Sweat the small stuff!

                        Sweat the small stuff!

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I am unhinged. This morning my daughter sent me a picture of a lap blanket she bought me.

I am in tears. The blanket, purple and turquoise, with feathers and butterflies and such, is beautiful. Beautiful.

You know who uses lap blankets?

Old women, that’s who! Old women! A few days ago I had another birthday. The good news is that this morning I woke up still alive and grateful. The other side of that coin feels like a slap in the face.

These last couple weeks have been hard. I rappelled down the steep cliffs into a pit of depression, dragging along all my niggling fears and worries in my backpack, knowing I could feed and grow them in the fertile pit.

Lethargic days. No energy. Nights my mind managed to find some unsolvable problem, danced around a Mobius Strip from whence it could not jump off.

Maybe my birthday precipitated it. Maybe not.

I muddled around in the muck and mire a few days, lying awake through the dim hours of the nights.

 I tell it like it is. One night I said aloud, “I’m scared.” “Scared of what?” the saner part of me asked. And answered, “Scared of dying alone in poverty.”

Talk about a slap in the face. But that is what it took for me to begin the arduous climb back out of the pit, leaving my backpack behind.

I had to ask for help along the way, of course.

Josue came to talk with me. We both ended in tears, talking about being scared. When he left my patio, I felt better just for the talking.

Charlotte sent me a link to watch, live, an osprey nest in Missoula. Seeing an osprey hanging out in a spot familiar to me brought memories from when I’d lived in Missoula, as well as the pleasures of simply watching ospreys hang out.

Crin took me for a walk in her neighborhood park in Victoria, via a series of photos. Seeing the daffs and tulips and primroses and especially the forsythia perked up a little piece of my heart.

Kathy, who got stuck in Banff, not by her choice, and not a hardship, not to be outdone by her sister, took me on a walk along an icy mountain stream. I could feel the cold, smell the ice and the pines and firs.

Gary wrote me about an “ah-ha” moment. After twenty-seven years of slogging in real estate, he said that staying home is powerfully healing, stripping away his workaholic guilt, allowing him to truly enjoy those close to him. It is good.

Pam, with whom I shared that I dragged my painting supplies out of storage, set up an easel, selected a canvas, sent me a link to a Havre artist who shares her insights and perceptions. A gift.

Janet and Tom, my only remaining gringo neighbors, who chose to stay on the Rancho, said she and Tom express gratitude daily for simply being here, a place beyond any dreams they’d ever had. Those simple words touched me and reminded me, to not compare my insides with somebody else’s outsides. I’m always wrong. We share a living dream.

Michelle from Oconahua, up the road a piece, emails daily; Are you okay? Need anything?

Ben reminded me that most of my worries are none of my business. Blunt. But correct.

Dee observed, in the midst of all my angst, “You are reading national news, aren’t you.” It was not a question.

“News? What news? It is all speculation. Maybes. Dire predictions. Conspiracies. Idiocies. Gossip. The sky is falling.”

“Quit it,” were her words of advice. “I think I will,” I agreed. I’m not one to capitulate easily to my bossy daughter but I recalled how many times over this last year I’d said to her, “Don’t watch the news! It makes you crazy.”

What makes me feel good today? Getting up in the morning, still alive. Making cowboy coffee. 

Planting another pot of lettuce. Walking the Rancho lanes. Gorditas for lunch. Dabbing paint on canvas. Picking a papaya from my tree. Talking with friends.

Waiting for my old-woman lap blanket. It’s all small stuff.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

April 23, 2020

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Re-reading the classics, irreverently yours

                Re-reading the classics, irreverently yours

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Occasionally I pick up one of the classics in literature for a re-reading. I don’t recall what prompted me; it wasn’t the virus. Several weeks ago, in the interests of perusing a translation I’d not read, I chose the Ignatius Bible.

The Bible is a daunting big book. I begin at the beginning. Granted, I skim the genealogies and speed through pages of dietary laws and building codes.

But otherwise, I read a few pages at a time, slowly, pondering. That Moses is quite the dude. After all he’s done, distributing plagues, parting the Sea, leading his quarrelsome kin-folks, forty years wandering in circles, he is denied permission (by the Big Guy) to cross the River into the Promised Land.

What really struck me this time through is how human everybody is. It’s like watching a movie and you want to say to the protagonist, “Don’t open that door. Don’t open . . . “

Sheesh, Moses, you know you are leading a people notorious for their stubborn ways. You tell them to go left at the wall; they pull to the right. You lead them through the Red Sea on dry land and they want to go back to the fleshpots of Egypt.

“Let us cart those rocks, build those bricks,” they say. “We want to return to the terrors we know, along with the palms along the Nile, ‘gators in the water, dates and olives.”

Doesn’t matter if you turn your back for ten minutes or forty days and nights, same spiel. “Egypt. I wanna go to Egypt. Are we there yet?”

Or, hey, Moses, I like the one where you went for a stroll up the mountain and came back to find your stubborn backsliding people feverishly worshipping a golden calf. “It was not our fault. The gold jewelry jumped out of our hands into the forge and the calf miraculously rose from the flames. Don’t blame us. You left us alone.”

We lack Moses, but, sheesh, people, do you see any parallels here?

For the first time in the history of the world, we all share a common peril. Our leaders, political and medical, say to us, “Self-isolate. Keep a social distance. Only go out for necessities.”

But how soon we tire of manna in the desert. How quickly fade our concepts of danger, to ourselves and to others. How bright the neon lights of the fleshpots of Egypt that lure us, kind of like the Vegas Strip. How loud our protestations of innocence.

How human. We tire of the walls of home, the known boundaries of our yard. 

Other family members bounce on our last nerve. I, even though alone, am capable of severing my own last nerve.

After all, we feel good. We are not sick nor have we been around who are ill.

Surely it is safe to go to that out-of-the-way campground, that almost-deserted beach, that shopping mall for necessary items, Pinot Grigio, the latest shade of lipstick, the essential automatic weapon with ammo. And, who knows, maybe we can pick up an extra pallet of toilet paper.

Seriously? Seriously, we are tired of wandering our own confining desert. 

Wandering a continuous loop from living room to refrigerator to bedroom while the plague rages and ravages around us.

I don’t know. Close your eyes and think of England. Remember the blitz bombing of London during WWII. Back to the bomb shelter, stiff upper lip.

Persevere.

Buck up. This plague is not forever. The life you save might be your own. Or your neighbors. Or the whole neighborhood.

We are a stubborn people. We are human. We have every weakness of every human since time began. We also have every strength.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

April 16, 2020

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This Time Reminds Me

                                                This Time Reminds Me

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It must have been the winter of ’65-‘66. I was pregnant with Dee Dee who was born in April. Harvey and I lived on the ranch south of Dodson. A mile-long dirt drive with three ‘farmer gates’ of barbed wire strung onto diamond willow sticks separated us from the highway, only three more miles from town.

That grim winter we were snowed in for ninety days straight. Every day of that time our thermometer on the post registered below zero. Wind drifted each snowfall until packed into hard crusts.

Not by choice but necessity, I helped break and learned to drive Harry and August, our young, unbroken team of Percheron workhorses. King and Queenie had become too feeble, too long in the tooth to work under such adverse conditions.

Harry and August could not put up too much fuss against the high drifts. Harvey climbed atop the stack, forked hay onto the sleigh. I held the team. Once loaded, I drove the horses while Harvey forked hay from atop the sleigh down to the hungry herd.

Mealtimes became creative adventures when we ran out of basic supplies such as flour, sugar and dry beans. Before Christmas, Harvey took the team and sleigh to town to pick up much-needed kitchen staples, to send my letters and Christmas cards and pick up our mail. 

Nobody out our way had a telephone. During that three month period, the only person other than my husband I spoke with was Hugh Kienenberger, the blacksmith in town, and that only because the pump broke.

Cattle had to have water. It was minus thirty that day in January. The cattle could survive a day or two without food but water was a necessity.

Harvey saddled up Sputnik for me while I donned all the warm clothing I had I tied the broken pump piece behind the saddle and rode into Dodson, big belly and all.

I don’t know how I managed to get those dang gates open and closed again with the heavy snowdrifts. I remember I left the last one open until my return trip.

While the blacksmith hammered out a new pump part for me, I huddled close to his huge cast-iron red-hot wood/coal stove, trying to thaw my feet for the ride back where Harvey was feeding the cattle by himself.

I made it home before dark, fired up my own wood/coal cook stove and fixed supper.

Harvey put the pump back together. A hundred-fifty bawling cattle crowded against the tank for a drink.

Vast differences separate three months of weather-enforced isolation that winter and this first month of self-enforced isolation, not the least being the ease of life in my spot of paradise in Mexico.

Perhaps the main or most vital difference was our focus. The simple feeding, doctoring and care of the cattle took up our days. We had not been able to use the tractor with the forklift to feed since mid-November when the snows piled up.

We had a radio, my constant companion in the kitchen. When we came in for lunch, usually soup I made the previous night, we listened to Paul Harvey. That summer we’d bought a used television from a man in Malta. Paid the handsome price of twenty-five dollars, scrounged from the household budget. We seldom missed “Gunsmoke”, “Bonanza” or “Ed Sullivan”.

We usually caught the newscast. Was it at 5:00 or 6:00? If there was news at ll:00 on our one channel out of Great Falls, we were asleep by then.

Believe me, life was neither ideal nor romantic. Like all things and times in the past, some memories seem sweet, some I would not want to return for any reason.  

I would trade the brutal cold, the fears, the sore muscles, the lack of things we today consider necessities, and the harsh conditions of that harsh winter for one day of relief from living in this nightmare “Reality Show” of today, in which we all play a role.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

April 9, 2020

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How to survive and maintain sanity in the “new normal”

How to survive and maintain sanity in the “new normal”

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Now that I gained your attention I confess, I have not a clue. Neither to survival nor to sanity. I’m fishing for answers. I figured if I cast out a line, I might hook you and you could tell me!

Self-quarantine and social distance. You’d think they would be my old normal since that is pretty much my life during the summer months when my snow-bird neighbors return to the north-country.

Yet I went through the same patterns of ups and downs as my friends reported. We found the first few days rather gleeful, planning activities long neglected, trying new recipes, tackling that electrical or construction project or digging out the jigsaw puzzles, binge-watching Shakespearean plays on You Tube, from the simple to the sublime.

Then came the days of the grumps, snarky responses, angry reactions, to what? To self-enforced safety measures, to not being able to go with friends to a restaurant, to chapped hands from constant washing? For one of my friends, having to cancel the pedicurist.

Hopefully, eventually, for it seems we must plow through the whole range of feelings, around a corner we get a glimpse of acceptance.

We cut our own hair, oh, well, nobody will see us anyway. We polish our own nails. One friend got help with his electrical project. Another discovered his construction project would not tolerate shortcuts. Long way around, it is finished. Another sewed and delivered facemasks to friends and neighbors. The jigsaw puzzle had only one missing piece. We settled into a routine.

My world of smugly coping exploded when the EMTs carted my son Ben to the Bremerton Hospital with a fever of 107 and with trouble-some breathing.

I told a friend I had a couple rough days. She immediately called me on my understatement. She hit it right. I was plumb nuts, loon crazy, around the bend, an emotional wreck.

Ben was incarcerated in ICU a few days, moved to the infectious diseases wing, underwent numerous, numberless tests which took forever (Mom Clock) for results. Once the coronavirus test came back negative, we in family breathed easier. But what was wrong?

Two people were my rocks during this time. Gary, Ben’s Dad is a good man. Conversation with him calmed me down. Dee, my daughter, is my other rock. We talked daily. Dee had her own drama. My granddaughter, Jessica, pregnant with problems, was supposed to have her little girl on my birthday. Doctors in Glendive induced labor and Jess has the sweetest little bundle imaginable, whom she did not name after me.

I still felt helpless. I could not speak with Ben. I could not go see him. I could not kiss him and make it well. I had no control at all. Ah, control. As if ever!

When illusion of control, or lack of control is the issue, I (eventually) know what to do. I sat myself down and had a meeting, channeled my inner Al-anon. Those Al-anon men and women are mean and tough and tell it like it is. This meeting lasted hours. Nothing changed. I still had to feel all the fear and anxiety, all the way to the bottom. But, I felt grounded.

My son was finally diagnosed with a severe infection which had entered his blood, lungs and heart. Yesterday he was released, sent home with super-antibiotics to be administered by IV. Gratitude whelms me.

Today I was supposed to be in Montana to renew my MDL. I said to Dee and Chris, “Aren’t you glad I did not get to make the trip.”

They fluttered and stuttered. “Just think,” I continued. “I would have been in quarantine with you for months.”

Today my son is home. Today my daughter sent me pictures of our baby girl. Today the jasmine is in full flower around my door and windows. Today the jacaranda is in full purple umbrella.

Today I have control over nothing. Today is all I have. It is enough.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

April 2, 2020

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Old dogs learn new tricks

            Old dogs learn new tricks

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How quickly we progressed from refusing hugs and handshakes, to isolating in voluntary quarantine.

In the mornings when Leo came to work our gardens, he calls out, “Sondrita, are you alive.”

“Just a minute, let me check. Breathing? Yes, Heart beating? Yes. I’m alive.”

Our governor of Jalisco has asked everybody to stay home for five days, to help ‘flatten the curve’.  How quickly we learn the new language. Will everybody stay home? Of course not. For those of us who are ‘of an age’ we might recall when we, too, were invincible.  

Churches and bars, restaurants, street markets, government offices, all are closed. The streets are empty. Schools closed weeks ago. 

Never have I washed my hands so frequently. I wipe down patio chairs with soapy bleach water after neighbors visit. We maintain ‘social distance’ of at least two meters in the open air patio. Short visits, no sharing food or drink.

Visits will soon be a memory. Like rats abandoning the sinking ship for a leaky raft, my neighbors are all headed northerly. It is not an easy decision. The Rancho with few human contacts is probably a safer place, each of us in our isolated enclave. But home is home.

For me, this is home.  My children tell me, “Mom, stay, you are in a good place.”

But, let me tell you about yesterday. I thought I was dying.

Within a few minutes of sitting down with morning coffee, I began to feel strangely disoriented.  

My world wobbled. If I closed my eyes, I felt like I floated out of my body. In a rather pleasant way, but . . . My thoughts were erratic, disjointed. Did I have a stroke? Shouldn’t there be more pain? I’m not afraid. I sat with that thought a moment. Yes, I am afraid. A little. I wonder if I am dying. This is not a bad way to die. I just wish I didn’t feel so loopy.

Like a drunk, I weaved my way to the bedroom. Blood pressure measured 122/70. So my heart must be okay, right? Back to the chair.

But sitting in a chair is not the best place to die. What if I fell onto the floor? I’d rather die in bed. I weaved and wobbled to my bedroom. While trying to stay focused, my eyes fell on the basket on top of my shelf, a basket containing aspirin, Vicks, paracetamol and my anti-inflammatory. In the middle of the basket the CBD oil caught my attention.

After my morning shower, in preparation for therapy exercises, because I felt more pain than my new usual, I had grabbed the CBD, which I had not used in two or three weeks. The stuff helps. 

Distracted, I unthinkingly squirted the dropper bulb and shot a dropper’s worth under my tongue rather than the carefully measured drop.

This particular bottle is a home brew from a friend. Who knows how it was made, or of what. But, a drop at a time, it was effective. I wonder if . . .

About that time, Leo came by. I called him to my window. Told him how I felt. He asked a few questions. “Sondrita, I think you are stoned.”

Jim and Josue showed up at my window screen next, asked their questions. When I giggled my answers and told them I was dying, they hoo-hawed with delight. “Hey, trippy! You are stoned. Wait it out. Enjoy. It will pass.”

John came by next, bringing me another pint of hand-sanitizer. Goodness, these men got a hoot out of my near-death experience.

I relaxed. I certainly felt no pain. I could barely feel my body. Over a several hours, the feelings of disorientation passed. I could close my eyes without entering another universe.

In these grave times, pardon my pun, I am happy to report I am breathing and my heart is beating.

Without panic, please be safe, be sensible. I send you virtual hugs with real love, along with these words from Pope Francis:

“Tonight before falling asleep, think about when we will return to the street. When we hug again.

When all the shopping together will seem like a party. Let’s think about when the coffees will return to the bar, the small talk, the photos close together. We think about when it will all be a memory but normality will seem an unexpected and beautiful gift. We will love everything that has so far seemed futile to us. Every second will be precious, swims at the sea, the sun until late, sunsets, toasts, laughter. We will go back to laughing together. Strength and Courage.”

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

March 26, 2020

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We never know what the day might bring!

                        We never know what the day might bring!

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It’s probably been centuries since our world has been so united in purpose. We are concerned; concerned for our own health, our families, our neighbors, concerned for those around the other side of the globe.

A few weeks ago I bought tickets for a quick trip to Glendive. Let me modify that—there is no quick trip into Montana from Central Mexico. I bought tickets for the long trip, short stay. I felt I had little choice since on my birthday, my Montana Driver’s License expires.

While I no longer own a car, now and then I rent one or drive one of my children’s vehicles. I’m not quite ready, nor is it necessary (self-assessment), yet, that I give up the privilege of sitting behind the wheel and sailing down the road.

A few days ago my daughter called. After a brief greeting Dee said, “Mom, I don’t know how to say this . . .” and here I interrupted her. “I know what you are going to say and I’m already there. I decided to cancel my flights and stay home. I cannot chance picking up the virus and carrying it to you or the grandbabies.”

She was worried about my advanced age (sage, as another friend would say) and vulnerability due to recent surgery.

Next I contacted my son whose daughter was to join him in Washington for a couple weeks of spring break. Lexi’s parents had cancelled her flight too.

I walked around the corner to Lani’s house to beg and plead with her to cancel her trip to Seattle, Hawaii, and a road trip around several states. Lani is diabetic and even more vulnerable than me. No argument. She and her daughter had just come to the same agreement.

By the close of day, Crin and I were speaking about the possibility of Crin staying here in Mexico rather than flying back to Victoria, BC at the end of the month. Then we also rounded onto her sister Kathy, who with Richard were flying in to Guadalajara mid-April. That evening, Kathy wrote with mirrored thoughts.

Then along loped Josue, sooty smudges on his hastily washed face, ears rimmed in black, as he burst onto our scene from stage left, so to speak. “I just got home from fighting fire. Miguel’s house burned. Everything is destroyed. Anything we can do to help is needed. He has nothing.”

“How?” I asked, looking around my own typical casita, built of brick, concrete, tile and exposed metal beams.

“His house had wooden beams on the roof. From a defective circuit to curtains to beams. The roof caved. Everything inside the walls is destroyed.”

Miguel has worked for Josue several years. We know Miguel, his cheerful wave and daily greeting.

Immediately we jumped into action, each of us gathering items to donate. We counted and divided our pesos, one for you, one for me. I gathered sheets and blankets, soap and toothpaste. Filled a plastic tub with spare necessities.  

While dragging a chair to the curb for Josue to pick up, Crin joked that Miguel would end up with more than he lost and that might be so.

Miguel is going through a rough patch, separated from his family and has been living in a casita owned by his grandmother. Now the fire.

The old platitude is wrong. Sometimes life does bring us more than we can bear. We bear it anyway, with help.

Crin, concerned for her family, flew back to Victoria. Kathy and Richard cancelled their flights into Mexico.

My friend Carol has wonky lungs. She and John are sitting in the on the fence. Stay put? Fly back? Drive back to Duluth? My newest neighbors, Tom and Janet, face the same quandary.

Josue and Miguel will rebuild his roof, rewire the casita. Family will pitch in with clean-up and salvage. In a few days, Miguel will be back in his home, surrounded with our cast-offs.

And surrounded with us, those few of us who remain. None of us are going anywhere soon!

Sondra Ashton

Looking out my back door

March 19, 2020

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Dancing to CCR in Espanol at the Old Folk’s Home

Dancing to CCR in Espanol at the Old Folk’s Home

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My friends, who shall remain anonymous, sent me money to donate for them to a good cause of my choice here in Etzatlan. These good folks have visited me several times. They like my little chosen town.

Several years ago a Franciscan Friar, a wealthy man, sold all he had and built a lovely hacienda among the trees to house those who need special care, the aged who can no longer live with family as well as the disabled in body, the infirm in mind, both men and women.

One hears stories like this, often with healthily skeptical ears. This story happens to be true. Not only that, if you and me were hungry, we could go there to be fed, no questions asked. True story.

Leo’s cousin, Oscar, a man whom I know, works there. We consulted with Oscar about what might be the best way to spend my friend’s pesos.

Oscar suggested that we get things that continually need to be replaced, personal products, cleaning supplies, and basic foods such as beans and rice. Oh, and, everybody loves ice cream.

This morning Leo and I went shopping. We chose to spend the money in small tiendas, spreading the benefits to the neighborhood vendors rather than shop in the big stores.

Interestingly, when we told the tienda owners our story, when they learned where the products were going to be used, they each piled on discounts. We gained at least twenty percent cost value over what pesos we actually spent.

But what we gained most was gratitude for what we were doing, hugs, thanks and blessings at every stop.

We chose soaps for laundry, kitchen and bath, bleach, hand soap, shampoos, combs and brushes for hair, razors, toothbrushes, dental cream, toilet tissue, lotions, adult diapers, and other items, all in great quantity. By this time the back of Leo’s SUV was squatting close to the ground.

We made two trips, loaded up with rice, cooking oil, beans, eggs, pastas, soup bases, mashed potatoes and other basic cooking necessities, as well as an assortment of brooms, mops, scrub brushes, again carefully making our way, bumper hovering low over the cobblestones. We did not forget the ice cream, having snared eight two-gallon tubs of frozen goodness.

When we delivered the first load of plunder, I got a special treat. While a dozen men emptied the car, I got to tour the Spanish-style hacienda, huge with open hallways, surrounding a great courtyard. Nothing was hidden. I lost my heart in the wing which housed the severely disabled.  

Many residents had gathered in the courtyard, sitting in clusters under shade trees, with a beautiful chapel offset in one corner. Residents shook our hands and introduced themselves. Many knew Leo. Particularly memorable to me was the woman dressed in blue with strings of beads, who told me she had lived in Fresno, California and had been all over, even to Disneyland.

In the short while we were there, several people arrived to spend the day with family, including a woman in a taxi from Tequila, an hour’s drive from here.

While men formed a chain and unloaded our the second delivery, a group of young people in the center of the flagstone courtyard, played music, sang, and danced with the residents, amidst a great deal of laughter, bouncing and clapping and kicking up their heels to a Spanish language version of Credence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary”.

My heart nearly burst.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

March 12, 2020

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