Dreams And Horses

October 24, 2011 By

Beautiful granddaughter Zoe, during riding lessons when she was around seven years old.

I’ve been thinking about my dreams. Not the kind that come during sleep, the kind that come in my waking hours. Often my daydreams are about happy things; remembering someone I love or something that made me laugh. But they can also be remembrances of sad times.  Or they can be sheer fantasy, about what I want, or something that I want to accomplish, like writing a book.

I daydream a lot and I call those moments staring into space time.  It is often when my best ideas come and I jump into action to bring what I want into fruition. So it was many years ago, when I was a small, naive fourth grader.  I was in love with horses, begging and pleading with my father to please get me one.  Earlier, as a second grader, I believed I was a horse and would gallop across the potato fields near our home, snorting and pawing the ground when approached by some of my friends.

Precious grandson Noah, during his first riding lessons, about age 4.

Those were the days of early TV with shows like Howdy Doody, Kukla, Fran and Ollie, and The Merry Mailman.  The sponsor of one of them, advertised a contest that I jumped at the chance to enter because I knew I would win. The trick was to send in the winning name for a small Shetland pony with silvery mane and tail and a golden coat, similar to Roy Roger’s horse, Trigger.  The only differences were that the pony was much smaller, and lacked the blaze down the middle of his face.  Instead he had a white patch, the shape of a star, on his forehead, right above his eyes.  If the name you sent in was the one chosen to be the winner, he’d be delivered to your home in a fancy pony trailer pulled by a pick-up truck that looked like my dad’s.

I knew I could build a stall in one corner of our two-car garage because mom never parked her car in there anyway.  I knew my dad would have a fit, because whenever I asked if we could get a pony or a horse, he said “no, we can’t afford it.”  I figured that because the pony didn’t cost anything and because I won it, he’d have no choice but to accept the fact that the pony was mine. I owned it!

I thought and thought about the perfect name. Staring out the window above my bed, when darkness came and the Milky Way glittered in the night sky with billions of pin-prick lights, I made a wish upon one of them. I knew that the name I chose would be the winner.

I sent in the entry blank and waited for the phone call that would tell me that Star would be delivered tomorrow.  I kept the whole thing a secret.  Every night as I was falling asleep I searched the dark sky for the star I had wished on and then dream about the pony who would soon become my life companion.

Weeks passed before the lucky winner was finally announced one late afternoon. It was perfectly clear that someone had made a terrible mistake.  I was heartbroken.  When I finally told Mom about it, she laughed and told me that not all of our dreams come true.  I responded with, “it was not a dream, I KNEW I was to be the owner of that pony and it is soooo unfair that somebody else has won him.”

My horsey daydreams continued into my teens when I was sent away to boarding school for a year, where I took riding lessons.  I learned to jump, and won a couple of blue ribbons at the school’s horseshows, competing in the novice class.  I also learned a deep respect for horses as well as fear when one of my classmates was thrown from her horse during a brief thunderstorm. She ended up in a body cast for many months.  But, the companion of my dreams never materialized on my doorstep and life went on its merry way.

I got married, had kids and living in a tiny community in northern Vermont, got into raising chickens, sheep and Angora goats on about 20 acres of open land.  One day, a friend asked me if I’d like to have one of her horses.  I had ridden Haggerty several times at her farm. He was a nice enough bay gelding, just a little skittish. I thought, why not?  I had the barn and the space.  I was a stay-at-home hippy mom with energy, time, and an aging dream.  If I was ever going to own a horse, this would be the time.

I was very excited and started preparing a stall. When Haggerty was delivered, he didn’t feel at home in his new stall and his skittishness turned into terror.  Whenever I approached, he’d back away and start to rear up or run off to the opposite side of the pasture.  One day he jumped the fence and ran into the wilds.  Randy, his former owner came to help me find and capture him.  He was clearly not happy and my fear of him was growing.  He was simply not the horse meant for me.

Haggerty went back to his old home and I gave up the dream that a horse was in my future.  But I still find myself dreaming about horses. This time, I’d just like a gentle old mare like myself.  I wouldn’t ride her or make her work.  We’d just chat across the fence and dream about what it might have been like had we found each other sooner. The problem now is that my yard is only one-third of an acre.

Filed Under: Animals I Love, Childhood, Dreams, Life, stories, Vermont

Longing

October 14, 2011 By

This frog who lives in my studio is always at peace.

“My mind works in idleness.  To do nothing is often my most profitable way.”

Viriginia Woolf

The peace I gathered and brought home from my recent retreat to the beach has worn off.  Until this week I was able juggle all that I needed and wanted to do without overwhelm.  But this week it hit me that suddenly the feeling of freedom had disappeared and my chronic dis-ease with too much to do with too little time, struck like a bolt of lightning.

Amidst dealing with a crew of painters working on the outside of my house, looking after an ailing dog, the daily stuff of laundry, and cooking, I’ve not been able to have extended moments of time to stare into space, when sweet epiphanies come my way and help me through the difficulties of writing and life.

I need time when there isn’t constant chatter going on just outside my window. I’ve had enough of men banging about with ladders and Molly and Sam responding with non-stop yapping in response.  It’s been going on and off for two weeks and because my studio is above the garage, and the only way I can get to it is up a flight of outdoor steps, I’m currently locked out and have had to drag my computer into the house to the guest room, where the elderly card table I’m using as a desk bounces about as I type

There is Bill, my beloved, in the next room, making phone calls and recording a CD of his lines in Act I of the play he will be acting in come December.  He’ll replay that darn thing until he’s learned his lines and then he’ll record Act II and begin again.  I long to be back in my studio where the peace and quiet I love lives.

We’ve had monsoon-like rains for the last several days and the painting, though mostly done, had once again been postponed until things dry out.  If the sun comes out and keeps shining this afternoon and tomorrow, the painters will come and put the final coat of paint on the studio stairs, finish up the doors and do a clean-up.  I’m praying that my last day in the guest room will be tomorrow and that by Sunday I’ll be at peace again, tucked away in the room I claim as my own.

Filed Under: Animals I Love, Life, Wise Words

My Donkey

October 9, 2011 By

“For most of us, and for most of modern culture, the body is principally seen as the object of our ego agendas, the donkey for the efforts of our ambitions. The donkey is going to be thin, the donkey is going to be strong, the donkey is going to be a great yoga practitioner, the donkey is going to look and feel young, the donkey is going to work eighteen hours a day, the donkey is going to help me fulfill my needs, and so on. All that is necessary is the right technique. There is no sense that the body might actually be more intelligent than “me,” my precious self, my conscious ego.”

Reginald Ray, Touching Enlightenment

Self Portrait taken while fooling around with my Ipad.

Found this the other morning in my mail box, one of the daily quotes I get from Daily Dharma, and wow, did it hit home.  My poor donkey is aging and tired a good part of the time and I realize I’ve been doing nothing but abusing her for years.

But what’s a donkey owner to do?

As I grow older, the days grow shorter and I need to get stuff done before I leave this planet.  I’ve beaten my donkey into pushing through the “To-D0” list, that seems to grow by leaps and bounds every day.  When she begs for a nap, eyes slowly closing, head nodding off then snapping upright again, I shake her, explaining that we must continue so that at least today’s to-dos are checked off.  If we don’t we might have start getting up at 5 AM.

In a new Yoga class just a few days ago, I felt embarrassed and ashamed in front of all of my friends, because my donkey couldn’t do what their donkeys were doing.  I wanted to be out front with the best.  Can an almost sixty-nine-year-old donkey be as good as a crowd of thirty-somethings?  Guess I need to go back to the Gentle Yoga class I was attending with girls my own age.

It’s not as if I don’t exercise on a daily basis.  I warm up each morning with a fifteen minute trot around the block with Molly and Sam.  Then if the creek hasn’t risen and the sun is shining, I take myself for a power walk, after which I do a thirty minute combo of stretching, body rolling, and Pilates.  If the weather is nasty, I’ll climb aboard the old cross-trainer in my studio.  Once a week I work out with my Pilates instructor.  She and my massage therapist tell me that my body is in a constant state of fight or flight.  So I added Gentle Yoga as an additional way of trying to get the kinks out,  stretching the tight tendons and learning further about relaxation.

What to feed my donkey?  Though I’m versed in healthy lifestyles, I can’t seem to get control when it comes to what is on her plate.  She’s always starving, loves fresh leafy greens, rice and fruit, but has been and could again become a raging sugar addict because of what I like to feed her.  Lot’s of sweet things like cupcakes.  Then there are salty things, like roasted cashews, and also cheese … a lovely sharp cheddar from Vermont.  Her digestive tract doesn’t feel too good when I make her eat lots of that stuff and she complains.  But it sure does taste good!

Bill and I recently attended a talk on SUGAR by Gary Taubes, whose books, Good Calories, Bad Calories and Why We Get Fat, gives us the low-down on what we’re doing to our donkeys as individuals and as a society.  By consuming the huge amount of sugar we do, we’re becoming a world of obese humans and susceptible to many more serious ailments like diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.  Bill has decided to give sugar up.  In six days, he lost 6 pounds without making any other changes.

For the moment, I’m doing okay with food, getting close to being vegetarian, but not giving up chicken, dairy or fish.  Last time I tried it I got very sick.  This time I’m studying India’s Science of Life, Ayurveda, and finding out what foods are good for my unique combinations of Doshas.  But it’s hard to give up those things that I love like the cashews, cheese and crunchy granola loaded with honey, even though my donkey tells me she feels much better without them.

Maybe if I give in to feeding her the things she really wants and needs, I can get her to work harder so we can get through the to-do list in record time!
Filed Under: Animals I Love, Healthy Living, Life, Wise Words

OnTraveling, Autumn Leaves,Trains and Ducks

October 5, 2011 By

Reid, Zed, Me with Mom in the background on our trip to Vermont.

When October comes, and colorful leaves begin to drop to the ground, I’m reminded of a trip I took one year with my family to Vermont.  It would be the first time I would find myself in the Green Mountain State, not knowing that one day I would move there and spend 20 precious years living amidst its spectacular beauty.

At the time of this trip I was living at Eaton’s Neck on Long Island and in eighth grade.  My parents rarely traveled, stuck in their roles as housewife and architect/building contractor, unable to afford going very far.  Our trips were mostly to New Jersey to see an aunt, uncle and cousins or to New York City for events like the circus.  They were always day trips, and by the end of each jaunt, us kids were tired, cranky, and just wanted to be home.

Mom and dad had always wanted to see New England in its autumn glory. So on the spur of the moment, on what promised to be a beautiful Columbus Day weekend we went on our first real overnight trip together.

We spent most of our first day in the car, reaching Bennington, in Southern Vermont, just as the sun was setting.  Dad tried to find us a hotel room for the night but there were none to be had. With three starving, unhappy children, he figured a meal was really the first order of the evening. After standing in line for an hour or more, we were finally seated while tourists from all over the country who had made prior reservations,were just finishing their meals.  My brother Reid, nodded off between bites while I just wanted to go home, where I could be less than the angel I was expected to be.

After dinner we headed out again in the car, looking for a room for the night.  On the advise my father had been given by a waiter at the restaurant, we drove out into the dark countryside, looking for what dad had been told was a blue-gray, barn-like structure where we would probably be able to talk the owners into renting us a room for the night.

After many twists and turns we finally found the place and settled into one room. There didn’t seem to be any heat, though there was warm, running water in the tiny bathroom.  Suffering from exhaustion I quickly fell asleep under several layers of blankets and a coat to keep me warm.

Sometime in the night, there was a thunderous, burst of sound. The building started to shake violently and even my parents were frightened by what turned out to be a freight train traveling on tracks right next to the building. Its long throaty call giving it away as it hurtled through the dark.  It happened again several hours later and then again just before the sun found it’s way over the edge of morning.  None of us had slept very well, though it was comforting to know that what we had feared was only a train, not some man-eating giant sweeping the land clean of all children and their parents.

Grumpy as we all were, we climbed into the car to try to find some breakfast.  It was a cold, sunny morning with silvery frost plating the grasses, goldenrod and other late-season wild flowers growing along the side of road.  Around a sharp turn we stopped to watch a cow in a small field, giving birth to her calf. Its small placenta encased body slipping into the chill of a new day.  The mother licked the calf clean as it wobbled to its legs, quickly finding the pink bag filled with warm, creamy milk.

We successfully found a place for breakfast, and spent the day wandering the narrow roads of what seemed like another country.  The leaves were brilliant in crayola colors: reds, orange, golds and yellow. A breathtaking painting of mountains, fields, and sky we drove right into.  We stopped at covered bridges, historical markers and began learning the history of this place, imagining what it might be like in the winter months buried deep in snow.  We found a small roadside mom and pop kind of restaurant, not bulging with rest of the world, and a slightly battered motel where we would spend the night before heading home the next day.  Here in the middle of some unknown land, I had my first taste of what real silence was.

The next evening, we arrived back home in time to feed the dog and three ducks that we had been given on the previous Easter by a friend.  They had grown from fuzzy yellow ducklings into sleek white adults over the summer months.  They layed eggs in odd corners of the yard and mom would gather them, giving them to the milkman in trade for milder chicken eggs.

My grandparents had agreed to visit while we were gone, to check on and feed the dog and the ducks.  The dog met us with a happy tail and little yelps welcoming us back, but the ducks were nowhere to be found.  Mom called my grandparents who told her that the ducks had disappeared the first day we were gone.  We searched, called neighbors and had no clue as to what might have happened to them. I grieved, missing their quack-chatter when they followed me around the yard.

It wasn’t until the following Sunday, when we went to my grandparent’s home for dinner that I understood what had happened.  After playing in the yard for a while, we were called in to a dinner of roast duck.  Needless to say, I refused to eat.  The pangs of hunger more welcome than the crisp taste of friendship.

P.S.  The ducks mentioned here are not the same ducks mentioned in my last post.

Filed Under: Animals I Love, stories, Travels

The Teacher Around The Corner

August 23, 2011 By

Molly and Sam, ready to walk.

It’s seven AM.  It’s warm and the humidity is high.  I’m already sweaty. I go out the back gate with Sam and Molly in tow, for our early morning walk.  We like to go this way, up the street behind our house, but often we don’t, because if Lily, the cat is out, she’ll follow us.

Before we moved here, our home in the country was located on a cul-de-sac. There was little to no traffic. Lily and Pepper would often walk along with us. I’d trod down the lane, two dogs on leashes ahead of me, two cats taking up the rear or hiding in the tall grasses ready to pounce as we passed by. If neighbors were to drive by and see us, they’d automatically slow down, knowing that even if they didn’t see the cats, they were probably lurking about somewhere.

Here in the city it’s another matter.  Even though we live in a quiet neighborhood there is more traffic. A few people don’t obey the leash law, letting their dogs run about, chasing anything that moves.  So, I try to walk the dogs when all of the cats are in, which doesn’t always happen. In that case, if one of them discovers us heading up the street, I’ll turn back toward home, try to get the offending cat indoors and start out all over again.  But this morning, all three cats are safely inside eating their breakfast.

I’m not fully awake yet, feeling kind of cranky and longing for the chill of autumn. I went to bed on the late side last night and didn’t want to get up this morning. I have a busy day ahead of me with a number of appointments I can’t miss and don’t particularly want to go to.  I’ll be gone a good portion of the day, with no time to write, read or stare into space, which is one of my favorite things to do.  It’s a time when wild, creative ideas pop up or answers to tough questions take shape.  When I’m without a chance to breathe and take stock, I can easily turn into a curmudgeonly hag. Why do I schedule things so thickly that there is no time in-between?

Sam is tugging on the leash wanting to stop at every shrub to read the doggie newspaper and to leave his own drop or two of pee making it known that he was here.  Molly sniffs as well, but she’s more interested in finding morsels of smelly, possibly rotten things to eat or roll in that the trash people have spattered about, as they emptied garbage cans up and down the street, a day ago.

These trips can be slow going. That is why my morning routine is to take the dogs for a ten or fifteen minute walk, drop them back at home, then continue on a more lengthy power walk that leaves me feeling vibrant and ready to start the day with enthusiasm.  But that is not on today’s agenda.  Too many other things to do to get ready for what is yet ahead of me.

As we round the corner back onto our street, we meet a neighbor, slowly walking with her tiny, month old baby tucked in a sash tied across the mother’s back. The infant secure and pressed against her mom’s breast, must surely be comforted by the beat of her mother’s heart as they walk as one,  down the street toward home.

I stop to chat, admiring tiny fingers curled into fists and the soft, wispy auburn hair of the sleeping child. Mom smiles, tells me they’ve been pacing all night, the little one crying, unable to sleep.  But in this early morning light, the flow of tears has come to an end, her eyes are tightly shut and she’s fallen into a world of dreams.  I remember those nights, many years ago when my own babes kept me up.  I’d rock or walk them, trying to soothe the hurt of a gas-filled tummy or the new tooth slowly poking through swollen gums.

As they turn into their driveway, I wish them well, saying, “I hope today is better than your night was.”  The mother turns, smiling, gently hugging her precious bundle, saying, “We’re fine.  You know … it is what it is.”

The grousing tale I’ve been reciting in my head about how difficult my day will be, suddenly evaporates. I’m left with the warmth and soft glow of this new day.

Filed Under: Animals I Love, Navigating Through Life, stories
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