Did you wake this morning still breathing?

Years ago, when I was in the hospital in India getting a new knee, I walked the corridors as part of my therapy. At the end of the hallway I stood at the window and watched the construction activity across an empty lot. A new building was going up the old-fashioned way, with men’s muscles, not machinery.

The empty lot was not really empty. The men’s families were camped in the lot. I’m making an assumption here. Perhaps they were homeless people, but as I watched, they seemed to be the families of the construction workers.

Pieces of cardboard, plastic, canvas, any flat surface, were cobbled together for shelters. In one corner a standpipe with a turn faucet provided the water supply. The women squatted over open fires, cooking. They washed their clothing in buckets. Children played around their mothers’ feet.

Every afternoon at 3:00 the skies above Bangalore opened. Monsoons are not comparable to the rainy season here in Jalisco. We have rain. They had deluge. The streets overran with water and garbage and unidentifiable debris.

When I was in China, I had the marvelous experience of riding a train inland. This was not an Amtrak train. In the center of the car was an iron stove, coal or wood, on which a hostess or porter heated huge iron kettles of water to make tea, available for a few pennies.

We passed huge factories flanked by housing for the factory workers. The train rain through tea plantations, fields of crops I could identify and others I could not, through cities and past city dumps crawling with children who lived at the dumps, pawing through the trash, picking out any item which could be sold or recycled.

I was reminded of living in Great Falls in the mid-’60s when one day I went with my husband to the dump out by Hill 57. We could have been in China. Today we do a much better job of hiding, of keeping invisible, our homeless and poor.

One of the big news items of the day is the universal scream, “What are we going to do about the upcoming Holidays with the empty shelves, the supply chain buckled?” What indeed?

One of my most memorable Christmases was also one of my poorest. In terms of grace and gratitude, one of my best. Newly divorced, I had moved from Chicago back to Montana and had little other than kids and a cat.

I’d recently started a new job for which I had no wardrobe. A woman showed up at my door with an armload of appropriate clothing. A neighbor family brought us a turkey.

On Christmas Eve we went to Church, returned home to find a tree on the front steps and another tree with a tree-stand on the back porch. A knock on the door revealed another neighbor with an armload of well-loved decorations.

A friend from California had sent a box of gifts, a full set of clothing for each child, including shoes. When she was a child, her mother had been in a similar situation and somebody had done the same for her family. She asked that someday I do similar. I never forgot.

My own gifts for my children were sparse, much-needed socks and coats plus one “toy.” Santa gave Ben, at 2 years old, a tool chest full of plastic tools. Dee, 14, got the boom box she wanted.

While I was fixing the meal, Ben crawled under the vintage table, formica top and steel legs. With his plastic screw driver he removed every screw from the legs. I noticed Ben was too quiet so asked his sister to check on him.

Dee Dee found Ben pulling the last screw from the fourth leg, crawled under the table with him and helped him replace the screws. Had the table top fallen, Ben would be no more. That set the pattern for his growing years. He needed to know how everything worked. Dee Dee is still saving lives.

In town there lives a family who touched my heart. In the first wave of the COVID-19, the whole family was ill and the father died. That left mom with two small children and elderly parents. This family is “needs food” poor. I know neighbors will show up with clothing and toys.

My Christmas gift will be the “turkey,” however that translates as the day arrives. This woman doesn’t know me. The family will never meet me. Now and then, when Leo goes shopping, I put extra pesos in his hand for “my family.” That is my gift to me.

I’ve been poor. I’ve seen poorer. Today I am rich. I have a refrigerator and electricity. I have a washing machine and running water. I have food in the pantry, enough to live a week without buying more.

When I wake up still breathing, I know how rich I am.

——

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 http://montanatumbleweed.blogspot.com/. Email sondrajean.ashton@yahoo.com.