Looking out my Backdoor - To the tune of, "Will you still love me, when I'm 95!"

I went to Oconahua to Jane’s birthday celebration for cake and homemade ice-cream. Ninety-five full years. From the stories Jane has told and from stories her daughters told with great glee, that woman was a pistol. She’s still a pop gun.

She lived fully and outrageously, a registered nurse, from NYC to Alaska to Washington to Mexico. In what order, I don’t know. There are chapters I’ve not heard.

Jane is Michelle’s mother and has a casita on Ana and Michelle’s land a short ways from the Big House.

Michelle is her primary care-taker. Ana is taking nursing classes, in order to be a better-educated helper.

I enjoyed an enlightening talk with Ana. She explained how Mexican culture doesn’t see anything wrong with senility. It is a natural part of the life cycle and is treated as such. That is refreshing.

The party was a small gathering compared to what Michelle and her sister Susan, in Mexico for the event, had envisioned. They had wanted all of us, everyone who knows Jane, to be there, a catered dinner, a mariachi band, the whole big blow out with fireworks and all things glittery. With all the various plagues in the land, the family chopped the party back at both ends and in the middle.

Meanwhile, back at the Rancho, Josue, checking in at a youthful and invincible 35 years old, seems to be trying to foreshorten his days. Picture this: Josue was working at a friend’s hacienda, up six meters (that is about 20 feet high) on a ladder, swinging a paint sprayer attached to the air hose, when the ladder slipped.

When the ladder slipped, gravity took over, the ladder hit the ground, the man came down, broke arm and leg but saved his crown, so he said, barely coherent through the pain, “At least my head is OK.”

“Josue,” I said, “If your head was OK, you would never have been that high on a ladder without a harness, with an air-tool in hand.”

I must explain that when one needs a ladder that tall, here in Mexico, one takes two or more ladders and ties them together end-to-end. Just picture that.

Josue laughed, so we knew that even though he wasn’t “OK,” he will be. After surgery and three months recuperation.

Not to be outdone by others’ drama, my bank card quit working. I bank at Bear Paw, now called something else. At first I wasn’t worried. It happens. The bank machine is maybe out of money. Three tries in town later, three weeks, plus a denial in Guadalajara, I figured panic was appropriate.

Finally, I called the bank and after waiting in a long queue, got a voice I’d not heard before. The young man was quite nice, explained that my bank card would never work again. I explained that I live in Mexico and that is my only access to money.

I knew there were changes at the bank because I saw an article in the Havre Daily. I know changes never go smoothly as envisioned in an office somewhere else. The nice young-male voice assured me that he’d issue a new card and new checks to be sent to my daughter at my Montana address, her house.

Bank cards are not allowed to be shipped across the border. So if my daughter receives my card as assured, she will have to then mail it to the next person coming here from the U.S.

Whenever. Do you see all the opportunities for disaster?

Lent is around the corner. I confess that I have not seriously observed Lent in a whole lot of years. However, when in the trenches, one calls on Greater Powers. I’m going on short rations, not from a renewed sense of devotion, but from a severe shortage of pesos.

Which brings me back to Jane’s birthday party, a sweet affair at which we all agreed, none of us really want to live to 95, not unless we can still have all our physical and mental functions. Of course, we also want to die peacefully in our sleep, a dream as likely to happen as me getting my bankcard without a hitch and a hiccup.

We know that Josue will, in a few months, be back up high on a make-shift ladder.

Jane is planning to make 96 years.

I’ll let you know how Lent goes for me and if I live to enjoy my own next birthday in April.

——

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 [email protected].