Horses! Horses! Horses!

Today my niece (7) and nephew (5, just) both participated in a horse show involving equitation, pleasure, games (egg-and-spoon, the equestrian equivalent of musical chairs, and other fun delights, culminating in the fancy dress show, horse and rider both).

Simon was done after his morning stint; Tesla carried on throughout the day. So did her dogged aunt. It was FREEZING, though not as bad as yesteray.

It’s a very long time since I’ve spent an entire day around horses, though I used to do it a lot. Through the energy and giggles of preadolescent girls I got some hardwiring back to days spent around jukeboxes in jodphurs. The smell of a stable/barn: it throws me back to a time when I wasn’t remotely concerned about who I was, but was desperate to know what a horse was thinking. The stable was a place where I really felt in control; I saw that countless times today.

There were lots of ragged lives around this show. A girl whose father was killed in a car crash two years ago in front of her, whose mother just remarried two weeks ago; a triad of sisters who are all homeschooled, impeccably mannered, with almost no money for clothes; the horse who can’t move for arthritis and other ailments but who seems too happy to put down. The woman who runs the whole show, Beth, has lost in the last three months three relatives including her mother, a cat, a dog, two horses, and almost her sanity. This is a partial list.

It was like witnessing a communal healing-gymkhana. Such a notion shouldn’t surprise me…