Looking out my Backdoor: Coming Home

Being sick gives new meaning to the much overworked cliché, “There is no place like home.” Home to warm sunshine. Home to my own bed. Home.

The rainy season is nearing the end. The “boys” tell me that while I was shivering up north, down here, 40 days and 40 nights, storms of Biblical proportions dumped rain and wreaked havoc. I feel like I have been away a very long time.

All I cared about was my own bed. My house still had a roof. If it floated away with me in it, so be it. Being home this soon had not been my intention. I had scheduled an interlude on the coast.

From Billings to Salt Lake City to Mexico City to Mazatlan, I fell asleep on each leg of the journey before the planes left the tarmac. I had a head cold when I left Billings. By the time I got to my hotel room in Mazatlan, I was sick.

The stress of sick grand-babies had done me in. That and living out of my suitcase for 40 days. The good news is that baby Kyla is out of the hospital. For that, this family is grateful.

When I awoke in my Mazatlan hotel room, by now miserably ill, I croaked, “I need to go home.” I called my friend Carlos, “Will you come help me, please.”

Within an hour I was at the bus station, ticket in hand. Next I called Leo, “I am catching the noon bus. Will you pick me up in Zapopan?” By the time I climbed off the bus, clutching my box of tissues, I had completely lost my voice.

Usually, the first thing I do when I return home is tour my yard. Usually I follow that with a cyclone of cleaning, laundering, putting my surroundings back into order. Usually.

For three days I did not walk outdoors, did not leave my house. Slowly, my body is mending. Little by little I venture out. One day I sit a few minutes on my front patio. Another day I walk around the house, look at the flowers, sit in sunshine in a rocking chair in back.

Today I looked around with eyes to see changes. Here are a few “word snapshots” around my home.

My Madre plant, a succulent, shot up a five foot long stalk covered in delicate white flowers. She has a dozen babies around her skirts.

One could strain spaghetti through the Elephant Ears, huge leaves, riddled with holes from the hail.

My Papaya tree, planted only this spring, has four baby fruits. I never knew a fruit tree to grow so quickly, like Jack’s beanstalk.

In August I had planted a row of low greenery which flower in purple clusters and permeate the air with a delightful spicy scent. They all lost their heads and drowned.

The salad bar plant, the one with trumpet flowers that the bane-of-my-life iguana feasted on regularly, has flourished now that it is unmolested. (I caught him in a sleepy moment and beat him with a broom a few days before I left.)

A new iguana has taken up my enemy’s perch on the corner tile of the bodega roof. I give him the evil eye.

My Cascada de Oro, Golden Chain tree, has doubled in size. How can that be?

The King David Jasmine, after two years of nursing and nudging him along, finally feels strong and established, thick with new branches and buds.

My gardenia looks dead.

A tree outside my wall which looks like a lipstick plant on steroids is loaded with red lips.

My avocado tree supplies me and my neighbors and their neighbors.

The bedsheet-butterflies have returned. Partridge doves behave shamelessly, acting like it is spring. This morning loud and persistent booms of firecrackers woke me up — the noisy kind, not the flowers-in-the-sky kind.

The two hours of explosions heralded the annual procession of the Statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe from Etzatlan to San Juanito de Escobito. Thousands of people walk the route. I stayed in bed.

It is good to be home.

——

Sondra Ashton grew up in Harlem but spent most of her adult life out of state. She returned to see the Hi-Line with a perspective of delight. After several years back in Harlem, Ashton is seeking new experiences in Etzatlan, Mexico. Once a Montanan, always. Read Ashton’s essays and other work at montanatumbleweed.blogspot.com. Email [email protected].