When I was a young girl, I was what was referred to as “horse-crazy,” meaning I was obsessed with horses. As a young child, my favorite outing was a trip to the local pony track, where a dime would buy me five laps around a small corral on the back of a Shetland pony. When I was older, I would nag my parents into taking me to riding stables where I could go for hour-long trail rides through the woods, and also saved my allowance until I had enough money for a few riding lessons. Growing up in the city in a barely middle-class family, I understood that I couldn’t have my own horse, but reading horse books, collecting china horses and getting to see a real horse only once in a while just wasn’t enough.
And then, wonder of wonders, my family moved to a small town in rural Kansas when I was eleven-years old, and having a horse of my own suddenly became possible. A few months after the move, a family friend appeared in our driveway, towing a horse trailer behind his pick-up truck. He told us that he had found me a horse, which he would keep at his farm until we found a place closer to town to board her, and that we could come out that night to meet her. And just like that, Gypsy was mine. My dreams had come true: I finally had a horse!
Sadly, things didn’t go exactly as I had hoped. My first meeting with Gypsy went well, and so did my first ride. The second time I rode her, she bucked me off and I landed so hard that I was knocked out for a few minutes. I think we all hoped that was an isolated incident, but it wasn’t. She threw a fit whenever I didn’t let her have her way when I was riding her, and she had a nasty habit of biting and kicking when I was in her stall. It wasn’t long before I was both scared of her and ashamed that I couldn’t handle her. This was not what I had dreamed it would be like to have my very own horse.
That could easily have been the end of my obsession with horses, but it wasn’t. The stable owner kindly stepped in, offering to find a more experienced owner for Gypsy and helping me find Tony, a good-natured Welsh pony, to help me regain my confidence. Later, I got Prince, who was as close to the horse of my dreams as any horse would ever be (you can read his story in A Prince of a Horse), and I was lucky enough to share my life with Prince until he died, almost eighteen years later.
There’s no doubt that I would have been spared a lot of physical and emotional pain if I had never gotten Gypsy, and if either Tony or Prince had been my first horse instead. But in some ways, I’m glad she was my first horse, because I learned a lot from Gypsy. I learned that the things we dream of don’t always match reality, and I learned that there are always going to be some situations where my best just isn’t good enough, no matter how hard I try. I learned that sometimes reaching our goals means being willing to make some necessary adjustments, and that there’s nothing wrong with accepting help when it’s needed. Most of all, I learned not to give up, even in the face of failure and humiliation, when we’re chasing our dreams.
Life, just like Gypsy, is going to knock me down hard some times. But that doesn’t mean I can’t get back up and try again.
I remember clearly how excited and nervous I was when I finally started this blog. I was excited because I was finally trying out a new writing venue, but at the same time nervous about putting my writing on the internet. I didn’t know whether to worry more about no one reading it, or lots of people reading it but not liking it, and then saying so. I had seen links to blogs on Facebook with lots and lots of cruel comments, and I didn’t want to deal with that.
I have gotten to the point where I just hate labels. Not the kind of labels we find on our groceries, of course…they keep me from eating too much sodium or trans fat, and that’s a good thing. I mean the labels that we give ourselves, and worse, the labels we assign to other people. Maybe it’s because I’m not much of a joiner, and no matter what group of people I’m with, I almost always feel like the “odd one out.” Or maybe it’s because most of the people I know well are complicated, complex individuals who don’t fit the labels that we toss about so casually. All I know is that the minute people start assigning labels, to themselves or to others, I get very uncomfortable.
I’ve come up with my own system for “remembering” the passwords I have to use when I’m at home on my own computer. I have a binder that I keep in my desk drawer, right under my computer monitor, clearly labeled, “Important Computer Passwords.” My son, who does tech auditing for a living, has pointed out that there’s little sense in having passwords if I make it so convenient for everyone to find them. But I think that if someone has taken the trouble to break into my home with the intention of accessing my computer accounts, the least I could do is make it convenient for them. That way, they might not be so inclined to mess with my important stuff, like the profile on my Facebook page.
As we all know, some days are better than others. Some days flow smoothly, with everything going according to plan, and leaving us feeling competent and content. Other days are much more trying, hitting us with one unexpected problem after another, each one more urgent and dire than the one before. We scramble to keep up, to fix everything as quickly as we can, but it feels as if we are trying to bail out a leaking, sinking canoe with nothing more than a thimble. And just when we think we’ve pulled it off, just when we think we’ve solved all the problems and fixed all the issues, someone is kind enough to point out the one thing we missed, or the one thing we did wrong. I don’t know about you, but when that happens to me, I don’t handle it well.
Self pity comes easily to me in the winter. I don’t like cold weather, and because my volunteer job entails walking shelter dogs three times a week in any and all weather, I spend way more time out in the cold than I want to. Even when I am inside my warm house, I am constantly plagued with dry skin, chapped lips and random shocks from static electricity. We have a humidifier, but from what I can tell, its main job is to fog up our windows. Even our wood furniture suffers, drying and cracking unless I’m diligently polishing it with lots and lots of lemon oil.
And I especially hate the way I have to constantly supervise my dog whenever I let her out in the winter, because she persists in believing that those frozen treats she keeps finding (and eating) in our back yard are chocolate popsicles. They aren’t. More than once our neighbors have been treated to the sight of me charging out the back door late at night, clad only in my flannel pajamas, yelling, “Don’t you dare eat that, you dumb dog!” Lest you think I’m making too big a deal of this, I’d like to point out that if we do let her have her “snacks,” she eventually throws them up in our house, and always on my good rugs. So the vigilance continues…..
I usually have a hard time getting started, because I really like the way my house looks when it’s decorated for Christmas. I like the way my upstairs tree casts a warm glow over the living room when I turn on its lights. I like the way the vintage glass ornaments shimmer on the tree, and the way almost every household decoration holds a special meaning or memory. I have a lovely nativity set that was a joint effort of my father (he made the stable) and my mother-in-law (she made the ceramic figurines). Both my father and my mother-in-law have been gone for several years, but every time I look at that nativity set, I’m reminded of them.
I tried a few other stores with no more success at finding a dress, but I did spot a nice blue jacket (on sale, thank goodness) that I thought just might work over an eight-year old, sleeveless black dress I already owned. At that point, I was far too depressed to keep on shopping, so I bought the jacket, went home and tried it on with my black dress, and decided to believe my husband when he told me it looked just fine. I know he wouldn’t have told me otherwise no matter how bad it looked, but it still helped to hear him actually say the words.
Muddling Through My Middle Age 