The Sweetest Days

Thanks for your patience, everyone, while I’ve been giving this blog such short shrift. It’s the time of year. These drifty summer days are among the sweetest I have ever known. The garden is only just beginning to deliver her abundance onto my kitchen counter. Doug has all the tending and weeding under control, and so we are in a lull before the really big harvests enslave me (happily) with the canning. We are finding ourselves in our lawn chairs in the cool evenings for every sunset, and I am not writing much. Tacking words up from time to time with not much thought, and yet people just keep checking back. I will try to do a little better — or see you here again in the fall!

One major contributor in this summertime embarrassment of riches is my yearling filly, Salsa. I never dreamed she would turn out to be such a pet, or that a horse could be quite so lovey-dovey, frankly. So playful. I still maintain that my first horse and I had one of the great loves in the history of animal husbandry. I got him when I was 13, and am pretty sure we were together in a dream the night he died 20 years later, me all grown up with children to raise, living 1,500 miles away. He laid his head in my lap, and we sat together in silence, nothing more, for what seemed like the entirety of the night. I awoke and knew he was gone. But Salsa is an all-new dimension in my experience of horses  — she may well think I am her mother. She plays ball and hide-and-seek with me, curious and intent as a puppy. She nuzzles my hand if she's not getting enough attention, and then she swings around and leans in to change up the spot that is getting scratched. (Yeah, sometimes she's crabby as the hormonal “pre-teen” that she is, too. Having raised four daughters, I know that look.)

Oh it’s good to get a little older, I think, and know what you want. To have the wisdom finally to dial it all up in the right balance — to know “what to leave in, what to leave out,” as Bob Seger sang it. To have the space in your mind and heart for what you really want for yourself, after so many years of raising children, the career grind, and, for many of us, the upheaval of getting ourselves out of the wrong relationships and into the right ones.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately — the richness of maturity. It doesn’t really have anything to do with wealth, or the lack of it, within reason. Everyone has a budget, limitations, problems, and we always will. Hopefully we are wiser dealing with the negatives, too.

“Age has its rewards.” How often I have heard that in my lifetime. How often I have thought, unbeknownst to the speaker, You lie.

But I am beginning to believe it may be true.

My New Boy

Nothing graceful or enchanted about the barn at all — nothing to suggest it housed a Fairy King, or a creature not of this world, or … something. A concrete corridor ran the length of a handful of stalls, dark as dungeons, then turned abruptly into a wash stall. I guessed that the proprietress had hand-drawn the layout for her husband, who executed the concrete block building without asking questions. She was, it seemed, far more into riding horses than the feng shui of housing them. I wanted to erase and redraw. Widen the corridor. Make everything bigger. Get some windows in. I saw through an open door that the office was directly next to the wash stall, opposite. All that paperwork and tack waiting to be blasted with the water hose stressed me.

Doug and I stepped in from a scorcher of a spring day and squinted to adjust to the sudden loss of light. The woman quickly grabbed up the horse she had for sale; he shimmied out and around the corner and into the too-tight wash stall, while my husband and I jostled around in the unfamiliar space. We were trying to figure out the limits of backing into a corner in the dark, while lifting our feet up and away from under the gigantic hooves that plodded by. When we all finally settled into our places, he and I found ourselves too close to judge the enormous animal being saddled up before us

What was that thing?

We could see his head far above, unusually intelligent, kind eyes, the way he cocked his countenance around to gather information (not “horse-like” at all) — ears at least five inches long? Neither horse nor mule, an equine crossed with a centaur, maybe? One quarter human? Moments later, we were out in a newly mowed riding ring, of sorts. I swung up on the giant and encouraged him to move out. His massive legs — thick bones connected by extra-large joints — reached into the super-long stride characteristic of his gaited breed. My husband would later comment on how strangely calm I was on such a big, young animal I knew nothing about:  “You looked like you were sitting on a chair. You didn’t seem to be paying attention to him, or what he might do.” Well, I already knew he had had no training whatsoever — he only has two gaits, and the most I could ask of him was that he would go forward in those two gaits, turn, and stop. But mostly, I sensed his brain just did not work like any horse’s I had ever known, and that somehow, for some reason, within that odd framework he was not easily rattled.

The next day, my trainer and his equally knowledgeable wife drove the hour away at my excited insistence, to give him a thorough, more critical examination than I could.  My trainer put him through all manner of tests for two hours, rode him, tried to make him freak out, stressed his joints, banged on his hooves so hard I winced for the horse. My trainer’s wife offered a running commentary through the process. They, too, were sure he was not drugged. In the final analysis they found him green but sound, with an extraordinarily sweet disposition. Very, very different in the way he thinks. My trainer’s wife tried to find the words. “Babified?” she asked. We all wondered if maybe he had been raised in a house, with humans, until he was too big to sleep in the guest room.

Continuing my long habit of being the Statue of Liberty of the domesticated animal world — “bring me your odd, your abused, your unwanted” — I bought him.

My horse experience is quite dated, and I don’t pretend to know much anymore. But I have always had an eye for conformation, which is really just aesthetics, defined. Form following function. And I can confidently say this about my new horse:  he is a big bony bag of conformation faults. But in ways I cannot explain, they work somehow, if you’re not absolutely committed to buying a horse.

I held my breath as my high school-age daughter approached him for the first time — my young artist who inherited a concentrated version of my eye for aesthetics, the same gnawing sense of annoyance when anything is out of balance, visually or spatially. She was already furious with me for having purchased him without "consulting" her, and she was having a big old time playing up her greatly inflated sense of self-righteousness. She was cocked and ready to shoot me right between the eyeballs with a stream of angry words — she needed only to lay eyes on the new addition to the family menagerie for confirmation of the mistake she was sure I had made.

But her tight-lipped bitch-look melted instantly instead. She grinned from ear to ear, completely unaware that she was giggling out loud from time to time. “Ohhh! He’s adorable!”

So now we start the process of figuring out what, or who, he is, exactly.

To begin: His name is Cosmo, and I think he is a Jim Henson creation.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch ...

Today, a break from the "Corporate Chronicles" series, because I am busy falling madly in love. How's a person supposed to think of anything else but the object of her obsession, under these circumstances? Stomach all fluttery; aching constantly for the moment I will see this girl again at last; sweet sweet image of her face on the insides of my lids every time I close my eyes.

I am in the complete destabilization stage. I feel dread just below the surface, knowing I could be wrecked beyond all repair if something goes wrong now. I am terrified of ever losing her. I've not yet discovered the maddening habits that could shift this new love into something a little more realistic. In other kinds of love, the little annoyances could have something to do with squeezing the toothpaste wrong, or eating up every last full-size tortilla chip in one sitting (leaving a few salty crumbs that only saliva-covered fingers could gather up), or the constant presence of background noise  --  when the damned TV and radio buttons just won't freaking stay off. You know, the stuff that makes other spouses  --  not me, of course  --  ask "for the love of god are you trying to drive me insane???" In this case, reality might set in if my horse has a tendency to spook at trees even though we live in the temperate deciduous forests of the Southern Appalachians. Perhaps I will have to fight her head constantly on the trail, because she wants so bad please-please-please to eat up every single tuft of new grass along the way. Maybe she will shatter the peace with abnormal gaseousness.

Who cares? I'm in love.

My family deserves an explanation for this unexpected turn in my affair. They deserve to know what's going on, what's so different about now when I've always loved all my pets, including the yearling filly that came into my life as just a wee babe. Her name is Salsa. This change in my love for her might be especially surprising to those who know me best, because I'm not silly about my pets. Heartless, you might say, depending on where you stand on the pet-love spectrum. No high-pitched "oh lookit the pretty baby, pretty pretty little babykins" will ever come out of my mouth. I don't give treats. I read the pet food label and feed the right amount by weight, no matter how cute they are. I am a disciplinarian, in that bad behavior will get them the ice cold shoulder from me.

I really, really hate it when my dogs whip themselves into a frenzy when I get home, whine and widdle and jump on my legs. (Sort of like the way I feel about everybody first thing in the morning  --  leave me the hell alone until I wake up.) My dogs frustrate me especially because it's the easiest thing in the world to teach dogs to be calm upon your arrival, without kicking them across the yard. You ignore them. Simply walk in wordlessly, do not make eye contact, hang up your purse, take off your shoes, make yourself a drink, sit down, and then call them over for some affection. As with all training the effort requires absolute consistency and the cooperation of every member of the family. Unfortunately, someone in mine just can't do it. Coming through the back gate without falling on the ground for a tickling match with the dogs is as unnatural to him as leaving a bag of tortilla chips unopened for a few days.

I do a little better with training animals, than people.

But back to the explanation, dear family. It is this: Salsa and I work together, and sometimes when you work very very closely with someone, well, things just happen.



A little goofier than usual ...

I've taken a week off from my job to devote to a little more intensive training than I could offer in normal weeks, seeking to advance her education quite a bit just before summer weather and all its expanding possibilities. Salsa has now been saddled three times and driven twice  --  with no weight on her whatsoever, of course, not for at least two more years, and with the driving reins attached to her halter, not a snaffle. I wish I could explain better for people who don't have working animals, but that's about it. She's not really a pet, she's a partner, and the magic of perfect partnership, of working like this together  --  it  feels like a beautifully choreographed dance that we are beginning to execute more effortlessly. It feels like the possibilities for our future are endless. It feels harmonic, the way music feels inside when the TV's not on, too.

And aw, you should see her sweet, pink, translucent hooves, still so babyish, with her trying so hard to put them down just so, trying so hard to please. "Here Mama? You want it here? Or here?" And you should see her little pink tongue that she sometimes sticks out like a puppy dog, because she's thinking so hard. Her goofy funny face with a few winter hairs making her jawline look all silly, and the way that she turns her slim head and tucks it under your arm, saying she thinks she deserves some extra loving. You should see ......

Oh lookit the pretty baby, pretty pretty little babykins. Sweet sweet little schnookums ......  Oops. Gotta go.

A Feminist on the Farm

Shortly after I bought my horses, an elderly man in my life shoved his hands in his polyester pockets, sucked his teeth, and said, “I’ve never understood why women like horses so much.”

I don't suppose he would have liked my answer, if he had really wanted an answer: Because you can swing up on them and get the hell out of Dodge.

Every minute that I live, it becomes more and more apparent to me that a woman has to take what she wants. Nobody but nobody is going to give it to her, not without expectation, and not unless the object of her desire falls safely enough within the proper bounds. Men take fishing trips and sports excursions for the pure pleasure of them; women take recovery. From my experience, "Girls Night Out" is always an act of desperation. And babies big or small  --  no matter how much they scream they want their independence, they can hardly bear for their mother's attention to be turned away. (Try taking five straight minutes to write a blog, for example.) They light out into their own adult lives, and still her countenance is supposed to be watching every time they turn. The collective message is subtle and complex. Societal machinations are humming in the white noise of a woman's world, every waking minute from birth. With every step she takes away from expectations, the tuneless screeching of violins grows louder, and words clarify themselves within the drone. You are so selfish. How dare you?

This is old news for women, a rehashing of the old blah-bi-di-dah  --  we fight it, think about it in our most exhausted, over-used moments, and too often fail to take what we need out of guilt. But there's another side we might not think about so much. That is, not just what to grab for ourselves  --  but what not to.

My horses are on a short list of the big things I have grabbed in my lifetime, for myself, without permission, and without apology. So it came as a surprise to me, that giving one of the horses away was as important to the effort as getting them in the first place. Because it's easy to forget:  The fabric of your life  --  whatever threads you find yourself studying at the end, turning over and softly rubbing between your thumbs and fingers  --  the quality is as much because of whatever material you leave out, as weave in. And it takes as much strength to stand up for what not to accept.

I'll not go into too much detail (it can be found here, in "Possession," Dec. 13, 2010), but the mare was aggressive to the point of being deadly, different from other problem horses in that she commenced full-frontal attacks seemingly without provocation. The first decision I made was between putting her down (because I would not have handed off a killer) and having a trainer with more experience than I work with her first. I chose the latter.

Two weeks later, the trainer and I met for an assessment, beginning with whether this was what in the old days was called "a bad animal." No, he said, just a very, very alpha one, a dominant leader of the herd, with no small number of issues. "I think this can be done," he said. "Are you ready to work hard?"

Ask a woman if she's ready to work hard? How, pray tell, is she supposed to answer that? I blinked at him silently, thinking, well, but, that's not the idea. Not that particular kind of "hard." I'm planning ahead for my golden years here!

The training was helpful, and at length I rode the mare on a number of occasions, quite proud that I still had it, I could still keep this headstrong 1000-pound female under relative control. The internal arguments began then in earnest. All the ones closely related to what you might expect from a mother trying not to give up on her difficult child, alongside all the ones that said I've already done this before. As a teenager I lied to my father for a year about how wild my gelding was, knowing he would sell him if he knew; that gelding and I eventually claimed a 1978 All-Around High Point Horse trophy in Texas that is still displayed in my living room. During that time, I only met one horse I never got a full handle on, and if we hadn't gone down in soft Texas sand when she reared over on me, I'd be dead. Good enough for near-death experiences; what do I have to prove now?

In the end, it came down to this: the mare was off-mission. I found I had to stand up for the decision to give her away, repeatedly. My trainer, my family, my own heart fought to see the effort with this mare through. It was hard, first because in a qualified way, I was fond of her. She is a beauty, and I continued to want to hold onto that beauty. But also because, once I'd said "damn the torpedoes" and brought my little herd home, the societal drone changed, inside and outside of my head. The subtle and complex message: OK, you did this. Now accept your responsibility.

 “Martyrdom” is something I’ve worked hard not to allow in my household of five women. Just as no one was allowed to say “no fair” as they were growing up. So first I accepted the responsibility of a horse, and yes, I turned and handed it off to someone else. A perfect match, incidentally, after $2,000 of training.

How dare I.

Ω

Suggested reading for mothers and anyone else interested in whether our modern, American way of raising children might be going off the rails: Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety by Judith Warner, http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781594481703.

"The paradigm-shattering bestseller that investigates how women have fallen into the trap of "total motherhood," and how that mind-set damages them and their relationships with their husbands and children."

Possession

(continued from Dec. 11, 2010)

"This one's going to be trouble," I said as our farrier crouched under the electric fence. I remember the words as certainly as anyone does from the charged, slow-motion moments that precede a tragic accident. I had my mare on a halter and lead in a pasture adjacent to where Trevor had just trimmed our other two horses' hooves. I conveyed the message in the quietest, calmest way that I could, knowing that human control of a powerful animal 10 times her size and weight is 90 percent bluster. That they can "smell fear" hardly begins to describe just how smart horses are, how perfectly keen on reading the body language and voices of their owners.

Trevor raised himself upright inside the pasture, and I couldn't draw my whip quickly enough. The mare bumped me off-balance with her shoulder and attacked him without further preamble. In seconds the scene flashed from me using all of my weight to hold the mare's head down as she reared and struck, to Trevor and her locked in a shoulder-to-shoulder, life-and-death battle. Her hooves sounded like well-drilling equipment pounding the ground. He happened to have been carrying a heavy metal mallet of some kind, and he used it with the force of a man fighting to save his own life. He may well have saved mine in the process. Nothing short of real, furious, relentless pain would have gotten that mare to back off. Trevor was not killed after all. And if you think for one second I have ever thought since, "aw poor baby horsie"  —  you've got the wrong girl here.

Horse people for some reason or another love to lay blame  —  that old human need to believe we can be insightful enough to control anything, I think. I've been over and over in my mind how I was duped into buying this horse, and what replays above all was my over-willingness to trust another mother. I had ascertained that the woman knew horses well. When her four-year-old daughter climbed into a small enclosed stall and not only crawled under the mare's belly and all around her legs, but handled the mare's weeks-old baby  —  I admit, I was duly impressed. While I would never have allowed my own young child in a stall like that, no mother would risk her own daughter if she didn't have complete confidence in the animal in there. Right?

Now I have three experts in agreement on this:  The mare was almost certainly drugged initially, and just trained enough to stand for the health inspection by a vet a little later. All of which is completely moot now. Once I saw Trevor fighting for his life, once I'd imagined another human being  —  as worthy of his human existence as my own children  —  dead on that pasture floor, I myself wasn't getting in there with that animal again. Maybe nobody was.

*  *  *

Whenever Tom Petty sings "you be the girl at the high school dance," I conjure a memory of the girl I was in the 1970s. She's pretty cool because, you know, you can do that with memory. Tightly wrapped in that young woman, though, are the confidence and the skills I learned growing up with and showing horses. They are less malleable than memory and more fixed in my mind and in my life. All I ever needed to know, I learned with horses, beginning with "I can take on something bigger than myself." Most especially on behalf of my children, I have been capable of mallet-wielding rage or bluster, as necessary. If I've been wrong about myself all these years, it's a damned good thing I didn't know it. But one newly acquired horse has called everything I ever thought I knew about myself into question. The consequences of being wrong could potentially kill someone.

For a possible answer (and if you're inclined toward long, strange trips), fast-forward from the 1970s dance to 2005, when I read a magazine piece that has rattled around in my head ever since. Lately, it's been knocking hard. For the original scientific article, go to your library or online and find  "FETAL MICROCHIMERISM IN THE MATERNAL MOUSE BRAIN," BY XIAO-WEI TAN ET AL. For Scientific American's distillation, see:  http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=baby-to-brain. Updates since 2005 I leave to individuals to find.

Here's my synopsis:

During pregnancy, stem cells from fetuses cross the blood-brain barrier, set up shop in the mother's nervous system and (in humans) live there for at least 27 years. Then the cells-- what? Isn't that the most fascinating question? Scientists are still working on that, but found that when they "chemically injured the mouse brains, nearly six times as many fetal cells made their way to damaged areas than elsewhere, suggesting the cells could be responding to molecular distress signals released by the brain." Makes perfect sense for the babies' long-term survival:  if Mama's not happy  --  or healthy  --  ain't nobody.

Forget that, though. Paradigm shifts are afoot. We may have found a biological explanation for what is called, in less polite or technically picky company, possession. And I have found a powerful filter through which to consider what happened to the young woman I once was. I've had five children. By my calculation, I have no brain cells of my own left.

I wish those scientists would come talk to me, as they proceed in their work to fully understand what it is our babies' cells are doing in our brains for 27 years. (But no, they're all concerned with implications for how the cells might repair damaged organs.) Suggesting they confirm that the phantom pain I quite literally feel when one of my daughters hurts  —  even when she is thousands of miles away  —  is probably out. But other aspects of motherhood might be more measurable. I would tell them to look for differences in the way mothers' auditory lobes work compared to all others, for example. Why is tuning out the crying baby or the whining adolescent akin to poking a stick in your ears? And why is it that, against all reason, I continue to bend over and pick up the socks, the slack and the tab, long past the time when I should?

Perhaps most interestingly of all, what happens to maternal / child welfare  —  and even a larger, universal welfare  —  should the stem-cell delivery system fail? Maybe a woman would risk her own child to make a sale. Maybe some other mother's child gets killed as a result. Maybe someone loath to do so must even consider the possibility of putting down the results of the sale.

*  *  *

Whatever the answers in XIAO-WEI TAN ET AL's particular realm, I've got mine. I'm not the same, because I've had children. In the Nature-vs.-Nurture debate, however, I argue that neither gets ascendancy. We can use our big brains to harness one and effectively subordinate the other. I press on. Demonatrix the Mare has gone to a professional trainer, one who in our first telephone conversation quickly assessed this baffling turn of events in my recently resurrected horse life and asked, "You're a mother, aren't you?" (To which I did not respond, "Is your name Xiao-Wei Tan?") I think we can safely say this trainer has no fetal stem cells living in his brain, and that for now, he may be a better match for this horse.

Hang in there with us, Trevor. We may all look the same, but the next time you come here, you'll be working with different animals.