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First week in October, 2007

Dear Friends,

My horse Precious and I welcome you to our community of readers. This photo is of me and Precious practicing our “Miss America Smiles.” Actually, right before the photographer snapped the picture, Precious asked me, “Why’d you make me wear this saddle, you know it makes me look fat!”

Now that I am turning 64, I am sharing my essays online for anyone who wants to pull them off for whatever reason. And I hope they will be seen as “gifts” to be used in school rooms, meetings, book groups, etc. A few “upfront facts”: I bought Precious over the telephone 7 years ago. I was shopping for a special horse because the two geldings I owned were getting old and unhealthy. Because I was in the polio epidemic at the age of 6 in l950, I have to have a horse who will do a special job—i.e. take care of an old woman and get me places in the woods where I can’t walk. A couple of professional trainers got together at the Appaloosa World Championship in Oklahoma City, discussed my needs and picked Precious out for me. Then she was shipped to my farm. She was barely 4. I named her Precious because I thought it’d be funny to give a poodle’s name to a 2,000 pound animal. But on many days, she has been semi-precious.

Because she was not “finished” as is said in the horse world, I did much of the finish training myself. After all, she has to be special to make up for what I physically cannot do. She was chosen for her mind and kindness. Also she is described as “forgiving,” meaning she won’t buck me off if I make a mistake! “Kindness” in the horse world means a willingness to give back. Horses are not like dogs; they do not love us unconditionally; they do not crave our company. They have to relate to us in a leadership agreement, i.e. they will follow and cooperate as long as the person giving the directions emits an air of confidence and strong leadership. Many of these traits I had to develop within myself. In fact, a few years ago I hired a “horse whisperer” to teach me to talk “equus.” From the moment Precious got off the trailer, I began working with her in my round pen, convincing her I was an “alpha mare” worthy of her trust. My ability to work with horses changed completely when I realized my behavior repertoire had been built around raising children. And to do that well, you teach them how to make good decisions. And you teach how to make good decisions by giving choices. But in horse training, you have to take the horse’s decisions away. If Precious wanted to walk away from the barn slowly, I made her walk fast. If she wanted to come back to the barn before I did, I make her turn around and work some more. Soon she learned, “This old lady knows what she wants and if I obey, I have a real cushy life. In fact, I’ve fallen in the honey hole.”

She is now completely voice trained; even knows the words, “left lead” and “right lead” to make up for weak leg cues. (When a horse canters or gallops, it leads with one leg or the other. A racehorse performs 4 flying lead changes in each race as it balances around the curves.) Of course some days she blows me off, and we fight like mother and daughter. In those early years, she was like riding a teenager shopping at the mall.

This time last year, I was traveling to Philadelphia to talk with Barbaro’s owners about the possibility of my writing a book for children about the Barbaro phenomenon. So many kids were responding with compassion to his plight, I felt this was a generational milestone for them and should be preserved. I was graciously offered the opportunity to meet Barbaro in the Bolton Center. As I looked at him and saw how he was accommodating to his injury, I suddenly realized, “Why, he’s gonna to walk like me! And that’s okay. Everyone will eventually see that’s okay.” In American lingo, You don’t get your cowboy wings unless you’ve got a bum body part. A hitch in your giddy-up is a sure sign you’ve paid your dues.

While some might see Barbaro’s eventual stride as a loss of his dignity, I myself was sure that Barbaro himself was learning to not mind it quite so much. He’d take whatever he could get, as long as grass and sweet feed were around. And in the future the possibility of a few fillies.

Writing a story about a magnificent athlete who suffers a devastating injury and then can be seen in the media accommodating to it—uncomfortable though watching that may be—is of valuable. With so many young men and women coming back from Iraq with parts of their physical being changed, this story would have extraordinary value, I decided. Time will tell.

Now to share with you one of my essays--

This Thing Called Memory

I was in the grocery store the other day, going up and down the aisles as I usually do, putting into my cart a little of this, and a little of that, for I never use a grocery list.

Nope, making up a grocery list is just way too organized for me. I prefer strolling by all the items on the shelves and letting the sight of each one of them jog my memory into realizing that I either need it, or I don’t. And of course, too, this leaves a good bit of room for that impulse buy, like the two cartons of macadamia nuts I brought home last week because it was a special of the day—buy one and get one free—the idea of which got me so excited I forgot I’m allergic to macadamia nuts. Now, I guess, I’m going to have to feed them to the dog.

But anyway, it was right after I bought those nuts that I swung around Aisle Two and ran into a man who instantly knew me. He reached open his arms and swept me up into them while halfway singing with joy,”Why, just looky here who I’ve found! I’m so glad to see you!” I looked into his face and hugged him back and said that I was so really glad to see him, too. Then I waited for his name to come to me.

Now it always takes me a little bit of time to sort out all the faces and names that I have known over the last thirty years. In fact, I used to roll my son in diapers through the same grocery store every week, and I have never gone there since that I do not see someone with whom I have been acquainted, either in my kids’ school, though my husband’s work, from my own classes I taught, or just by being in the same neighborhood. Living in a small city like ours, where you can almost always bump into someone you know, is enough to make me take a bath and comb my hair before I head off to the grocery store. I just assumed I knew the man who was swallowing me in a bear hug.

His face was so full of joy in seeing me that I was sure we had one been very special to each other. I was wondering if he could be my son’s second grade teacher who so warmly reassured me that, no, I had ruined my son by teaching him how to play craps because it was the best way I knew for him to practice the addition tables. Or, he could be the man who promised not to tell anybody when he found me at a mother-son picnic beating the fishing worms to death because I couldn’t stand to put them on the hooks wiggling.

But now, a woman, who was apparently this man’s wife, was touching me on my arm and apologizing.” He thinks he knows you,” she whispered, and then she took him by the hand and coaxed him away, glancing back at me with the embarrassment of one who cares for someone whose memory has been misaligned by a disease that is usually accompanied by age. I felt sorry that she was embarrassed, for I can’t remember when I have been the object of such a joyful greeting. My face must have jiggled loose someone very special in his past. And I was more than happy to be to him whoever he wanted me to be. Besides, my own memories were making up parts for him in my life, too.

It is said that God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December. And Tennessee Williams once wrote that in memory everything seems to happen to music.

Well, last week in the grocery store I had one of my finest hours. I was a rose dancing in a memory.