarily I wouldn’t give thought to since if I had a hankering, in my previous lives, I could go to the grocery and buy a chunk. Or a friend might gift me a chunk of deer sausage after a successful hunt.

Our spicy chorizo sausage is easily obtainable here in Jalisco, and like elsewhere, everybody makes it differently. Generally it is rather soft and juicy, lovely in an egg scramble or mashed into refried beans. Delicious. But it is not the sausage I want.

I’m not vegetarian but seldom get hungry for meat. This winter I find my mouth watering for a slice of hard sausage from the North Country. It has probably been ten years since I sank my teeth into a slice. Why now?

Winter. Definitely winter. Traditionally, a season of rest. Trees rest. Bears hibernate. Flowers tuck into beds beneath a blanket of snow. While, not quite the same frozen details here in my piece of Mexico, still, it is winter.

The time for rest. Since mid-December when I finished my last face mask and unplugged my sewing machine, I’ve not had a “project” as such. I always have a project. One in front of me on stage, one waiting in the wings, one in rehearsal. It’s the way I’m geared.

This morning I had a thought. (Stop that!—I heard you groan!) If we split our lives into arbitrary seasons of twenty-five years, generously allotting ourselves one hundred years, I am transitioning from autumn into the winter of my life.

In this, my year of solitude, in this, my winter of rest, lately my morning walk-the-lanes time has become walk-my-grief time. We Americans don’t do well with grief. We’d rather brush grief under the rug, slap a coat of paint over it, or otherwise make it go away. But it doesn’t go away. I’m guilty. I use busyness or I-need-to-be-stoic-for-others as my avoidance excuses.

Memories are funny though. Rest and they come running. I don’t control them. One day memory brings a girl from my first grade. Shirley had small pox as a baby, which had left visible scars on her face, her arms. Instead of pushing her away, I take a moment to think what sorrows those scars might have brought into her life. I say, “Hello, I remember you. We played around the huge oak at the edge of the playground. Thank you for visiting.”

Other days might bring my own baby, or my Dad or my Mom, relatives. Or 4,000 faces of U.S. Covid deaths from a single day. Or a mudslide. A plane crash. A neighbor whose breadwinner died and her family is hungry. They all come with faces. I let them into my walk.

Instead of making me feel morbid, these memories or reflections bring me feelings of peace, of rest, a quietening of spirit. I feel richer, connected.

If you are wondering what summer sausage has to do with grief, just let me thread my big needle with a long thread and I’ll show you.

I’ll stitch patches of winter together with patches of rest. As they appear, I add patches of memory along with impressions of the day, news from friends, news from around the world. Around each patch I stitch a border, a walk of solitude.

So when Jim from Missouri showed up a few days ago, we talked about what stores are open, which ones are safe to enter, where to find different foods, I said, “In your searches, if you ever see anything like summer sausage, buy me a small chunk.”

Jim said, “My friend sent me a gift box for Christmas. I’ll share my sausage with you.”

I don’t believe in coincidences. I cut a paper thin slice of Jim’s sausage and it tasted like bliss. I’ll stitch this patch of sausage bliss onto the other pieces of my winter quilt. There is the perfect place for it, down here by this corner. It is all about being connected.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

January 14, 2021

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Beginnings, Mysteries and a Mixed Bag of Nonsense

 

                                Beginnings, Mysteries and a Mixed Bag of Nonsense

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Bob T, a long-time friend from my past, used to compare life to a battery. In order for it to work, life must have both positive and negative poles. I, of course, wanted only the positive, the easy, the serene. Ha! Wantin’ ain’t gettin’.

On my patio I have a vine that I potted some three years ago, a vine, but more branch than leaf. I don’t know why I’ve kept it; it is not a bit pretty, but rangy and the leaves fall off leaving naked brown stems. In the cold of this morning, that ugly step-sister plant had borne two beautiful blue trumpet flowers.

My son is on the mend following weeks of Covid and seizures. My daughter is down with Covid and pneumonia. My heart is wrung dry.

When I was seven my Dad bought the book “Heidi” for me. Going through e-book offerings, I thought, why not? I love children’s literature and like to read books from my past. How did my Dad know that “Heidi” would be perfect for a seven-year old girl? It was a different world when I was seven.

Most years when the annual number changes, it takes me a month to write the correct year-date. Not this year.

I’ve been in Denial and it is more than a River in Egypt with frequent flood waters which spread pestilence and strange diseases along with rocking Baby Moses in the bulrushes.

My particular present form of denial has been concerning winter in Etzatlan. Until the lettuce leaves wilted, I pretended. “Nights are cold but I hope it doesn’t frost.” In actuality, we had frost several nights before this undeNileable Big Freeze. The weather dart board ahead looks grim. A real winter, for here.

But, hey, no competition. No comparison between our winter and a Montana winter. I sigh for insulation, double glazed windows and central heating. Where did I put my other sweater?

In a prescient moment mid-December, my daughter bought me a new ceramic heater, a cutie, in shape and look similar to a mottled, bronze flower vase. She shipped it to Jim, who drove here from Missouri. Today he, with my heater, arrived.

I already had Ralph, a tall, dark and stately column I bought a couple winters ago. Ralph worked hard but I still bundled up like the Good Year Blimp to get warm.  

Running on low, this little gal puts out more heat than Ralph on high. I named her Glow-ria. I keep the two well separated. I see them eye-balling one another, both in heat. For the first time in two weeks I feel warm from the inside.

My cousin Nancie is returning to her home in Sedro Woolley, Washington. I dearly love Nancie and I’m glad she is going back. I sense it is safer for her, with Pat, up on their mountaintop, away from the world. She had envisioned hours of intimate cousinly story-telling, lunch in restaurants, sight-seeing, the usual tourist holiday. It’s not to be.

 Sitting at my computer, I saw my reflection in the window behind the screen. Without thought, the next minute I stood at the bathroom mirror, scissors in hand and chopped what needed chopping for too many weeks.

In order to do this, it is handy to have a certain amount of “it doesn’t matter” in one’s character. At any rate, I no longer have a fringe covering my eyeballs. There is no possible way that, without spaghetti arms, I can make both sides even and who knows what the back looks like, but “it doesn’t matter”.

For the next three days “it doesn’t matter” will be my mantra as I grab scissors trying to even out the mess. A shorn sheep comes to mind. Or an escapee from a 1950’s asylum.

I’m so thankful for my friends, for people with whom I can share triumphs, the boring and the terrifying. In my note to Michelle today I apologized for being so negative. She wrote back that she alternates between being a bag of mush and a pillar of steel. Yes.

My very adult children handle things so differently. Ben thinks, “Don’t tell Mom. She’ll just worry.” Dee knows to keep in touch regularly, no matter how sick she is. One thing I’ve learned about myself through this is that a specific worry is less troubling than a blanket worry. We all fear the unknown.

Thank you, my friends, for letting me blather on, for letting me share the good, the bad and the ugly. I could not handle the unknown in these troubling times without you. You keep my battery charged.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

January 7, 2021

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When every day is Sunday

 

When every day is Sunday

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This week between Christmas and New Year’s Day is a strange time, a time when every day feels like Sunday.

This morning I made a big mistake. I checked the temperature. At 10:00 it was 42! That means in the coldest hour of the early morning, it was near freezing. How can that be? It didn’t feel that cold when I walked out to my bodega. I wasn’t cold until I looked at the thermometer on the outer wall.

 My ceramic heater is swiveling back and forth, the setting on Hi. I’m not sure if that is a temperature or a greeting. Hi. Hi. Hi.

My little brick house, planted in the midst of my garden paradise, is built of one layer of brick on brick on brick, no insulation or even stucco to sway the seasons into a fantasy of warmth. When I say I live outdoors, that is truth in several layers.

I have no problem with maintaining fresh air exchange. My windows are so loosely settled into the brick, Santa Claus slipped through the edges along with the wind.

Around 10:30 I scoot outside to sit in the sun, a sun willing to bake me warm, no matter what the thermometer reports. I drape a scarf loosely over my head and shoulders to keep from burning to a crisp. I’m there just to warm my bones. Hey, it is a delicate balance.

I go inside to finish a chore, to sweep the floors, to make a meal. What can I bake today? The oven helps heat the house. Lemon cookies? Banana cake? Apple pie?

I’ve noticed a strange phenomenon during this pandemic. Not that it is caused by the pandemic, just that I never noticed it before. My clothes seem to be shrinking. Probably from hanging in the direct sun. Let’s face it. They just don’t make clothes like the good ol’ days. What?

The warmth pulls me back out the door as though I’m attached to the sun by a long rope. I deadhead the daisies. I stop to admire the two red lilies, sole survivors of the plague which wiped out all my amaryllis, all my bulb plants two years past.

I move to another corner of the yard and partridge doves gather, unconcerned, near my feet. Kiskadees fly from tree to tree while gold finches, or small birds that look like a gold finches to my untrained eye, dominate the flowering bushes. Wherever a flower blooms, there is a hummingbird. They’re not shy.

What is this in-between time? What is this strange lethargy that has me locked in its thrall? I have projects lined up. In my limbo of laziness, I leave them, rejected, ignored, abandoned, though temporarily.

What I am really avoiding is the battle being fought in the background of my mind. Of the few of us who are here this winter, my coronavirus safety rules are the strictest. I think about these things in the dark night. Not often. But they make my list.

Here I am the only single person. Everybody else, like animals on Noah’s Ark, go two by two. Negotiating one’s way through a pandemic is definitely easier with two. Well, I think so.

With the Covid upsurge, I’m contemplating a strict January lockdown.

One part of me says, no more patio visits, careful as we are. The other part of my mind rebels.

I love visiting my friends and it hurts to have a mere few minutes conversation through bars of the wrought iron gate while others are gathering on the patio, sharing food, music and celebrating the season.

The really ugly part of this decision-making quandary is that at heart, I am a people pleaser. I want to sit on the patio, yours or mine, and gab for hours. I want you to like me. I don’t like for you to raise your brow in judgement.

In my imagination I see the various bubbles mingle. The bubbles of a couple who have no boundaries. The bubbles of others who have restrictions with exceptions. Each bubble holding, overlapping, mingling more people.

I know me well. I know how my mind works. The minute I say, okay, I will let down this boundary because she is my cousin, or let down that restriction because I really like them and know they are careful or fudge this rule a little here because I know they mean well. Then my mind, in a fit of what’s-the-use, will throw up its hands and say, “Might as well party.”

So I’ll attach a mental padlock to my gate. For now. For January. I hate this. It is hard.

Christmas is behind me. New Year’s Eve is here. I’m not recapping my year. I’ve no insightful predictions for the future. I make no resolutions.

What’s to complain? Every day is Sunday.  

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

December 31, 2020

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Merry Christmas

 

 Merry Christmas

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The phone rings. I grab my mask with one hand and the phone with the other. “Merry Christmas.”

My new habit. Masking has become automatic. Before I leave the house I grab a mask, even if I’m going to the clothesline, expecting to see not one other person. I go masked. Just in case.

I’m locked and loaded. In the holsters on the belt around my waist, a spray bottle of disinfectant rides on one hip and extra masks, gloves and a tape measure for distance (Okay, the tape measure is a joke.) and hand sanitizer on the other.

Overkill? Now that is an interesting word. So, yes, I’d say the Coronavirus Covid 19 is in serious overkill. Is there a one of us not affected?

In my other lives, before I came to Mexico and eased into my quiet solitude, I was active in many groups. I have friends in all walks of life. Friends who have had mild cases and recovered. I have friends who’ve died from the virus.

One neighbor here has a nephew hospitalized over a month. Another, her brother-in-law hovers near death. Another, his close friend died yesterday. One friend whose sister died. All from this novel virus.

My son has been several days in the hospital, again, this time with brain seizures from the virus. I just heard this morning he is home again, but rough around the edges. What does that mean? I don’t know. Will he recover? Will he be disabled? I don’t know.

I’m terrified. I’m angry. Just saying, in case you think I am a mild-mannered Clark Kent sort.

‘Tis the Season, peace, good will to all. I’m having a hard time being jolly.

Despite my helplessness, despite my inability to fly north, kiss my son’s owies and make them go away, I have hope. I know Ben is getting the best of doctor care.

In the grand scheme of life, this is not about me. I am one little bitty cog in the works, yet connected to an entire world of other cogs, all of us feeling fear and hope, love and rage, loss and love. Love. Yes, I said love twice because I don’t want to lose sight of love.

The world is in a sorrowful place. Again. Not for the first time. Not for the last. Just again.

We feel weary. We feel worn. Helpless, yes, sometimes we feel hopeless. Tomorrow is Christmas Day. I wanted to write something warm and fuzzy today for you. Every column I write is from my heart, even when my heart is hurting.

Despite differences, we humans seem to be able to come together, to connect, to help each other, to grieve together, to rejoice together. Together. To love. Most importantly, to love. Merry Christmas.

HDN: Looking Out My Backdoor

December 24, 2020

Sondra Ashton

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