Charlie had his second riding lesson today and as I watched I could feel my body responding to the commands -- commands I had heard so many times in my own life as a child in countless riding lessons, it was kind of odd.
As he struggled to post, up down, up down, I could feel with every fiber of my being what that felt like ... how awkward it feels when you fight against the horse's gait ... and how natural it feels when you sync with the horse and your entire body rises when it should, falls when it should and it becomes a graceful dance, a balance in rhythm.
As I watched him run through a series of exercises I was brought back to the many riding rings I've been in myself ... in lessons, in horse shows and camps. As the instructor told him to get into the jumping position and ride over some "gates," which were actually just posts on the ground, I flashed back to a lesson where I was told to do the same thing, and I was in the same position and the horse thought it was an actual jump and jumped into the air. YIKES!
I could tell horse stories until the cows come home. (That is if they choose to do so! I don't like to be pushy with cows, and not since the cow tipping days have I bugged a cow and they can come home when they choose). But that is another set of memories.
Right now we are going down horse memory lane (equine memory lane?) and after the heady assaults of nostalgia, the overwhelming urge to be on a horse knowing that without a doubt my body would know what to do -- just as I responded to the instructor's commands and felt my spine stiffen because I ALWAYS had to fight the urge to slouch -- I sat in the midst of the barn on a rickety bench and instantly my cozy memories faded away and I saw nothing but WORK.
Everywhere the eye turned, there was work. Dirty stalls, grain to be scooped, hay to be untied and broken into chunks, the floor to be swept, floor boards to be replaced, tack to be cleaned, and as a fly buzzed incessantly around my head, I thought to myself that I had invested a good chunk of my life into this world, and there was no need to go back!
Which is in itself a very freeing thought. When Hallie took lessons about ten years ago, I had a decidedly different frame of mind. I was working full-time then and rarely had time for much of anything, so the dream of once again having a barn full of horses was still vivid and something to strive for. But I knew that I wouldn't be able to work as well, so it was something to think about, dream for, but not put into action until the time was right.
Hallie did not take to horses as I did (or did I not take to the scene like my mother did?) Probably the latter is more the case, but Hallie took lessons for years, but she never went much further than that. And once she began swimming, it was all over. And, so it seemed, was the big barn (though I had designed it in my head and where it would be and I could already see the riding ring in the lower field).
What it is nice to know now is that there will never be any regrets about not having that again. I have so many good memories of it -- and I am thankful that I experienced them all, and I can only wonder why the universe provided me with Tuppy -- the world's most ridiculous horse! Oh, the angst that horse put me through. All I wanted was what everyone else HAD -- and that was the perfect horse -- you know, the one that stands there happy to be groomed, the one that stands there like a statue when you get on, the one that walks serenely, trots smoothly and canters effortlessly. And you, the rider, get to sit there and look all smug and know-it-ally.
And then there was me. Tuppy never stood still outside of his own stall. He was like a bull in a china shop once out of his familiar surroundings. It was near impossible to get him into a trailer, and then once transported to a new environ, it was madness. I recall one horse camp where all the girls and
their perfect horses were
frolicking about, and then there was me ... and Tuppy the Terrible. He nipped at the other horses, he kicked at them for good measure, he was always completely out of control ... and gasp ... when you had to switch horses everyone HATED to be on Tuppy. It was awful. So embarrassing to have THE BAD HORSE. Like it was somehow my fault, like somehow **I** had done this, kept my horse from being perfect.
Even though inside I knew this wasn't true, I was still left to endure his antics. One night the moon was full and we took the horses out bareback. Everyone's horse was rather mellow, but not Tuppy. He bounced and pranced and I gazed longingly at all the girls laying down on the backs of their horses, staring up at the stars. And there was me, fighting with all my strength to keep Tuppy from bolting off into the dark night. I was nearly in tears, and who knows where this might have gone ... if it hadn't been for Doris Fillmore.
Doris had begun the camp with a mellow horse, but her parents insisted that she use her new horse -- let's just call him Demon. So that first morning Demon was far worse than Tuppy -- as he was big and let's just say it, the horse scared the crap out of me! He snorted all the time, which made his nostrils flare, he bobbed his massive head so it looked like he was trying to jackhammer you into the ground, and he never stood still, not for nothing!
That first day Doris was completely saddled (hehe) with the basic business of just trying to get her horse to do anything right. Oh, Tuppy looked like Flicker that day, and as the sun shone down upon his sparse white mane, I almost thought for a moment like I too was one of the others. I was in the club, and as I stood (and Tuppy stood quietly, for it is a basic law of nature that if there is another animal acting worse than you, than you will act a million times better just to make that animal look even worse than the worse they are portraying!) in the pack of perfect ponies ... I saw what the others always saw me enduring -- a constant fight with a pain in the neck horse. Oh, it was good to be on the other side, if only for that once.
Because it is another law of nature that all animals will return to their normal behavior eventually!
But the camp was saved that summer -- for every day Doris's Demon did something that made Tuppy look like a prince. Like the morning we went down to feed the horses before feeding ourselves breakfast to find that Demon wasn't in his stall.
"OH NO!" Doris screamed as she ran to the stall. "My horse is gone."
But no, he wasn't gone. He had decided to leave the fairgrounds via China, and had dug a hole so deep he wasn't visible until you peered down into the stall! What a mess, and as we all saw the work that was in front of Doris, I meandered over to Tuppy who knickered softly and brushed his velvety nose against my shoulder. Ahhh, yes, it is good to have a horse in the mix who is worse than yours! It can make your day!
After that, Doris and I became fast friends, bonding over the tragedy of long, sad horse tales! Oh, we could go on all night, and often did, much to the chagrin of our perfect-pony-pals. They had no stories, who cares if they saddled up their horse and went on the perfect trail ride. No, we had adventure, danger, imminent death stories, and everyone listened in awe as we told them. We would all climb into our cots and lay on our stomachs, our chins cupped in our hands, and tell the long sorry tales of horses that go backwards, that bite the judges, that take off at breakneck paces through the woods and there is no way to control them. Our cabin became the most popular, as girls from the other one wanted to come listen to the stories! It was all we talked about during the day ... either what Demon had done that morning, what Tuppy was doing right now, or some snippet from a story the night before.
So I found a new niche -- not as one of the others -- but because of my horse's basic badness I had become popular in a different way.
So I suppose if I ever run out of things to blog about, I can always get a horse!
Named Demon of course!
This picture is when I was probably Charlie's
age (13) and the horse's name is Charlie! Because Tuppy was such a PAIN IN THE BUTT, I often had to use my instructor's horses for shows. One was Charlie, who was 30 at the time (that is ancient for a horse!) and the other was a nasty little pony named Apple Pie. Now that I think back, I was never blessed with a perfect horse in my life! I guess there is a lesson in that .... right?
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