Holidays and Horses
This weekend, S. and I offered to help care for the seven horses that live in the campus' barn (as well as two cats living temporarily alone on opposite ends of town, but I digress). I don't know the first thing about taking care of horses, but S. has learned a lot in her eight months of lessons, and she knows each of the horses well. (Even after four days of seeing them twice each day for about an hour, I have yet to tell a couple of them apart--this either proves I'm not very observant or not a horse person, or both). Usually there are seven students, or more, taking care of these horses, but only two students were sticking around, so our help was welcomed.
I'll just admit this: I agreed to do this partly because I was hoping to convince S. that she's not ready for her own horse, which she desperately wants and hopes I will decide to purchase for her for her 16th birthday. "I want a horse, not horsepower, for my sweet 16," she keeps saying. I keep telling her I'm not sure either car or horse is possible financially, though the horse, if we were to keep him/her on campus (something S's horse teacher was sure to point out was possible for a faculty member), would actually be cheaper and, I think, a better investment in S's future, since she wants to do something with animals as a career.
Still, I thought if she had to be at the barn at 8:00 every morning to feed the horses, lead them out the pasture, and muck their stalls--and again at 7:30 every night to lead them in and feed them--well, this was going to get old, and she'd realize that she's not really ready, yet, for this kind of responsibility. Did I mention we live in a place where late November is very, very cold? I was willing to suffer through it because, like I said, I had an ulterior motive.
But things did not go exactly as planned. S. got up willingly, even excitedly, every morning--to say that this does not generally occur on school days would be an understatement. And, in all of the time we spent with the horses, there were only two ten-minute intervals during which she was not helpful--one morning, she dazed out for awhile and worked on combing out a horse's tail (rather than mucking her stall), and one evening, she lost her glove and became fixated on finding it rather than helping with leading the horses back into the barn (thankfully, one of the two students helped her). But in both cases, she was able immediately to reflect on what had happened: "I know I need to be more focused if I really want my own horse, mom."
Oh, yes: she's a smart kid, and she knew this was a test. But, honestly, aside from these two incidents, she was truly helpful. Sometimes she needed to have a reminder about the next task, but she completed each task willingly and much more skillfully than I did.
But that's not really the point of the story. Something strange happened in the mornings and evenings we worked with the horses, something almost miraculous. We noticed the sunrise. We noticed the geese. ("You need to write a poem about that, mom, because the way they move through the sky is so beautiful--just look."). We noticed that we actually liked the smell of horses ("I'd rather smell this in the morning than anything else--no offense to your cooking, mom."). Sometimes I got irritated and barked out orders; sometimes she got irritated and corrected my inept attempts to be helpful--but neither of us seemed to mind very much. We were able, on the drive back home, to let go of whatever had happened and talk instead about the things we were realizing about each horse--like people, they have their own quirks, their own personalities.
There's also something satisfying--and this I already knew about myself--about physical labor that is repeated over and over again, each day. During my sophomore year of college, which was a particularly difficult year for me, I think I was saved by the physical labor involved in working the opening shift at one of the campus cafeterias. My job involved getting up at an ungodly hour to vacuum the space, then cleaning the restrooms (that part was kind of gross), then cutting the vegetables for all the sandwiches that day. I found myself, in those quiet, early morning shifts, singing or praying or talking to the dead ancestors who were always hovering close. I found myself noticing the smallest things on my walk to and from my dorm room. I made big decisions ("Of course I'll drop that class; of course I'll change my major; of course I don't feel about him the way he feels about me, and I think this maybe means not only that I'm not supposed to date him, but that I'm not supposed to date boys; of course I need to move out even if it ruins my friendship because I'm miserable"--etc).
On the days that I worked, I was less impatient with my roommate, my friends, and more able to concentrate on my schoolwork, less depressed. I also noticed things I wouldn't have otherwise noticed about how each day differed from the one before: why was there no toilet paper in the first stall today, when usually there is? Why did these tomatoes appear to be so much stiffer than the last batch? I would make up creative answers to these questions that sometimes led to stories or poems. Physical labor forces the mind to slow down, and open up, at the same time.
I am not depressed these days, thankfully, nor am I feeling unsure about the next steps in my life. But things have been rather hectic in the last month for a multitude of reasons--no need to go further with that, just take my word for it--so I haven't felt very settled or calm. So it was good to feel my mind slowing down, feel the prayers--and, later, with them, the poems and stories--begin to move in my body.
"I'm going to miss the horses," S. said to me this morning, after our last shift. "I know if I got my own horse it would be my responsibility, mom, but you have to admit, you sort of like it, too. Plus, it's nice for us to share this."
OK...so maybe she is/we are almost ready for our own horse. All of my earlier objections--the time, the cost, the fact that it would be harder to get away--all of them seemed completely and strangely ridiculous when I followed my daughter on Thanksgiving morning out to the pasture. She was whispering secrets to the horse she was leading, whose ears were cocked toward her. Her stride matched the horse's exactly, and when some geese flew overhead, she whispered "Ho" and the horse stopped immediately and appeared to look up with her. After a couple minutes, she said, "Walk on," and then said, ("See, Mom, that's how you do it. If you want to stop, you say ho. If she stops on you when you don't want her to, just swing the lead rope a little and tell her to walk on."). She was standing so straight, her head up, and there was no frustration or grief in her voice, just a calm confidence.
---
On Thanksgiving morning, after the horses, and this morning, too, S. and I did a spiritual ritual. We sang songs together (neither of us has a very good singing voice) about gratitude and grace, lit candles for all the things we were thankful for. In reciting this list, we told the story of our time together: how lucky to have found each other, how lucky we didn't give up, how lucky we have so many people and animals in our lives who keep us afloat and sane and, yes, joyful. We chose some readings from the Unitarian Universalist hymnal and sat on the couch, reading them out loud together. It feels like we are getting the spiritual thing right, finally--this is something we can do together no matter where we each are on our spiritual journey, whether or not S. ends up believing in God.
---
For my first several years here, I'd had Thanksgiving always with the same friends, but since they left town, each year has been different. Last year there was a giant feast with more than 30 adults and some 10 children, and I'd made a lot of the food. At that time, I was talking to S. on the phone, and we were trying to decide if we wanted to meet, and I distinctly remember my friend C. saying to me, "Is it strange to think that by this time next year you might have your own kid?" I couldn't let myself believe it, but I did feel somehow like things were never going to be the same again.
This year, most of those friends have either moved away or were out of town, so we ate with the other Greek family in town, whom S. loves mainly because they are horse people--though of course, by now, there are other, better reasons, too. She didn't know the 20-something kids who came back with significant others, or the elderly mother of my Greek friend's husband, but she was at ease, and there was a reprieve between courses that involved a trip to the barn where there horse now stays. I felt so grateful to have been included.
I didn't have to do much cooking; I made a few vegetarian dishes, but doing so felt easy, low-stress. I found myself, both while making the dishes and caring for the horses, doing what I used to do when I cut vegetables every morning so many years ago: talking to the dead, praying for the living, feeling the pieces of my life fall into to place.
As I peeled potatoes and yams, I offered up prayers for the people who would eat the food, and then, moving out from that circle, for all the people who had ever shared Thanksgiving with me. I remembered how, the first year after my separation from my partner, a small family of new friends had invited me, how I'd cried that morning while making the one appetizer I had to make, but how, in the end, it had turned out so beautifully, a small and quiet gathering for which I was truly grateful. I offered up prayers for the friends who had always hosted my partner and I before that, and, before that, the haphazard group of graduate students who gathered each year in Phoenix. And, of course, I prayed for my family, though at this point, it's been more than 15 years since I spent a Thanksgiving with them. And then I came back to the present, all of the people who have made an impact on S. and me in our first year together. I felt the old warmth in my body that I used to feel when praying and realized I hadn't felt it in awhile.
These prayers and thoughts went on as I mucked stalls, led the horses in and out of the pasture. They went on as S. and cleaned house, prepared for the incoming gigantic and fragrant tree and dragged said tree through our very narrow doorway. They became the words I used to explain the history of each ornament we unwrapped together. They went on as I wrote--a lot--this weekend, returning to old material, writing some new poems. They became the writing, and the poems, and the memories S. and I were making together. They spilled into the new, private family rituals S. excitedly created for the holidays, insisting that we need to make our own "new traditions," and I happily agreed.
Tonight, S. said, "Isn't it weird how we were just going along all those years, living our lives, and we didn't even know about each other?" She sighed. "And now you're my mother. You didn't give up on me. Sometimes I can hardly believe it."
"I know what you mean," I said, and I did, not just intellectually, but in the deepest parts of my body. And I let myself feel that all-over-gratitude, that strange feeling of everything being exactly as it should be. Usually this feeling is accompanied by either a dull panic ("This can't go on forever") or a low-grade grief ("This can't go on forever"), but for the first time in I think my entire life, I let go of all the what ifs--what if I lose my job in the next round of budget cuts, what if S. begins to regress, what if she can't figure out what to do when she turns 18, what if I can't really afford a horse and I'm dreaming, what if...
I let each of those worries go through my mind and I felt myself observing them, as if from a distance. Superimposed over them were the images of the weekend: when we turned out the lights and sat in silence in front of the tree, in awe at its beauty; when we walked to the lake and watched the geese taking off, black-ribbon-streams lifting and unfurling, finding their shape; when S. took off the last horse's halter that Thanksgiving morning and whispered "Go on, go out to the pasture with your friends, we'll be back tonight again."
This feeling doesn't have to be fleeting, or momentary, I realized. There are always going to be disasters looming, things going wrong. There will always be a dying friend or a social injustice or a war--and our job is, of course, to pay attention, to do what we can, but perhaps our job is also to know how to do the ordinary tasks of our lives, and then, to stand still in the midst of it all, to maintain the feeling of deep gratitude, to stay open, to fight paralysis and bitterness by paying close attention.
"It's like the secret to happiness has been here all along but I didn't see it," I said out loud, accidentally.
"That's right, Mom," S. replied. "Cody, Pennie, Snowbee (our dog and cats) and I have been your secret to happiness all along. It just took you 37 years to find it. But you'd be even happier if we also had a horse, admit it."
OK, I'll admit it--but not out loud, not quite yet!
I'll just admit this: I agreed to do this partly because I was hoping to convince S. that she's not ready for her own horse, which she desperately wants and hopes I will decide to purchase for her for her 16th birthday. "I want a horse, not horsepower, for my sweet 16," she keeps saying. I keep telling her I'm not sure either car or horse is possible financially, though the horse, if we were to keep him/her on campus (something S's horse teacher was sure to point out was possible for a faculty member), would actually be cheaper and, I think, a better investment in S's future, since she wants to do something with animals as a career.
Still, I thought if she had to be at the barn at 8:00 every morning to feed the horses, lead them out the pasture, and muck their stalls--and again at 7:30 every night to lead them in and feed them--well, this was going to get old, and she'd realize that she's not really ready, yet, for this kind of responsibility. Did I mention we live in a place where late November is very, very cold? I was willing to suffer through it because, like I said, I had an ulterior motive.
But things did not go exactly as planned. S. got up willingly, even excitedly, every morning--to say that this does not generally occur on school days would be an understatement. And, in all of the time we spent with the horses, there were only two ten-minute intervals during which she was not helpful--one morning, she dazed out for awhile and worked on combing out a horse's tail (rather than mucking her stall), and one evening, she lost her glove and became fixated on finding it rather than helping with leading the horses back into the barn (thankfully, one of the two students helped her). But in both cases, she was able immediately to reflect on what had happened: "I know I need to be more focused if I really want my own horse, mom."
Oh, yes: she's a smart kid, and she knew this was a test. But, honestly, aside from these two incidents, she was truly helpful. Sometimes she needed to have a reminder about the next task, but she completed each task willingly and much more skillfully than I did.
But that's not really the point of the story. Something strange happened in the mornings and evenings we worked with the horses, something almost miraculous. We noticed the sunrise. We noticed the geese. ("You need to write a poem about that, mom, because the way they move through the sky is so beautiful--just look."). We noticed that we actually liked the smell of horses ("I'd rather smell this in the morning than anything else--no offense to your cooking, mom."). Sometimes I got irritated and barked out orders; sometimes she got irritated and corrected my inept attempts to be helpful--but neither of us seemed to mind very much. We were able, on the drive back home, to let go of whatever had happened and talk instead about the things we were realizing about each horse--like people, they have their own quirks, their own personalities.
There's also something satisfying--and this I already knew about myself--about physical labor that is repeated over and over again, each day. During my sophomore year of college, which was a particularly difficult year for me, I think I was saved by the physical labor involved in working the opening shift at one of the campus cafeterias. My job involved getting up at an ungodly hour to vacuum the space, then cleaning the restrooms (that part was kind of gross), then cutting the vegetables for all the sandwiches that day. I found myself, in those quiet, early morning shifts, singing or praying or talking to the dead ancestors who were always hovering close. I found myself noticing the smallest things on my walk to and from my dorm room. I made big decisions ("Of course I'll drop that class; of course I'll change my major; of course I don't feel about him the way he feels about me, and I think this maybe means not only that I'm not supposed to date him, but that I'm not supposed to date boys; of course I need to move out even if it ruins my friendship because I'm miserable"--etc).
On the days that I worked, I was less impatient with my roommate, my friends, and more able to concentrate on my schoolwork, less depressed. I also noticed things I wouldn't have otherwise noticed about how each day differed from the one before: why was there no toilet paper in the first stall today, when usually there is? Why did these tomatoes appear to be so much stiffer than the last batch? I would make up creative answers to these questions that sometimes led to stories or poems. Physical labor forces the mind to slow down, and open up, at the same time.
I am not depressed these days, thankfully, nor am I feeling unsure about the next steps in my life. But things have been rather hectic in the last month for a multitude of reasons--no need to go further with that, just take my word for it--so I haven't felt very settled or calm. So it was good to feel my mind slowing down, feel the prayers--and, later, with them, the poems and stories--begin to move in my body.
"I'm going to miss the horses," S. said to me this morning, after our last shift. "I know if I got my own horse it would be my responsibility, mom, but you have to admit, you sort of like it, too. Plus, it's nice for us to share this."
OK...so maybe she is/we are almost ready for our own horse. All of my earlier objections--the time, the cost, the fact that it would be harder to get away--all of them seemed completely and strangely ridiculous when I followed my daughter on Thanksgiving morning out to the pasture. She was whispering secrets to the horse she was leading, whose ears were cocked toward her. Her stride matched the horse's exactly, and when some geese flew overhead, she whispered "Ho" and the horse stopped immediately and appeared to look up with her. After a couple minutes, she said, "Walk on," and then said, ("See, Mom, that's how you do it. If you want to stop, you say ho. If she stops on you when you don't want her to, just swing the lead rope a little and tell her to walk on."). She was standing so straight, her head up, and there was no frustration or grief in her voice, just a calm confidence.
---
On Thanksgiving morning, after the horses, and this morning, too, S. and I did a spiritual ritual. We sang songs together (neither of us has a very good singing voice) about gratitude and grace, lit candles for all the things we were thankful for. In reciting this list, we told the story of our time together: how lucky to have found each other, how lucky we didn't give up, how lucky we have so many people and animals in our lives who keep us afloat and sane and, yes, joyful. We chose some readings from the Unitarian Universalist hymnal and sat on the couch, reading them out loud together. It feels like we are getting the spiritual thing right, finally--this is something we can do together no matter where we each are on our spiritual journey, whether or not S. ends up believing in God.
---
For my first several years here, I'd had Thanksgiving always with the same friends, but since they left town, each year has been different. Last year there was a giant feast with more than 30 adults and some 10 children, and I'd made a lot of the food. At that time, I was talking to S. on the phone, and we were trying to decide if we wanted to meet, and I distinctly remember my friend C. saying to me, "Is it strange to think that by this time next year you might have your own kid?" I couldn't let myself believe it, but I did feel somehow like things were never going to be the same again.
This year, most of those friends have either moved away or were out of town, so we ate with the other Greek family in town, whom S. loves mainly because they are horse people--though of course, by now, there are other, better reasons, too. She didn't know the 20-something kids who came back with significant others, or the elderly mother of my Greek friend's husband, but she was at ease, and there was a reprieve between courses that involved a trip to the barn where there horse now stays. I felt so grateful to have been included.
I didn't have to do much cooking; I made a few vegetarian dishes, but doing so felt easy, low-stress. I found myself, both while making the dishes and caring for the horses, doing what I used to do when I cut vegetables every morning so many years ago: talking to the dead, praying for the living, feeling the pieces of my life fall into to place.
As I peeled potatoes and yams, I offered up prayers for the people who would eat the food, and then, moving out from that circle, for all the people who had ever shared Thanksgiving with me. I remembered how, the first year after my separation from my partner, a small family of new friends had invited me, how I'd cried that morning while making the one appetizer I had to make, but how, in the end, it had turned out so beautifully, a small and quiet gathering for which I was truly grateful. I offered up prayers for the friends who had always hosted my partner and I before that, and, before that, the haphazard group of graduate students who gathered each year in Phoenix. And, of course, I prayed for my family, though at this point, it's been more than 15 years since I spent a Thanksgiving with them. And then I came back to the present, all of the people who have made an impact on S. and me in our first year together. I felt the old warmth in my body that I used to feel when praying and realized I hadn't felt it in awhile.
These prayers and thoughts went on as I mucked stalls, led the horses in and out of the pasture. They went on as S. and cleaned house, prepared for the incoming gigantic and fragrant tree and dragged said tree through our very narrow doorway. They became the words I used to explain the history of each ornament we unwrapped together. They went on as I wrote--a lot--this weekend, returning to old material, writing some new poems. They became the writing, and the poems, and the memories S. and I were making together. They spilled into the new, private family rituals S. excitedly created for the holidays, insisting that we need to make our own "new traditions," and I happily agreed.
Tonight, S. said, "Isn't it weird how we were just going along all those years, living our lives, and we didn't even know about each other?" She sighed. "And now you're my mother. You didn't give up on me. Sometimes I can hardly believe it."
"I know what you mean," I said, and I did, not just intellectually, but in the deepest parts of my body. And I let myself feel that all-over-gratitude, that strange feeling of everything being exactly as it should be. Usually this feeling is accompanied by either a dull panic ("This can't go on forever") or a low-grade grief ("This can't go on forever"), but for the first time in I think my entire life, I let go of all the what ifs--what if I lose my job in the next round of budget cuts, what if S. begins to regress, what if she can't figure out what to do when she turns 18, what if I can't really afford a horse and I'm dreaming, what if...
I let each of those worries go through my mind and I felt myself observing them, as if from a distance. Superimposed over them were the images of the weekend: when we turned out the lights and sat in silence in front of the tree, in awe at its beauty; when we walked to the lake and watched the geese taking off, black-ribbon-streams lifting and unfurling, finding their shape; when S. took off the last horse's halter that Thanksgiving morning and whispered "Go on, go out to the pasture with your friends, we'll be back tonight again."
This feeling doesn't have to be fleeting, or momentary, I realized. There are always going to be disasters looming, things going wrong. There will always be a dying friend or a social injustice or a war--and our job is, of course, to pay attention, to do what we can, but perhaps our job is also to know how to do the ordinary tasks of our lives, and then, to stand still in the midst of it all, to maintain the feeling of deep gratitude, to stay open, to fight paralysis and bitterness by paying close attention.
"It's like the secret to happiness has been here all along but I didn't see it," I said out loud, accidentally.
"That's right, Mom," S. replied. "Cody, Pennie, Snowbee (our dog and cats) and I have been your secret to happiness all along. It just took you 37 years to find it. But you'd be even happier if we also had a horse, admit it."
OK, I'll admit it--but not out loud, not quite yet!
posted by Argie | 9:32 PM
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